Man from the Attic

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Yesterday afternoon I was lying on my bed flipping through a magazine when a man emerged from the attic. The attic door is next to my bedroom so I’d heard him coming down the stairs, but he was so quick about it that I didn’t have time to do anything like run out of the room in terror. I watched him open the attic door and then shut it behind him. I’d never seen this man before, nor had I had any reason to believe that there was a person up there. I had thought I was home alone. Naturally, I screamed.

Like all women, one of my great fears is having a strange man appear before me, unexpectedly, in my home. And like most women having a strange man appear before me in my home is a recurrent theme in my fantasies. But this wasn’t a man to stir up either fear or desire. He was short, stubby, and balding and wearing a gray suit with a polka-dotted bow tie. Who can take anybody seriously who looks like that?

He stood there, looking at me. I couldn’t think of a thing to say, and he didn’t seem inclined to say anything either.
“Are you a friend of my mother’s?” I asked finally.

“What, does she live her?” he said. “With you?” His voice was high-pitched, nasal, and unpleasant.

“Yes,” I said.

“The house belongs to you or to her?”

“It’s her house,” I said. “I’m just staying here awhile.”

“So I take it you aren’t married. And no kids of your own.” He shook his head.  “Aren’t you a little old to be living with your mother? What are you? Twenty-eight? Twenty-six? Thirty?”

“Hey,” I said. “It’s a tough economy. Or haven’t you heard? And I’m twenty-seven.”

“Tough economy?” he said. “Excuses. You know how to do anything?”

“What do you mean?” I said, though I knew what he meant. Childishly, I turned the tables. “Do you know how to do anything?”

“Sure,” he said. “I have good carpentry skills. I can put a roof on a house. I know a little about welding. I can make good pie crust, bake bread from scratch, mix a damn good martini, skin a deer, type 65 words a minute. I speak French.”

“Say something in French,” I said.

“Le temps est un aigle agile dans un temple,” he said. “Robert Desnos.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” I said. “Out! Why aren’t you at work, baking pies in a French welding shop and then typing about it? It’s a Tuesday!”

“This isn’t about me,” he said. “This is about you. You shouldn’t be sitting on your ass on a Tuesday afternoon reading a magazine while your mother is at work.”

“Who said she was at work?”

“Don’t be cute,” he said. “I know things.”

“Did you just come here out of nowhere to make me feel bad about myself?!” I shrieked.

“Stranger things have happened,” he said. He left me then, turning and walking  down the hall, down the steps, and out the front door. From my bedroom window I watched him shut the front gate behind him. I watched him walk down the street until he was over the hill and out of sight. It didn’t take long. He walked quickly, like a man who has someplace to be.