* * *
On one side of the board, possible backstories for Emmett Diggs: 1. Arthritic gardener’s son, recently home from the army; 2. Head chef in the kitchen of local country club; 3. Member of the maintenance staff at Miss So-and-So’s School. Behind each of these possibilities is the question: How does a black man in 1961 gain entry to the spaces where rich white girls live, so that he can fall in love with one, get secretly engaged, and then be accused of murder when she is found dead, raped and mutilated, on a golf course? Another question, asked only by the husband, and only in his head: How does a science-fiction guy end up writing racial melodrama? Also: How do I write this character without making him seem like all the other decent, long-suffering, wrongly accused black men who have shown up onscreen over the years?
* * *
Spit. Spraying across the glass. The barking sudden and loud. A black dog at the back door, lunging at him from the other side of the window in the door. It looks big, maybe seventy-five pounds. It looks from its light eyebrows as if it might have some Rottweiler mixed in. The door shakes when the dog launches itself, its nails scrabbling on the glass. Through the window, beyond the dog, he can see the washer and dryer, he can see sweatshirts and jackets hanging from hooks, cleaning supplies lined up along a shelf. Not too far from the back door to the shelf, the distance no more than the length of his arm, outstretched. And the dog, now that he’s had a minute to look at it? Not as big as its bark makes it sound.
* * *
We open on a couple, embracing in the dark. The grounds of a golf course roll away on all sides, the grass metallic in the moonlight. From nearby, the ticking of sprinklers and, farther off, mingled voices and the clink of silverware and glass, the warm commotion of a party. We push in on their faces, mouths locked, her skin almost ghostly against the darkness of his, his fingers black stripes moving through the pale waves of her hair. The kissing deepens, their bodies pressed close, she reaching up to slip from her shoulder the fragile strap of her dress, but with a single touch he stops her, his large hand over hers. Still kissing her, he cups her head lightly in his hands. Her eyes close; his open. A strangely empty gaze. In an instant his grip tightens, his arms contracting, a sudden twist. The sickening crack of bone. He’s broken her fucking neck! Off his glazed look we cut to titles. “Could that work?” Lenny, the story editor, glances hopefully from the showrunner to the husband to the other writers sitting loose-limbed around the table. “For the teaser?”
* * *
Only two blocks away from home, she feels her sense of well-being begin to sour around the edges. She’s using half a personal day for this. And that’s not including the hours she spent online, clicking back and forth between company websites and sifting through contradictory user reviews, followed by even more hours imprisoned in the house, waiting for the men to show up with their slip-on booties and clipboards and brochures. In her heart, she sees Slash, guitarist for Guns N’ Roses, his pet boa constrictor draped across his bare shoulders, staring morosely at a puddle spreading at the foot of his Sub-Zero refrigerator. Years and years before, when asked by an interviewer how his life had changed since the success of Appetite for Destruction: “I got this house and my refrigerator is leaking all over the place and I feel comfortable just leaving it that way, but I can’t do that, ’cause this is my house.”
* * *
The shock of the door flying open makes the dog skitter backward, but soon enough it’s on him, snarling, his shirt in its teeth, its weight pulling him down, but look who’s got hold of the Windex. So there. For a streak-free shine. Right in the eyes, buddy. Who’s scary now?
* * *
What sort of crimes are committed by an unjustly incarcerated man who’s traveled through a rift in the space-time continuum? There’s not much for our team of special agents to do if Attica inmate #17864 pops up in present-day New York and spends his days being decent. Hence the episode’s twist: Emmett Diggs is now a cold-blooded killer. Hunting down women who resemble his dead fiancée and ritualistically murdering them in exactly the same way that she was killed on the golf course. The husband locks his gaze on the water bottle sitting in front of him so that his eyes don’t start rolling involuntarily. Emmett Diggs: a saint and a predator. The husband can’t look at Lenny right now, can’t look at the whiteboard; he feels his insides slowly curdling. He’s not going to win any NAACP Image Awards for this script, that’s for sure. His first episode of network television, and he doesn’t want his mom and dad to watch it.
* * *
Oh, but there it is: her house. Home. Eaten out of house and home. But not quite yet—help is on the way. The termites chittering in their tiny villain voices: Foiled again! An upwelling of love as she turns in to the driveway and sees the white gate and the red door. It’s the prettiest bungalow on the block. The Craftsman clapboard container of their lives. Overpriced, yes; heavily mortgaged and termite-infested, yes; but it’s theirs. The feeling of four walls and a roof over your head, of turning a big cardboard box upside down and cutting out a hole for a window, drawing a door in magic marker, taking up residence inside. Safe! the umpire cries. There’s no van parked at the curb, no sign of Greenleaf; she’s beaten them home.
* * *
Finger on the trigger of the spray bottle, he backs the dog through the kitchen, then the living room, across a short hallway, and into the bathroom. Not ideal, as he’d like to take a look at what’s inside the medicine cabinet, but it’s the only room he’s encountered so far where he can close the door. Or maybe not. The latch won’t hold. The door pops ajar as soon as he pushes it shut. Which he does, without success, several times in a row. And now the dog is barking again, insanely. He tries once more, not slamming it but just pressing it firmly in that careful way you have to handle old things. He pauses, counts to three, slowly draws his hand away. The door springs open. Ridiculous. Now he’s going to have to maneuver the dog out of the bathroom and into the half-furnished guest room, down the hall. His Windex is ready. But seriously: a bathroom with a door that doesn’t close? How do people live like that?
* * *
We open on a man sauntering down a quiet block, hands in pockets, whistling “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Just daring someone, anyone, to stop him. Can’t a man enjoy a stroll through a pleasant neighborhood in the middle of the day? He pulls his large hands from the pockets of his checkered chef’s pants and wishes he’d had a chance to change into something sharp. The houses gaze back at him, cool and inviting. Maybe not quite as grand as you’d expect, only two blocks away from the country club. But still nice. Still desirable. He looks at the windows and imagines who’s living inside. Who might be brushing her hair over the sink, or writing in her diary. Doing stomach-flattening exercises in her underwear. Leafing through a catalog, fiddling with the radio, rinsing out a juice glass, all the while a man is walking by and looking at her windows. Why shouldn’t he look: It’s the goddamn twenty-first century. There’s a brother in the White House. Any one of these places, Emmett thinks, could be mine.
* * *
As soon as she walks through the front door she hears his footsteps overhead. “Doug? You’re still home?” She wonders what could possibly make him run so late. Because won’t that be noted? If he just moseys into the room after all the other writers are there? Her husband, working so hard to get this job. The multiple spec scripts, the rounds of fruitless general meetings. Finally to get a break—based solely on his writing sample! And now he’s going to be the guy who shows up late.
* * *
With the dog yelping in the guest room, he takes the stairs two at a time. “Always start with the master” is his motto. But what a corny word, motto, never to be used again, not even in his head. And it turns out to be not much of a master: the ceiling sloped, the bed unmade, the pillows strewn sloppily about. He peels a pillow out of its sham—fuck! how does he even know that’s what it’s called?—and uses the empty case to catch the stuff he’s scooping from a jewelry box divided into
a crazy-making number of small compartments. Good stuff? Bad stuff? He’ll sort it out later. Digging through the dresser drawers yields nothing. Where do they keep the watches? He circles the room pointlessly, and the floor vibrates slightly beneath him as the front door slams shut. “Doug?” a woman’s voice calls from below. “You’re still home?” He drops the sham.
* * *
Her husband doesn’t answer. She goes to the bottom of the stairs and calls his name again. Is he on the phone? It could be work-related, in which case she shouldn’t keep hollering in the background. She hears more footsteps and a man’s voice from the bedroom: “It’s just us. Just the cleaning crew.”
* * *
Cleaning crew? Where did that come from? More like a break-in crew. Break-in crew? Ha! Breakin’ crew! He cracks himself up sometimes, he really does. His whole body is shaking. Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo. Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo. He’s going to have that shit bouncing around in his head all day.
* * *
“Oh! Hi!” She is briefly confused. “Did my husband let you in?” He must have made it to work on time. “Please let me know if you need anything, okay?” she calls up the stairs. “Or if you want something to drink?” There’s still soda left in the refrigerator from when her in-laws visited. How funny to say cleaning crew—but then again who would want to call themselves exterminators? The phone starts ringing in the kitchen: either her mother or the dentist’s office or the Music Center looking for a donation. Nobody else calls on the landline anymore.
* * *
From below, a robotic murmur: Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. Pause. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. Fuck! Forget the master. Forget the pillow sham. Grab the laptops and go. The office is down the hall from the bedroom. Keep it simple. In and out of the office, down the stairs, through the front door, and you’re gone.
* * *
“Hello?” She picks up the handset, dropping her keys and gym bag on the counter, and notices for the first time that Misha isn’t in his crate. Did Doug put him in the backyard? She’s told him how many times that the dog’s peeing on her tomato plants—the only things worth saving out there—and can’t be left unsupervised. The woman on the other end of the line is saying that her name is Gloria. She’s asking, “Is this Maggie Voder, at 541 North Arden Boulevard?”
* * *
There’s Spawn, Spider-Man, Neo and Morpheus, the Crow. A really nice selection, but they’ve been taken out of their boxes, which is retarded, and arranged on a shelf above the computer and the desk. At least the comic books are stored properly: long white cardboard boxes line the walls, and he knows that if he lifts a lid he will find the books inside bagged and boarded, organized by artist or series or year. He would like to sit on the floor for a while and see what’s in there, fingering through the issues, granting or withholding his approval, losing track of time. How often has he opened one of his own boxes, just to check on some small detail, the first appearance of a minor character, only to look up a moment later and discover that the day has disappeared?
* * *
“Yes, this is Maggie,” she says into the phone. She has it tucked under her ear and is wandering back to the foot of the stairs so that she can adjust the thermostat. She’s still sticky from the gym and wants to turn on the air. Gloria explains that she is calling from Greenleaf. That she’s very sorry for the inconvenience but she’s just spoken to the technician who’s got stuck in traffic on the 101 and should be arriving at 541 North Arden Boulevard no later than—“He’s already here,” she tells Gloria, just as she sees him for the first time, coming down the staircase. She smiles at him. He’s African American! Good for Greenleaf.
* * *
The front door now seems impossibly far away: There’s a woman standing at the bottom of the staircase and beaming up at him. For a moment, he can’t figure out who she is. She’s short, squat, sweaty, brownish, her ponytailed hair frizzing around her face. The nanny? So where’s the woman who called up to him—the lady with the voice? As he inches farther down the stairs, he catches himself saying again, idiotically, “Just the cleaning crew,” like it’s the magic password that will get him safely out the door.
* * *
Who does he remind her of? Oh right—that kid from the Disney Channel who’s now competing on Dancing with the Stars. The eyes wide set, the face a little too broad, the cheeks chubby, the smile ingratiating. That’ll be something to tell Violet when she gets home from school. She always likes it when her mother pays attention to the Disney Channel universe. You’ll never guess, she’ll say, who he looked exactly like …
* * *
Emmett pauses in front of a house that reminds him, finally, of hers. Something about the sloping lawn and the red front door, or maybe it’s just the tinging of the wind chimes and the way the midmorning light makes the house look picture-book flat. He strides up the driveway. He smooths his hair. Without hesitating, he walks across the grass and goes straight to the windows farthest on the right—where the sewing room would be—but instead of the little lace-covered table and the pedestaled fern he sees only a mattress and box spring, a set of barbells, a bicycle, and an enormous black dog, which has risen up on its hind legs, placed its front paws on the windowsill, and is barking at him miserably.
* * *
All in the same moment she hears, from behind the guest room door, Misha barking (Why did Doug put him in there?), and notices, on the man above her on the stairs, the absence of a Greenleaf uniform (freelancer?), and sees, draped across his body, a black messenger bag with the name and jazzy logo of her new employer (Hey, what a coincidence) …
* * *
“Just leaving now,” he says, inching down the stairs.
* * *
She has the exact same messenger bag—given to her only a month ago by human resources on the day of her New Hire Orientation, and containing a huge three-ring binder holding the Employee Conduct Handbook as well as a reusable water bottle imprinted, like the bag, with her employer’s logo. A bag that’s remained untouched, she must confess, since she dumped it in a corner of their home office upon returning from the rather discouraging orientation. A bag that she hasn’t bothered to empty but that, she sees now, is perfectly useful.
* * *
He can hear a tinny voice coming from the telephone. “Are you still there?” the voice asks, as the nanny shifts the receiver from one shoulder to the other. “Hello?”
* * *
“That’s my bag.” The sentence comes out of her mouth before she even knows what she is saying. “That’s my bag,” she says again, as he squeezes past her and makes for the front door. The dog is barking. The phone is in her hand. “Where are you going?” she hears herself asking. With the other hand, she reaches out and takes hold of the strap. Everything feels both fast and slow.
* * *
He’s surprised by the way she asks it—“Where are you going?”—like it’s a real question. Not like, Where do you think you’re going. And not like, You better not be going anywhere with that bag. She asks as if she wasn’t expecting him to leave, and can’t imagine where in the world he could possibly be off to.
* * *
Let’s see: Her husband’s old laptop, which Violet uses to watch movies when they fly. The external hard drive that she bought last month but still hasn’t taken out of the box. Her husband’s off-brand noise-reducing headphones that she’s been planning to replace at Christmas with a fancy pair, the real deal. All of it known to her and protruding from the messenger bag.
* * *
Trying to pull away from her, he says it once more: “Just leaving now!” But she’s got a good firm grip on the bag, this lady, this nanny who’s turned out to be the lady. She’s grabbed hold of the bag, and somehow the weight of her hand on the strap has made it surprisingly heavy. “Ma’am, can you hear me?” comes faintly from the receiver. She ignores the voice and keeps looking at the bag. She doesn’t look at him, just at the bag, or maybe she’s looking at him as if he
’s an extension of the bag or the bag is an extension of him and she is claiming both. She won’t let go. All he wants to do is get out the door and up the street and around the corner and back to his cousin’s place but this sweaty woman gripping the strap won’t let him.
* * *
The husband isn’t hungry but it’s time now to think about lunch. The menu from the Mediterranean place is circulating around the table, along with the sign-up sheet to write down orders. He doesn’t think he can do the chicken panini again—it would be the third time this month, and the pesto aioli doesn’t taste as good as it used to. No more fries on the side, either; he’s starting to feel like shit. At first what had seemed like unbelievable bounty—the kitchen’s always stocked with Pop-Tarts and Mexican Coke? The show buys us lunch every day?—now gives him a constant, low-grade stomachache. And, fuck it, who cares if eating kale is clichéd. He writes down a salad, and Lenny, at his elbow, lets out a little sigh of admiration. Lenny, plump as a partridge, who has asked on several occasions about his gym routine. “You eat smart,” Lenny murmurs. “You work out smart. You’re in the peak physical shape that a person can achieve.” He shakes his head in wonderment as the husband hands off the menu, laughing.
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