Louis Beside Himself

by Anna Fienberg

  After I peed, I crept out into the kitchen. Silence. I took a step towards the window. Bright moonlight was silvering the lawn. Deep breath—

  —but the air stuck in my throat. A shadow shot across the moonlight, quick as a bird. A human shadow. Tall, fast, unfamiliar. Too tall for Singo or Hassan. And too quiet.

  A footstep scraped on the concrete porch. That was no bird, or possum. I ducked back against the wall, behind the kitchen door, trying to make myself thin as a pencil. The latch on the window shuddered, then clicked.

  I watched the window slide open. My heart felt as if it would rocket through my chest.

  How could this be happening? A burglar, just like in the movies – the thrillers I’d stopped watching because I could never get to sleep afterwards. And just two weeks ago, hadn’t Mrs Livid Next Door had a break-in? Her precious bracelet, from her mother who’d been born a whole century ago, had gone missing. I tried to think . . . an emerald bracelet, she’d said, and the burglars must have been very professional because the window hadn’t even been smashed.

  I tried to slow my breathing, but my heart wouldn’t shut up. Surely it was too loud? Thud, thud, like a shovel coming down into packed earth, a grave of mud . . . I was going to be buried alive in this silence.

  There was a sharp grunt, and the shadow outside suddenly became a solid figure on the windowsill. It teetered there for a heartbeat, then – oh! It tumbled forward onto our own polished floorboards, crashing against the kitchen table—

  —just a metre from my big toe.

  This couldn’t be real. I stretched my eyes wide open, to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. But the person was still there, crouched over, hands on his knees as if he’d been winded. I couldn’t see his face. He was breathing hard, a black cap pulled down over his forehead.

  The sweat was running down my back, a small creek between my shoulder blades. Then I heard a moan. The burglar was clutching his ankle. My eyes fixed on his boots – black, head-kicking, steel-capped boots.

  Now, hissed Dad’s voice in my head. While he’s down on the floor. You’ll have the advantage of surprise. Get him on his back, hook his legs under your arms in a Jericho hold . . .

  But my legs had frozen. I couldn’t move. My heart was hammering so hard, my head floated off into the dark. I’d have given anything not to be there. Oh, to be falling off a skateboard, dribbling a basketball, even getting lost looking for Agnes. Any second I’d be discovered and then the burglar would have the advantage. Maybe there was time to run out back through the hallway. But what if he chased me?

  Jump on him, said Dad. No, the burglar was getting up, or . . . what was he doing? He’d turned around, was slowly inching up to the windowsill, just his head peeping up, looking out the window. At what?

  Get him from behind, do a dropkick. But my legs felt like air, wobbly air. As if I wasn’t inside my body at all.

  I was BESIDE MYSELF.

  So that’s what it means, I thought, almost calmly. Mrs Livid from Next Door was always saying, ‘I was so upset I was beside myself.’

  Just then the burglar turned, his face in profile catching the moonlight. Thin, young, worried. Lips pressed together in a grim line.

  What a lugubrious expression he’s wearing.

  The silence changed. It became charged somehow, electric. I suddenly wondered if I’d spoken out loud. The words seemed to ring in the air.

  ‘Well, look what you’re wearing.’ The burglar was pointing at my head.

  My hand shot up. I’d forgotten about Grandad’s beret. My cheeks blushed hot. But surely that was the least of my worries? My heart was rioting against my ribcage.

  ‘I’m beside myself,’ I said, trying to explain.

  ‘Pleased to meet you both,’ the burglar replied, sarcastically.

  There was a short, surprised silence. We studied each other. Then I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘You know, you can’t really wear lugubrious like a . . . like a hat.’

  The burglar glanced at the window again. ‘Are you the only one home?’

  I nodded. What an idiot. I should I have said my enormous father was asleep in bed because he does shift work and any moment now he’d be waking up to get his tea and then he’d be off to the police station because he was a sergeant soon to be promoted to detective as he’d just captured his fifth burglar that month.

  The burglar looked relieved. As he lifted his cap to smooth his hair, his bomber jacket swung open. I saw a glint of steel in the pocket of his shirt. God! What do I do now? He was probably a serial killer who enjoyed talking with his victims first, like a cat playing with a mouse. He might be a serial killer with . . . something that wasn’t quite right.

  I looked closer . . . a serial killer with bosoms?

  Was I dreaming again? The burglar ran his hand through his hair. Short reddish-blonde spiky hair. I peered at his face. No beard shadow, fine features, large brown eyes like a possum, soft pale skin . . .

  ‘You’re a girl!’ I told him. Her.

  She put her cap back on, and grinned. ‘Yeah, but don’t let it get around.’

  Then we both heard it – the metallic snap of the front gate. The burglar jumped.

  ‘That’ll be my friends coming back from their various sporting activities,’ I said, rolling my eyes to show my interests were much more mature. Then I stopped. Just because this burglar didn’t mind being corrected about her use of lugubrious, which was actually very generous and broadminded of her, there was no reason to think she was harmless. Never be fooled, Dad said, by the many disguises your opponent might adopt.

  But the burglar wasn’t reassured by the mention of my friends. ‘Ssh!’ she hissed, and put her finger to her lips.

  Silence. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. If the gate had closed behind Hassan and Singo, wouldn’t they be talking and laughing? Or, if it was Dad, wouldn’t he be through the front door by now with, Why is it so dark in here? Where are my wrestling buddies?

  No, definitely, the silence was wrong.

  The burglar suddenly pushed her face into mine. ‘Start yelling at me,’ she whispered.

  ‘But why . . . what should I say? I mean, you kind of deserve a good talking-to, breaking in here, giving me a dreadful fright but . . .’

  ‘Say, How dare you break into my house, I’m calling the police! Stuff like that. Look, there’s someone after me, you’ll just have to believe me. Jimmy’s mean as hell – he’ll do anything.’

  There was a footfall on the concrete, and another right after it. A short hard word, spat out like something poisonous.

  ‘Jimmy?’ I whispered.

  She nodded. ‘Go on, now!’

  ‘How dare you break into my house!’ I squeaked.

  She slapped a hand over my mouth. ‘Talk like a man, can’t you? You sound like a frightened mouse!’

  That’s what I seemed to her – a frightened little mouse.

  My throat closed up. My voice box was empty. I just sort of stared at the burglar, helplessly. I had a choking feeling, and I didn’t know if I was breathing or not.

  Was Jimmy the serial killer? I was paralysed. Weak. Not even a mouse, more like one of those little squishy transparent animals in the sea without backbones, just wanting to glide along the bottom, leading an unchallenging invisible life.

  I couldn’t find my voice.

  I couldn’t find my words.

  ‘. . . er,’ I gasped weakly. I tried again. ‘Err-ugh!’ My voice squeaked then dropped down to my feet, like a duck in hunting season. What was this?

  The burglar swore and pulled me over to the window, shoved my back against the glass. ‘Stand on tiptoes, make yourself taller,’ she hissed. ‘Fluff up your beret.’

  I couldn’t help noticing she smelled sweet and tangy, like mandarins.

  I was trying to find my feet when a voice – fierce and male and full of strange vowels – filled the room.

  ‘What do ya mean by ut, ya dirty little thief? Comin’ enta m’ house like thus?
Who invited ya? I’ll ’ave t’ chop ya, d’ye hear me, bro? Chop ya enta little pieces.

  ’ What the? The girl’s mouth was moving but the voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else . . . Suddenly there was a bang like gunshot and the kitchen chair flew from the girl’s hand and hit the hall door. Now she gestured frantically at another chair, wanting me to throw it, too.

  I picked it up shakily. My arms felt weird – as if they didn’t belong to me – but I lifted the chair high above my head and swung it around, ready to throw. I don’t know what happened then – my hands were slippery with sweat – but the chair slid out of my grip and fell hard, crashing right onto the girl’s foot.

  She let out a cry, and stumbled over the upturned chair.

  I sprang to help her up, but she flicked my hand out of her way. She leapt up, dragging her bad ankle behind her.

  God, now I was dangerous, as well as useless.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the girl yelped, her voice high-pitched. ‘I was just hungry, I only wanted a piece of bread, I’m not a thief, I’m a girl, just a hungry girl!’

  ‘Aarrgh, ya think ya can make an udiot of me like thes bro? What do ya take me fa’? I’m gunna chop ya!’

  The girl pulled me savagely away from the window, pushing me up the hall. She pounded the wall with her fist – bang, barff, boom! She sounded like a bunch of cowboys brawling in a bar.

  Then she stopped suddenly and lifted her finger for quiet, which wasn’t necessary as I seemed to have lost my voice forever. In the silence we heard feet running away up the path, and the slam of the gate. Then nothing.

  Jimmy was gone.

  I should have been relieved. But I felt like I’d been run over.

  How are you going to protect your family if you can’t even stand up for yourself? said Dad sadly.

  The girl picked up the chair and slumped down on it. She shook her head at me. I’d only just met her, but I knew a look of bitter disappointment when I saw it. And it matched exactly the look I’d seen so often on my father’s face.

  7

  STRUCK DUMB

  I stared at the floor. There wasn’t much to see, what with the moonlight now barely diluting the dark. I was glad. I didn’t want anyone looking closely at me, at my squishy, spineless self.

  ‘Where’s the light switch?’ The girl was feeling the walls, searching.

  I sighed and reached over near the door, snapping it on. We looked at each other. I was the first to look away.

  She groaned, heavily. She was probably thinking that of all the males home alone in the world, wasn’t it her bad luck to have found the most cowardly. I sneaked a glimpse at her. She had her foot up on her knee and was examining her ankle.

  ‘Pffaw,’ she whispered. How would you spell that, I couldn’t help wondering. There was the problem of the silent ‘w’. She was touching her ankle bone gingerly. Her face was scrunched up, looking lugubrious again. I felt a stab in my chest. Her ankle must really hurt. I remembered when I’d sprained mine last year, stumbling into a bandicoot hole, and how the needling pains had made it feel burning hot. And she didn’t even have a dad there with a cold packet of peas to put on it.

  ‘Is it sprained?’ I blurted.

  I’d found my voice again – now that it wasn’t necessary, of course.

  ‘Nah, don’t think so. Just twisted it a bit. I’ve had worse – that bang on the foot didn’t help.’ She gave me a lopsided grin. ‘Are you okay?’

  Did she mean me, the invertebrate?

  ‘Yeah, you,’ she said. ‘That was pretty scary, I guess. I’m sorry I got you into all . . . thet.’

  I laughed without knowing I would. ‘How did you do that? You know, make your voice go all manly and fierce, as if it wasn’t yours?’

  She grinned. ‘It worked, hey?’

  ‘It was awesome. For sure that guy— ’

  ‘Jimmy.’

  ‘Yeah, Jimmy, he would have thought you were with a big angry man, a big angry, infuriated, irate man from . . .’

  ‘New Zealand.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I can do most accents.’ She smiled, but sadly, as if this wasn’t a talent but more like an annoying disease she’d picked up somewhere.

  I was burning with questions, but I didn’t know where to begin.

  ‘It’s not that hard,’ she said, as if reading my mind. ‘One of my stepfathers was an actor. He lived with us longer than most. He used to practise his lines at home, and I just borrowed some. He played a Kiwi gangster. He was a good actor.’

  ‘Say it again!’

  ‘I’ll have t’ chop ya.’

  I doubled over, cacking myself. It was amazing, her transformation. Amazing, too, that I could laugh.

  ‘Mum was really happy with that guy,’ the burglar went on, ‘so I tried extra hard to show interest in his interests, you know? We’d have these conversations at breakfast, for instance, about things like method acting.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Like when you’re playing a character, you don’t just learn your lines, you become the character in real life, dressing like them, eating like them, trying to find similar experiences in your own life to use on stage . . .Oh, it was exhausting. But worth it to see Mum’s face light up over her boiled egg, watching us, enjoying how well we were all getting along. Like a real family.’ She sighed again. ‘Mum does better when there’s a man living with us. She gets lonely on her own. Or at least, when there’s just the two of us. But her actor boyfriend fell in love with the leading lady, and moved on.’

  ‘What did your mother do?’

  ‘Cried for weeks. Lost her job because she couldn’t get it together in the mornings, no matter how many boiled eggs I made her, and no matter how many accents I perfected. That’s why I was glad to see Jimmy walk in – at first.’

  ‘What was his interest? I mean, what did he do for a job?’

  ‘Well, it was hard to tell. He was a man of few words. It made me uneasy— ’

  ‘Me too!’ I shuddered. ‘If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a lack of words. It’s my worst thing.’

  ‘You sure took your time finding them today. Thought I’d have to send out a search party.’

  I smiled, weakly. ‘Yeah, you can always count on me in a crisis.’

  ‘Razor-sharp reflexes, hey?’

  I winced. That was too close. My eyes felt hot. ‘But anyway,’ I said quickly, ‘you were saying, about Jimmy . . . ?’

  Her face turned lugubrious again. ‘He said he worked at a bar – nights, you know, pulling beers, making cocktails. And he always smelled like a bar, a real stink, alcohol and fags, but he didn’t seem to have regular shifts. Once, I asked him how to make a Rusty Nail – it’s a kind of cocktail – and he looked shifty, you know, cornered. Even when Mum begged him to show her how, all set to admire his barman skills, he wouldn’t budge. I decided he probably just used to hang out at the bar, drinking with his dodgy friends.’ She frowned.

  In the pause we heard the gate click open. We looked at each other. The girl’s dark eyes grew wide. Adrenalin shot through my chest.

  Then the roar of the skateboard and a crack of laughter broke the tension.

  ‘Lou?’ Singo was talking even before he came in through the back door. ‘You should have seen this dunk I did!’ His loud voice cut through the tension as he charged into the kitchen. ‘Hullo, who’s this?’ His face was open and friendly with surprise.

  I realised I hadn’t even managed to find out my burglar’s name.

  Singo’s eyes narrowed as he took in the head-kicker boots and the girl’s wary expression. He’d want a full recount.

  Shame washed over me at the memory of my move with the chair. Of being backed up against the window like a car-crash dummy. Of being a mouse instead of a man. All the girl’s interesting talk had made me forget for a moment. But now I saw that I’d never forget, no matter what happened. It would be a rotting secret inside me.

  I just wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep.
>
  ‘Cordelia.’ The burglar came to my rescue – again. Cordelia? I’d never seen anyone who looked less like a Cordelia. Surely a Cordelia should look more fragile, like a person dying of a chest infection in an opera, or a maiden with long golden hair, trapped high up in a tower for much of the eighteenth century?

  Singo and Hassan exchanged glances, their eyebrows going all acrobatic.

  ‘Are you a friend of Rosie’s?’ asked Hassan.

  ‘Who?’ said Cordelia.

  Suddenly Singo began to laugh. ‘Nice hat,’ he said, nudging Hassan.

  I whipped off the damn beret, and cleared my throat. Hassan smiled at me encouragingly.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Cordelia is . . .’

  I was taking a deep breath, searching for another, kinder word for burglar – I didn’t want to introduce her like that – when the mute thing came back. It is always possible to tell the truth, said Mr Mainprize, if you do it with kindness and consideration. But my words had abandoned me, rushing silently from the room.

  Cordelia looked at me. God. I hoped she wasn’t going to give a full uncensored description of my cowardly behaviour. Or maybe I deserved it. I hung my head in shame.

  ‘I broke in,’ Cordelia said into the quiet. ‘I was escaping from a bad man, and I, um, sought refuge in this humble abode. Your friend here helped me out.’

  ‘Geez,’ said Singo. ‘Where’s the man now?’

  He looked at me, but I was looking at Cordelia. HUMBLE ABODE – what interesting words, old-fashioned . . . Cordelia sounded definitely more like her name when she said abode.

  I caught Singo’s eye and felt myself blush. I forgot about abode.

  ‘The man is gone? You chased him away, Lou?’ Hassan was looking at me admiringly. ‘What, you performed the Jericho move, or maybe a dropkick? Ha, like this?’ And he chopped the air with his leg.

  ‘Or you could have jumped up on the table and done a moonsault, you know, with a full-body spin for extra leverage.’ Singo leapt about the kitchen, his arms swinging, fists punching. Hassan laughed a bit hysterically.