Buses from Bridgeport

After the company he worked for filed for Chapter 11, Jim began hiding cash around the house. He slid wads behind dresser drawers. He snapped rubber bands around rolls of hundreds, put them into plastic Band Aid boxes, and stored them in the dark corners of low walls surrounding the sump pump. He told no one.

Life continued on as normal, although he explained to his wife that they would have to economize. “No more spa days. No more manicures,” he said. “And for Christ’s sake, Sylvia, no more three martini lunches at the club with your friends….for a good long while.” She sulked for a day, like a little girl, in a way that was no longer cute or appealing. He did not try to reconcile or reassure her. Of all times, he thought, she should come to me, see how I’m feeling. She did not.

And when he finally went through her wallet to pull out her two Visas and a store charge, she wouldn’t speak to him for a day. “No more of this,” he said, violently waving the cards in front of her.

When her mood passed, she did not say, “I’m sorry” or “Are you okay?” Instead she asked, “So are we poor now?”

“Well, I’d like to keep paying the mortgage,” was all he would tell her.  

He watched his children, both teenagers, slip in and out of the house like cats, climbing into pulsing, bass-filled BMWs or Grand Cherokees their friend drove, friends Jim had never met. Sylvia did not ask questions or set curfews. She kept them at arm’s length, as if they were not her children, but someone else’s, for which she had been made involuntarily responsible. Jim couldn’t remember her ever having hugged them. Perhaps it was because they were boys…perhaps it was because she had never truly bonded with them, but sent them off to day care well before they were school-age.

Jim only now realized how little his children were actually home. He wondered how they managed all that going out, when they were probably tapped for money to buy beer or pot. (He hoped it was only beer and pot and dismissed the thought of anything worse. Too much to worry about now, with everything else.) He himself never gave the boys money. After all, he thought, they could get a job like he’d had at their age. Still, he suspected they raided Sylvia’s wallet…maybe even his own. Hadn’t he been missing two twenties last week, but then figured he’d been mistaken? Yes, well, maybe even his.

One night when his younger son came in at 1 a.m., Jim was waiting in a chair in the darkened dining room, just off the foyer. “Hi, Brandon,” Jim said, quietly.

His son jumped and reeled back, putting up his arms as if he expected to be hit. Even though he was feet away from the boy, Jim could smell the cigarette smoke lifting from his clothes.

“How are you?” Jim asked.

“I was…” Brandon stammered, “I was just getting in. Car broke down, so we got, um, stranded on Banksville Road for awhile. We…you know…we had to walk back.”

Jim nodded. “You been drinking, Brandon?”

“No.” Brandon said sharply.

“Just asking. I just want to know what’s going on in your life, that’s all.”

Brandon put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the Persian rug beneath his sneakers.

I realized,” Jim said, “that I haven’t been paying enough attention. And I don’t want you to think you’re not important to me because you are. You’re very important.”

Brandon continued to look at his shoes, saying nothing.

“You can come to me with problems, you know. Worries. Whatever. I don’t want you to think you’re alone. All right?”

Brandon nodded. There was a pause, and then he asked, without looking up, “Somebody said tonight that you’re going to prison. Is it true?”

“Who said that?” Jim said, startled and looking intently into the lighted foyer.

“Some friends. They said you defrauded a lot of people.”

“I didn’t defraud them. The company I work for did some very unfair things.”

“Are you going to have to go to jail?” asked Brandon, looking into the dining room, where he probably couldn’t see his father very clearly.

“No, Brandon. I don’t think so.”

Brandon looked down again, and Jim detected in his expression something that resembled disappointment. “Okay,” he replied in a crestfallen tone.

“Brandon, do you want me to go to jail? I mean, do you think I should go to jail?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Jim asked, leaning forward.

“I just,” Brandon hesitated. “I just think it would be cool to visit you in prison. I’d be like one of the Gotti kids. You know? We’d be famous. That would be amazing.”

Jim bowed his head. “No, Brandon. It wouldn’t. I don’t think you know what you’re saying. And I’m not a gangster. I’m an accountant. That’s all.”

“But,” Brandon continued with anger edging his words, “it would be the first really good thing you’ve done for us! I mean, I don’t have a car. I don’t have an iPod. Mom buys all this shit for herself, but never anything for us. I’ve got nothing that gives me any status with these people,” he thrust a finger towards the outside. “I don’t even have my own goddamn cash. The least you could do is go to jail, so I’d be someone for once!”

“You’d wish that on me?” Jim said, looking at his son with his mouth slightly open. “You’d send me to jail so you could be cool?”

Brandon stood there, his eyes burning. Jim saw the arms at his sides ended in fists. He did not answer, but did not seem to be softened by the realization his father was pointing out to him.

Jim got up from the chair and left the dining room by a door on the opposite wall. The only thing that seemed reasonable now was to have a drink. He went to the cabinet and realized that well over half of his bottle of Black Label was missing. No one had even taken the time to fill it back to level with water. They had neglected even that courteous pretense.

When he came around the stairs and into the foyer with the partially empty bottle, Brandon was gone. He was glad for this because he now felt the strong urge to beat the boy, to knock him sniveling into a corner and whale on him with both fists until his eyes were swollen shut. His own son, who didn’t care about anyone but himself. A son so much like his mother.

Jim drank out of the bottle as he headed into the basement. He checked his hoard of cash near the sump pump surround, counting it out and taking a long, burning swallow each time he reached a five-hundred dollar amount. Satisfied it was all there, he carefully tucked the rolls of bills back into their hiding place and climbed the stairs. There had been enough scotch left to make him sleepy, but not to mitigate his pain in any significant way. He collapsed in his clothes onto the living room’s leather sofa and stayed there through the night.

Face down, breathing on the soft cow hide, he became confused and thought of his wife, not the Sylvia of today, but the Sylvia he’d married years ago, who had been occasionally distant and frigid but warm to him, too. Certainly, he wouldn’t have married her otherwise. As he was passing into unconsciousness, he thought how much this sofa felt like human skin…was it real flesh next to his cheek, a woman’s torso? But it was so cold.

He drifted from this thought and into a dense, lightless forest, where he saw a man dressed like a scarecrow, standing a few yards from him. The man’s elbows shone through his plaid shirt. His pants were torn, his hair wooly and unkempt. The man began chasing Jim, who was dressed in one of his better wool suits. They stumbled through thick woods, running, tripping over roots that had erupted from the earth, regaining their balance, putting on speed. Finally, they reached a clearing, where a burning cornfield lit the sky. Forced to the edge of this field, Jim and his expensive suit lit up like corn fodder. And, as he was teetering on the field’s periphery, trying to move forward so he could roll the flames out, he saw more figures crowd close to him. Scarecrows, male and female, forced him backward with shot guns, until his body seemed to merge with the heat and light. He, in his business suit, which was already burning away, making his flesh ooze and meld, found there was no other way but into the fire. Before the flames consumed him, he saw Sylvia. She was standing at a safe distance with the boys, all strangely expressionless, none of them doing anything to help him. Not even crying. He thought, My God, why not cry for me?

He woke slowly. The light coming through the wide windows made him blink and squint. He sat up, accidentally balancing his foot on the empty bottle of Black Label, which slid away from him on the carpet. The blood pounded against his skull. He shut his eyes, feeling bristly stubble on each cheek.

Sylvia, he realized, was sitting in a chair across from him, snapping to attention the pages of the magazine she was looking at. “Glad you’re awake,” she said sarcastically. “I thought you went to work for once. But I found you here instead.”

Jim covered his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Eleven fifteen.”

“Did you call into work for me?”

“No.”

“Could you, please?” he looked at her squinting, the heel of his palm against his forehead.

She got up, threw her magazine down, and looked at him, “Do you know that both your sons saw you like this before they left for school?”

“Sylvia,” he said, again squinting into the light, “stop yelling. You don’t care anyway.”

She looked at him, her lips thinned, her eyes grew rounder, wider, and so dark they looked black. Jim instantly recognized the same stance Brandon had the night before.

“Please, Sylvia. Can you call for me?”

Instead of answering, Sylvia left the room, leaving the sickening scent of perfume in her wake. “I’m not your secretary,” she yelled from the hallway.

“And what are you doing today, exactly?” he called after her. “Sleeping for eight hours now that you can’t spend my money?”

“Fuck you, Jim Reynolds!” she shouted.

“You could get a job and help out a little!” he hollered back at her.

There was no answer.

“You might have to,” he added in a lower tone. But she probably hadn’t heard.

He knew she would never work unless she were living alone, and even then she’d find a way to avoid it. When he’d met her seventeen years ago, Sylvia was in an elite men’s clothing store. She was standing against a table of sweaters, staring out the window at the lighted Benetton storefront across the street. She had a dreamy look, like she hadn’t noticed him at all. It was a far away and distant expression that made him think she was a different kind of woman, a creative woman maybe. He didn’t really remember what he specifically thought anymore. It was just that, at first, he didn’t realize she was a clerk there. When she acknowledged him, a man in a crisp white shirt and navy silk tie, she seemed to come alive. “You look like a banker,” she said, her hand on her hip and a slight smile on her lips, which were shiny with gloss.

“I work in finance,” he said, raising his eyebrows and putting his hands in his pockets. He was proud that, even at twenty-nine, he was projecting the right image. “And you?” he asked, smiling down at her.

“Well, I work here, silly,” she said, throwing up her right hand, from which a long yellow measuring tape dangled.

“Ah, so you can measure my inseam,” he said gleefully. He made the joke without thinking and then suddenly regretted having said it, since he wasn’t sure how young she actually was.

But she was quick, “Be glad to. Any time,” she smiled back, winking.

He liked her instantly, this toothsome 20 year-old (as he would soon learn), with the amiable, knowing smile. And he realized that, even then, she’d been a shark, hadn’t she? She’d just been waiting for someone like him, waiting to get out of the tiny, rented salt box she lived in with her bitter, cigarette smoking mother, who’d been living on disability for the previous decade. Why else work in a men’s clothing store, a high-end men’s clothing store? But instead of the quick romp and roll an older man might have given her, he’d married her.

Still, it was her occasional aloofness, her moments of babyish sulking or icy dismissal that kept him interested in her, willing to please her, fawning and ingratiating. He still didn’t know what caused his obsession with pleasing her. His own mother had been even tempered, understanding, willing to help his father even at the cost of her own comfort. His mother, Ann, had cleaned and washed clothes and did a full complement of housework even at eight months pregnant with Jim’s sister Katie. Moreover, when Jim’s father was hurt—something with his back—his mother waited on his father hand and foot, doting on him. So how had he chosen Sylvia, who was hard-bitten and uncaring, who now so infuriated him? He still didn’t know.  

He got up, called the company's front desk secretary and made an excuse about illness, about not having slept, about oversleeping. It was accepted, or seemed to be accepted. There was no hesitation in the woman’s voice, and so he fell back onto the sofa, exhaling a residual, nauseating odor of alcohol. He turned on the television.

 “They need to simply break those contracts,” said one suited figure, whose salt and pepper hair was perfectly feathered and very likely sprayed in place. “Why honor them, when so much damage has already been done?”

“But, Randy,” said another man in a dark suit with a lavender handkerchief that matched his tie, “you can’t decide to break a contract without considering the legal and even moral ramifications. I mean, what kind of precedent does that set? So then, anytime a contract doesn’t suit the government’s agenda, it can be broken?” The man shook his head. “No. How does that pan out for other entities, even corporate entities that want out of contracts? No. Absolutely not. It’s wrong.”

The banner at the bottom of the screen read, “Fury Over AIG Contracts." Jim closed his eyes and turned the television off. There would be no mental diversion there. 

It was only the middle of March, but Jim put on his coat and went outside. He’d driven around the development before, when he got his new car and of course before they bought the house in Breckenridge Estates, which was just off a golf course. However, he’d never actually walked around the neighborhood. He had never had any interest in walking the streets and looking at other people’s houses, some of them belonging to men he worked with. He had interest only in his own house, and even that was scant. Mostly, it was Sylvia who had wanted it. Jim would have been just as happy in an apartment in the city. But when Sylvia wanted something, Sylvia demanded it, and then Sylvia got it, one way or another. She was friends with some of the women in the development, but he did not know where they lived. He realized that, for a long time, he’d largely been out of touch with his family’s external lives.

He looked around at other houses and saw shades drawn against the whitish winter skies. There were still patches of snow on the ground. Winter had not yet passed. He exhaled, and the plume of his breath obscured his view of the street for a moment. There was no scent of spring yet, as if spring would not come to this neighborhood. As if there would be no summer. A car passed him as he walked and whoever was behind the wheel put up a gloved hand. Jim waved in response, quickly returning his own naked hand to the protection of his coat pocket.

He had reached the crest of a modest hill, where the road peaked and fell towards the development’s entrance a quarter of a mile away. He saw, from afar, two school buses move slowly through the entrance. It wasn’t such an odd sight in the neighborhood, but at nearly noon, it seemed slightly unusual. Perhaps today was only a half day for students. He hadn’t really kept track of school holidays with any consistency. Jim walked on, looking down again, breathing deeply to clear the pressure in his head and chest. The buses had turned right and were heading into the giant circle that would route them past his house, up this road, and back out the development entrance. Jim awaited the exhaust fumes, the deafening sound of the diesel motor, which reminded him of his days in elementary school and then junior high, when he’d ridden on such a bus and made faces at truck drivers as they went past. He remembered once the kid next to him, who was slightly older, flipping one of these truck drivers off. He said afterwards, by way of explanation, “Truckers are stupid. My dad says they can’t even read.” The truck driver flipped off the boy in return and caused an uproar in the bus. Girls were even yelling, tattling on the man who was chugging along parallel to their windows. He shot the bird, they kept screaming, their voices high pitched and almost hysterical. He shot the bird!

Jim shivered against the cold, feeling that he hadn’t really escaped anything with this walk. Not his sense of dread, not even the sense of confinement. There was no nature here, with every planted tree surrounded by pea gravel, mulch, and sidewalks. Nothing was unwieldy and chaotic, like the nature of his childhood. Instead, it was trimmed to an unsustainable and apparent faultlessness. He suddenly remembered walks he’d taken with his father, along the stream near his childhood home, which had been a small affair made of clapboard his mother scrubbed and his father painted. Sometimes, to get away (although not to escape, that was different; then, the two of them fled nothing. They simply wanted to spend time together, and Jim had been grateful for that) his father and he often went fishing, wading into the shallows, catching minis and throwing some of them back.

When Sylvia had given birth to the first boy, Austin, Jim had thought he’d do the same things his father had. But then Jim found himself at work more and more. Eventually, he was there on Saturdays, called away on Sundays. There were after hours meetings every other day of the week. Sylvia seemed not to care, as long as she could find help, someone to sit the children, someone to clean the house. And all the while he thought, there’s plenty of time. Next week, I’ll take some time off. We’ll rent a cabin in the Poconos…we’ll…And then something happened, some project, some cataclysm that had to be dealt with. Now, he lived with boys that were almost men, whom he did not truly know or understand, and whom--he thought with a pang of conscience--he did not even like. He recognized their mother in them and none of his own contribution.

Jim began to think about running away more seriously. What if he started over again and tried to do it right…slipped away and truly escaped. Could he do it realistically? And more importantly, where would he go? Sure, he was looking at 50 in a few years, but still, men started second families in middle age. They made a go of it. They were happy. He couldn’t think of any examples at the moment, but he knew he had heard of them: people meeting the love of their life late in the game and having children. Jim began to feel his headache lifting. He began to walk a little faster now. So what, he thought, would I have to do next?

He heard the thrumming of the diesel motors. The buses had rounded the long bend and were heading towards to exit, which lay ahead. Jim moved first to the curb and then onto the sidewalk. He began to register that the buses were progressing with incredible slowness. They did not stop to let children off either, or at least it didn’t sound like they did. The engines just kept thrumming along, pulling occasionally as they accelerated to keep speed. Jim stopped and turned to look at them. They were still too far off for him to see either of the drivers’ faces. He waited, curious now that buses like this would come into the development without children. He felt lighter, sharper, more interested in everything now that he’d considered a new array of possibilities.

As the buses drew closer, he saw something fly out a side window: a soda can. He walked towards the bus, which was slowly motoring towards him. “Hey!” he shouted, “Hey! You can’t just throw trash out here!” He pointed to the can.

He stood parallel to the first bus, from which the can had flown. There were faces at the window, black faces, white faces. They were adults, not children and they seemed to be shouting at him. He thought he heard the word motherfucker. Something else flew out the window and made direct and stunning contact with his head. The people inside the bus roared with laughter. When he looked down to see what had hit him, a crumpled Pepsi can lay at his feet, rocking back and forth. He was bewildered for a moment and said nothing, and when he looked again at the bus, one small white figure in a backwards baseball cap and a puffy plaid shirt shot him the finger. The people in the bus that followed merely looked at him, as if he were an animal at the zoo. And then they turned their attention back to the houses, at which several of them pointed and appeared to comment on.

Jim stood there for a few moments, trying to make sense of what he’d seen. The response of the people in the second bus reminded him of the tours people took in Hollywood, when they went to see the mansions and hillside estates of movie stars.  He’d seen pictures of them years ago, their faces covered by sunglasses and sun visors, heads turning back and forth on swivels between gated villas. These people on the buses, the ones he could see anyway, looked like figures from the inner city, or so it appeared to him. Many were young, although an equal number were middle-aged men with hardened, deeply lined faces and squinting eyes that bore a toxic kind of hatred. Others were gray-haired mothers, who sat with big eyes, just looking, taking it all in. Several of the younger passengers had had camera phones they were holding up, as if they had been taking pictures. But why? Jim turned around and went back the way he came. It was the shortest distance home. He picked up speed as he walked, listening intently for the pulling of the diesel engines.

When he got back into the house, Jim could see from the doorway that Sylvia was on the chair in the living room. A sly smile spread across her face, although it was not intended for him. She was on the telephone with someone, and Jim heard her say, in a slow, devious-sounding voice, “You think so, do you? I don’t know…maybe this afternoon, if you can get away. I can.”

Jim came down the hallway and stood at the top of the stairs with his hands on his hips. He had not taken his shoes off. Sylvia looked up at him, but did not smile. “Later…Jim’s here.” She hung up. “Jim,” she continued, flatly. “You’ve got your shoes on. You know how I feel about that.”

“All the better to leave you with,” Jim said, his heart again thudding in his temples.

“Go ahead,” she examined her fingernails coolly. “Make my day.”

Jim turned around and went upstairs. As he passed the front windows of their bedroom, he saw two more buses cycle past his house, or maybe it was the same buses he’d seen before. He couldn’t tell. The passengers continued to throw things out the window. Nothing landed in the lawn or in the driveway, only along the gutter, where snow still lay melting slowly.

He went to phone and dialed 911. The woman on the other end seemed not to understand him, “They’re littering?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, putting his lips closer to the receiver. “They’re throwing things from the bus windows. One hit me in the head with a soda can. I don’t even know who they are. Buses like that don’t belong back here. Can an officer come and look into this? See what’s going on? Anyway, I’d like to file a report.”

She promised to send someone around, but after half an hour, which Jim spent at the window, no police car came. But neither did any more buses, so Jim thought, hopefully, that they’d been stopped before they’d even reached the development. He went to the walk-in closet, fought his way past Sylvia’s expansive store of clothing, which had begun to impede everyone’s entrance, and started to fill a duffle bag with underpants, undershirts, and ties. He took jeans from the shelves, and filled two garment bags with four suits, throwing his dress shoes into the bottom of the carrier. He knew that if he left anything, anything at all now, it would not be there if he came back for it. Sylvia would pawn it or sell it outright.

His watches, cufflinks, and the gold bracelet he’d bought himself in the early nineties, which had more recently been hidden underneath the felt lining of his wooden jewel box, went into what he usually used as his carry-on during flights. He collected the wads of cash hidden behind his dresser drawer and from between the mattress and box spring. He looked first at the walk-in closet, still stuffed with his polo shirts and chinos, and then turned to consider his empty drawers. He wondered whether or not he’d forgotten anything. He thought of the money down in the sump pump-surround and was headed that way when he heard a loud noise outside.

Jim went to the window and saw people were on the lawn. A man in a dark trench coat climbed off the bus. He was holding a megaphone and stood with his hand on top of a shiny black fedora. Occasionally, he would motion to passengers still on the bus. They came off slowly, uncertainly. Others were more eager, jumping onto the pavement from the last bus step and looking around, often to the upper windows, where Jim stood. Jim stepped to the side, so he would not be seen.

“Jim?” Sylvia began calling. “Jim! There are people in the front yard. They’re looking in the windows!” She was coming up the stairs.

Jim did not reply, but continued watching.

Sylvia came into the bedroom and saw the garment bags hanging on the bathroom door. “You’re not going now are you?”

Jim just looked at her, and then turned his attention back to the yard. The man in the dark fedora was putting the megaphone to his lips.

“We brought all of you up here to see how white collar criminals live. Yes, criminals!”

A shout collectively rose from the crowd.

“These people have swindled you, the law abiding tax payer,” the man continued. He raised a hand to quiet the crowd, “yes, yes, many of whom are now unemployed because of what’s happened in the market—as a direct result of what these men and women have done. And look around you! This is what a million dollar bonus buys you, folks! Over there,” the man pointed to Jim’s neighbor two doors away, “there’s a regulation outdoor basketball court! Imagine such a luxury! You, who have to choose between medications and groceries every week, or whether you can afford to pay your heating bill!”

Again the hand went up to calm people, some of whom were shouting inaudible declarations. “Yes, yes,” he continued, “I know some of you are even facing eviction! No, it’s not fair!”

The man turned and pointed his megaphone towards Jim’s windows, panning the upper floors as he spoke, “I ask you, James R. Reynolds, to account for what you’ve done! Explain to these workers, who have children to feed and elderly parents to care for, why you have perpetrated crimes against them. And moreover, we invite you to come see where they live!”

The man began waving a paper in the air. “We’ve brought a formal invitation to see what your actions have meant for these people. We welcome you to our neighborhoods! See the new era of poverty, Mr. Reynolds. See the people you’ve kicked into the gutter and splashed with your sewage!”

A cheer followed the man’s words, with some people throwing fists into the air. The man then walked over to Jim’s mailbox, and while still looking at the upper windows, inserted the paper he’d held before closing the small plastic door with a snap.

“Look at them, Mr. Reynolds,” he said through the megaphone. “These are the new faces of poverty.”

It took some moments for Jim to realize that Sylvia was no longer in the room. His heart was thudding in his chest, and he suddenly registered the sweat that had erupted across his forehead, on his upper lip, under both his arms. His mind began racing, thinking only, how can I get out of here without them seeing me?

He heard the front door open. The weather seal cracked loudly as it parted from the jamb. Suddenly, he heard Sylvia’s voice, “Get the hell off our property! We don’t want what you’re selling!  Look for pity elsewhere, trash!”

Jim ran to the stair railing and yelled to Sylvia, “No, Sylvia! No! Jesus God! Shut the door!”

Jim stumbled back to the window to see the people’s response. Women had crossed their arms. Other younger ones yelled obscenities and stepped forward to pitch soda bottles at Sylvia. Still others, men, were moving towards the front door. They were men in hooded Carhartt coats that were so worn, their stuffing was visible and each jacket hem trailed dirty strings. Their hands were hidden in their coat pockets, which made Jim more alert and uneasy.

The man with the megaphone said to the crowd, “You hear that, everyone? We’re trash to these people. Trash! From their lips to your ears!”

“We’ve called the cops,” Sylvia continued, unfazed. “So get the hell off our property!”

This did not deter the men. They continued up the stairs, and Jim heard Sylvia slam the door, but she was not fast enough in throwing the bolt because the men pushed against it. The force of their shove sent her staggering backwards. He heard the thud of her fall.

“You’re a big talker, aren’t you?” said one of the men, now inside the door. “Trash, huh?” Someone either punched or kicked Sylvia. Jim first heard the blow, Sylvia’s scream, and then the sobbing that followed.

“Is the man of the house home? We got somethin’ to talk to him about.”

Jim ran into the bathroom and tried to shut the door, but the hangers of his garment bags kept it from closing. He pulled them off, casting them on the floor, and tried to close the door again. He heard, “What’s that? Yoo-hoo! James Reynolds, you home? Sounds to me like someone’s home.”

Jim huddled in the Jacuzzi tub, listening intently. For awhile there was nothing, and then he realized they were right outside the bathroom door, going through the garment bags. Jim crawled out of the tub and put his ear against the door.

“Look,” said one gritty male voice, “fuckin’ glossy pair of shoes, ain’t they?”

Another younger voice said, “What are you doing?”

“Well, puttin’ them on. What does it look like?”

“You can’t do that!”

“Why the hell not?”

“We’re not here to steal his stuff. I thought we were here to talk to him. Like really talk to him, get something accomplished. That’s what they told me when I signed up for the trip.”

“What fucking planet do you come from, kid? You really think that’s gonna work with these people? You think they’re actually gonna see us and give a shit? You heard that bitch downstairs. To her, we’re trash. And he feels the same way. I guarantee it.”

“You still can’t take it. Then you’re no better than he is,” the younger voice insisted.

“I’m here to get what I can while I can. Nobody is gonna look out for me, but me. Anyway, the fuckin’ things don’t fit.”

The man must have tossed the shoes when he took them off because something hard struck the bathroom door, and Jim pulled his head away quickly, initially uncertain of what it had been. Were they trying to break in?

“Hey, though,” continued the raspy voice, “here’s a gold bracelet. Pretty nice stuff. Cufflinks, too. I can sell that for the gold. Maybe get a month’s rent. See, kid, you got be practical. These fuckin’ big ideas like what that jabbering cocksucker on the bus calls the greater good, it ain’t gonna feed you or pay your rent. You got to hunt and gather when you can. That’s the way it’s always been, and it ain’t gonna change. I don’t care what your savior politician says. That guy’s just shoveling a lot of warm bullshit, and you’re eatin’ it up like it’s burger. It ain‘t. You‘ll starve if that’s all you got to go on.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the gruffer voice said, “I hear motor mouth down there. Brought the fuckin’ megaphone in with him, sounds like. Here, take my advice and take some of this shit with you. You’d be stupid not to.”

Jim strained to hear more, but the voices were at first silent and then became suddenly distant, apparently having moved out of the bedroom. After a few seconds, however, he could hear the man in the black fedora, his voice amplified by the megaphone. He could hear him very clearly. “James R. Reynolds, your wife has let us in. We know you’re home. She’s told us you’re home. We’d like you to come out and face us, Mr. Reynolds. Come out and face the people you have wronged.” 

Jim could hear low mumbling, as if the crowd had followed the man. Sylvia had apparently told them where he was because the man’s voice drew closer. The low rumbling of voices grew louder, too. 

The door knob turned, but only a quarter of the way, stopping when it encountered resistance. Jim had, of course, locked it.

“Mi-ster Rey-nolds!” The voice sang into the megaphone. It was apparently pointed right at the crack of the door. It invaded the room in a nearly deafening way, bouncing off the walls and mirrors to assault Jim from new angles. “We’re waiting for you!”

Jim pulled back from the door, his heart thudding again. Sweat trickled down his forehead and dripped from his nose. He pulled at the collar of his shirt, his throat dry and growing more and more constricted. He looked around the room for something, anything that might provide him with an outlet, some form of egress. At first, he saw only himself reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors by the Jacuzzi tub. And then he remembered the window by the toilet, a place he often used to sit and quietly watch the golfers.

Again the door knob rattled, and the stir of voices behind it increased. “We’re all here now, Mr. Reynolds,” The voice again bounced off the bathroom walls, the mirrors. “We want you to account for what you’ve done to these families. Do you know the impact you’ve had on these people’s lives, Mr. Reynolds?”

Below him was the house’s sunroom, a room they rarely used, a room Sylvia insisted on and the contractor agreed was a good idea. “Passive solar,” the contractor said. “It will keep your heating bills down.”

Jim had thought having a glass-walled room near a golf course was a bad idea. “Imagine it, Sylvia, we’ll have Titleist balls through these panes at least once a month. You watch.”

The rattling of the door became more heated now. “We demand you open this door, Mr. Reynolds. Or we’ll come in ourselves! We’ve come this far, Mr. Reynolds.”

Someone put a shoulder against the door, as the voice coming through the megaphone began to chant, “The proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more! I’m reading to you from The Communist Manifesto, Mr. Reynolds!”

Again there was pressing against the door, more insistent this time. Jim heard it crack once against the pressure. The doors in the house were hollow, and Jim knew they would not last long against sustained force. He opened the window, quietly and felt the cold air blow in against him. The draft made the bathroom door pull and rattle. Jim hoped the man with the megaphone did not notice the draft at his feet.

Outside the door, the megaphone voice grew grave, “The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society—these men and women in your bedroom, Mr. Reynolds, their children jumping on your bed—cannot raise itself up without the whole social strata being sprung into the air. Come out and face our revolution, Mr. Reynolds!”

Jim ducked under the lifted sash and stepped gingerly onto the metal spans that held each pane. He did not attempt to close the window behind him because he was afraid he would accidentally put a foot through one of the panes in the process. Holding his arms out to balance himself, he took baby steps down the incline, moving towards the terrace below. It was slicker than he realized. Luckily, he’d kept his shoes on despite Sylvia’s withering look when she saw them earlier.

Above him, back in the bathroom, he heard a loud crack and the sound of voices swelling from the open window. The megaphone seemed to come first, heading directly for the opening. “Mr. Reynolds,” it shouted. The voice seemed louder than ever. “Mr. Reynolds!” Out the window came the man’s head. It still bore the black fedora, which Jim saw was a glossy onyx color, most likely made of tightly woven and epoxy-sealed straw. The man’s brown face looked pale and dry under the bright opaque sky, a sky that meant snow was somewhere near.

People had rushed to the bathroom’s other window, which faced the mirrored walls. Soon enough, they had the sash up and had begun throwing things at him. “Fucking coward,” someone shouted, while tossing a half full shampoo bottle at Jim. It missed and fell through the pane it landed on. Jim glanced at the hole it made and saw the brick floor of the room below him. He struggled to keep his balance. His wife, he knew, had at least half a dozen bottles of conditioner, shampoo, and body wash near the tub, so he braced himself for more projectiles as he tried to sidestep his way down the metal span.

Another bottle came towards him, this time, a metal one: his shaving cream. It, too, missed, and landed on the brick floor below, carrying glass with it. Three people had shoved their heads through the window at once. They hooted when the can went through the glass. Someone yelled, “Good shot, Marie!”

Finally, one of his shoes, a Cole Haan Air Jefferson slip-on that he’d paid well over $200 for, came through the window at him. It hit him in the gut and carried him off the side of the glass room and onto the brick terrace below. A cheer went up among the crowd at the window, as Jim gasped for air. He’d fallen flat on his back and every molecule of oxygen had been forced from his lungs, which suddenly burned with vacancy. Panic came over him as he tried and failed to fill them. He registered a sharp, throbbing pain start in his left hip and continue, in tandem, down his left arm.

More people, he now saw, had rushed to the terrace wall. They were looking in at him, some of them expressionless, some of them cheering to the people at the window from which the shoe had issued. Jim heard the megaphone now, “You know our collective power, Mr. Reynolds.”

Jim felt some relief when he inhaled and the air expanded inside him. He thought, hopefully, I will not suffocate now. But the other pains became stronger. He tried to move and could not.

He saw men scaling the low terrace walls. Their anger was unmistakable. It was in every set jaw, in every horizontal brow that squinted under the white sky.  Jim felt a sharp pain in his chest, but winced it away and tried to smile at the men walking up to him, standing over him, their dirty boots right next to his face.

“No, please,” Jim said, weakly. “I…I never meant to hurt anyone.” He took a breath. His lungs and chest burned. “This is all a misunderstanding. See, you don’t understand…”

He put his right arm up against the faces that were glowering down at him, some of them audibly rolling spit around in their mouths. “Please,” he said, meekly, squinting into the faces that were backlit above him, “let me explain. I can explain everything. I grew up like you. I’m from good honest people. Good, honest. Really.”