Only…
Only that wasn’t quite right. These were his belongings, he knew that, it was just that they seemed… corrupted.
Yes. That was it exactly. He didn’t have any sixth sense, was not able to see or smell or feel the taint of those hat-wearing specters on his furniture, on his decorations. But the On Any Sunday poster on his wall now seemed genuinely malevolent, and he was convinced that the drawers of his bureau held more than clothes.
He thought of those men he had seen in the tree, around the ladder.
The teeth.
He remembered the teeth.
He was grateful when Hunt and Joel arrived to visit.
“How is it that people don’t remember the word ‘snatch-box’?” he asked as the two unlocked and opened the front door, walking in. “They know ‘snatch,’ they know ‘box,’ but somehow they’ve forgotten that the two used to go together. I tried to look it up in the dictionary the other day and it wasn’t even there.”
Hunt laughed as he replaced the key under the that. “Using your time wisely, I see.”
“Can’t just watch soap operas all day.”
Joel walked into the kitchen, got them all a beer. He tossed one to Edward. “How are the exercises going?”
He shrugged. Or tried to. “They’re going.”
“Any progress?”
“That exquisite little beauty they send over for my physical therapy says so, but truthfully I can’t see it.”
“How long before you think you can get around on your own?” Hunt asked.
“Too long,” Edward sighed. “Too long.”
They talked about things in general. Hunt filled him in on the gossip at work, and Edward said that Jorge had stopped by last night.
“I saw him, too,” Hunt said. “He dropped by the house, said he’ll be back at work next week. Thank God. I don’t think it’s good for him to just sit at home with Ynez and the baby all day. Brooding. I mean, let’s face it, it must be hard to deal not only with that but with all of the gossip and the suspicion and the lawsuits hanging over his head.”
Edward lowered his voice. “Have you… seen the baby?”
“No.” Hunt shook his head. “I suppose they’ll show him… her to us when they’re ready.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. I just don’t know.”
“We didn’t even know how to respond,” Joel admitted. “I didn’t know if I should send a congratulations card or a sympathy card. Stacy ended up just giving Hunt a package of Huggies to give them.”
Hunt and Joel stayed another hour and promised to bring the wives next time. “You all set for everything?” Hunt asked. “Need me to make a grocery run or anything?”
“Not today. A few more days, maybe.”
“All right, then. We’ll see you later.”
“Later,” Joel said.
Hunt started to turn away… then stopped. There was a long pause. He looked back at Edward. “Has he come by?”
Edward knew exactly who his friend was talking about. “No,” he said.
“Any phone solicitations? Pamphlets in the mail?”
“Not yet, knock on wood.”
Hunt nodded, started to say something else, then thought better of it and gave Edward an almost genuine smile. “Later, then.”
“See you. And thanks for coming by. Both of you.”
He listened to them lock the door, heard their footsteps on the cement, the slamming of Hunt’s car doors, the sound of the Saab’s engine, faint music from the radio. And then they were gone.
He was all alone.
Things were not what they seemed.
Not that again. He reached for the remote, turned on the television.
And tried not to look at his On Any Sunday poster.
EIGHTEEN
1
It was Sunday morning. Hunt was mowing the lawn, and Beth was pruning her roses, weeding her flower garden. Across the open expanse of grass, the burned husk of the Bretts’ house still stood, undemolished and surrounded by red ribbon warning trespassers to keep away because the structure was unsafe. Beth yanked out a long string of devil grass, tossing it in the pile of weeds next to her.
And the agent emerged from inside their house.
She just happened to be looking in that direction and she saw their front door open and the insurance agent step onto the porch, briefcase in hand. She gave a short sharp cry, quickly standing and instinctively running toward Hunt. It was impossible. They had been in the house all morning, had awakened late, eaten breakfast, read the Sunday paper, and then come outside to do yardwork only a scant ten minutes ago. There was no way the man could have gotten into their home.
She remembered with embarrassment that they had made love after waking up, an uncharacteristically strenuous bout during which she’d screamed out a kinky demand that she would not ever have wanted anyone else to hear.
Had the agent been there all that time? Had he sneaked in yesterday sometime and spent the night hidden away inside some closet or crouched down in a corner of the guest room, unseen? The only other possibility was that he had jumped the backyard fence sometime within the past few minutes and walked in through the kitchen door while they were busy in the front yard.
Or he had simply appeared inside their house and then stepped outside.
Hunt, no doubt alerted by her panicked reaction, looked up from the grass and saw the insurance agent on the porch. He shut off the mower’s engine, and the two of them stood unmoving on the lawn as the man descended the three steps and started up the walkway toward them. “Good morning!” he shouted heartily. “I’m sorry if I startled you! Didn’t mean to!”
“What were you doing in our house?” Hunt demanded.
The agent waved him away. “Oh, don’t worry. Just a short routine inspection.” He was wearing a strange, almost Victorian suit with pleated pants, a buttoned vest and a visible watch fob. The suit looked perfectly normal on him.
“What do you mean ‘inspection’?” Beth had regained some of her self-possession. “That’s called trespassing.”
“I’m afraid not,” the agent corrected her. “If you’ll read your homeowner’s insurance policy, article five, paragraph 2, subparagraph A, you authorize any representative of The Insurance Group to conduct random and surprise inspections at any time in order to verify that you are abiding by the agreement you signed and not in any way modifying your home so that your policy covers additional items not expressly stated at the time of signing.” He grinned. “I’m happy to say, you passed with flying colors.”
Hunt pretended to fool with the lawnmower’s throttle. “What exactly do you want?” he asked. “We’re a little busy this morning.”
The agent chuckled lewdly. “So I heard.”
He had been in the house!
Beth could feel herself redden. “Get out of here,” she said angrily.
“I will. But not before offering you a chance to buy insurance that could very well save your life. I am speaking, of course, of physical protection insurance.” He had not opened his briefcase, but all of a sudden two brochures appeared in his previously empty right hand. “Take one, please.”
Reluctantly, they took the proffered pamphlets.
“I’m concerned about you,” the agent told them. “I’m concerned for your safety. Particularly in regard to these lunatics who keep writing those threatening letters.”
Neither of them bothered to ask how he knew about that.
“We have a physical protection policy for high-risk individuals that I think is tailor-made just for you. It protects your physical person from bodily harm.”
“What does that mean?” Hunt asked.
It meant, she thought, that anyone who attempted to do them harm would themselves be harmed. Or killed.
It was as if the agent could read her mind. “You can’t possibly have any moral objection to physical protection protection.” He was dumbfounded. “It’s entirely a matter of self-defense. And everyone has a right to protect themselves.
” He leaned forward. “Some of these people will kill you if given the chance. They’re zealots, they’re fanatics. The horrible punishments they threaten in their letters? They would gladly carry them out, in a heartbeat.”
She saw the look in his eye and knew that not only did he want them to buy the insurance, he needed them to buy it.
Hunt cleared his throat. “I’m… I’m not sure that such a policy would be right for us.”
“This policy is aimed specifically at people in your rather unique predicament. It is perfect for the two of you. And, may I add, it will undoubtedly prevent extreme unpleasantness from befalling your family.”
Again, she heard the neediness in his voice. What if they did not buy the insurance? What would happen to the agent? Would he be fired, demoted, reassigned? Any of those would be good.
“You can’t afford not to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime offer. Your very lives are at stake.”
“No!” Beth practically shouted. She grabbed Hunt’s hand, held it tight. “No more insurance. We have enough.”
“You will be killed,” the agent said, and it was not a warning but a promise. The expression on his face was dark. He’d changed, she noticed for the first time. His appearance. Where he had once been an average-looking man of average height and build, now he was bulkier and seemed a little taller, with features that were sharper, cruder, less bland. Although he could still turn on the charm when needed and his smile remained ingratiating, the agent seemed more likely to intimidate than cajole these days. It was an odd and probably stupid thing to think, but she wondered if all of the insurance they’d been buying had served to strengthen him. Maybe that was his commission. Maybe instead of receiving money from the company for each policy sold, he gained strength and energy, sucking it from the unfortunate men and women who were beaten down by the increasing financial demands made upon them.
And the financial demands were increasing. By her estimate—entirely unofficial since not all of the premiums had yet been billed to them—they were shelling out nearly five hundred dollars a month just for new insurance. That was six thousand dollars a year.
And the amount kept going up.
“Perhaps you don’t understand the terms of the policy.” The agent spoke slowly and deliberately. Threateningly, Beth thought. “Let me explain them to you.”
And there on the lawn, he went over the details of physical protection insurance, fondly reciting entire paragraphs from memory, growing ever more comfortable as he spoke, obviously relishing the opportunity to describe one of his precious policies.
“Best of all,” he concluded, “the rate’s locked in, guaranteed. They’ll be no raised premiums.”
There had to be a catch, but Beth could not think of what it was, her mind too distracted and unfocused to concentrate. She was still angry about the agent’s invasion of their privacy and incursion into their home. That was one of the insurance agent’s tricks, she thought. The man showed up at odd hours or caught them off guard, then gave them take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums so they weren’t able to think through all of the consequences and potential pitfalls of any policy. Only afterward did the side effects of the insurance become clear, and by then it was too late to do anything about it.
“Let me guess,” Hunt said acerbically. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer, and we have to decide right now whether to take it or leave it.”
“No,” the agent told them. “If you need time to think about it, go ahead.”
Hunt, too, seemed to be trying to find a catch. “We don’t have to make up our minds right away?”
“Well,” the agent admitted, “I do need an answer by this evening. But I can leave and come back later. Tonight, if you’d like. We could set up an appointment.”
In her mind, she saw the insurance agent stepping out of their shower at the appointed time. Or opening their locked front door and stepping inside. Or emerging from their bedroom closet.
She didn’t want to see the agent tonight, Beth realized. She didn’t want to see him again today at all. If they were going to do this, she’d rather get it over with right now.
“Can you give us a moment?” she asked.
“Sure,” the agent said expansively. He started walking across the lawn. “I’ll just take a short stroll over here and look at your neighbor’s place.” He shook his head. “Tsk, tsk,” he said, and Beth wasn’t sure she’d ever heard anyone actually say “tsk, tsk.” “Too bad they didn’t have insurance, huh? Could’ve saved them a whole heap o’ trouble.” He chuckled.
Hunt took her hand, and the two of them walked to the other side of the front yard. “What do you think?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know enough to have an opinion,” she said in an equally subdued voice.
“Why don’t we think about it and have him come back later?”
“He was in our house,” she reminded him. “I don’t want him coming back later.” She looked over Hunt’s shoulder and saw the agent staring at the ruins of the Bretts’ home, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. “Besides, let’s face it, do we ever turn down any of the insurance he offers us? Do we ever have a choice? You know damn well that whatever he says is going to happen will happen if we don’t protect ourselves.”
“Well, at least we should read a little bit about it.”
They both opened their brochures, but beyond the colorfully printed cover with the gold-stamped words Physical Protection Insurance, there was precious little information. Three bulleted paragraphs inside the pamphlet stated exactly the same thing the agent had already told them, no more, no less.
Hunt sighed. “If we don’t get it, we’ll be hurt, injured or, like he said, killed.”
Reluctantly, Beth nodded.
“Should we just take it?” She heard the defeat in Hunt’s voice. “The rate’s locked in and guaranteed. At least we won’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“We weren’t worried about it to begin with,” Beth said. “Not until he brought it up. That’s his fucking pattern. He brings up things to make us worried, then offers to ease our minds about it.” She stared at his back. “I hate him,” she said fiercely. “I wish he would die.”
Hunt smiled wryly. “Isn’t there an insurance policy for that?”
“I wish there was. I’d buy it in an instant.”
Together, they walked across the lawn to where he stood.
“I’d take it if I were you,” the agent suggested, and she thought again of how he seemed so much bigger, stronger and more clearly defined since their first encounter with him.
What would he be like when they had purchased every type of insurance available?
She did not want to know.
But what if they refused to buy any more? Would he grow weaker? What if they canceled all of their policies? Would he wither away and disappear?
They would never find out. Because, as he said, they would die, killed by one of their unseen enemies. And he would find someone else, another couple, another family, to whom he could sell his ever more intrusive forms of insurance.
The agent was right. They had no choice. They had to sign up.
“We’ll take it,” Hunt affirmed.
The agent nodded, satisfied. “You’ve made the right choice,” he told them. “The only choice, really. And in the long run, I guarantee you, you’ll be glad you did.”
But Beth seriously doubted that they would.
The three of them walked over to the porch, where the agent had left his briefcase. Beth let go of Hunt’s arm. Unenthusiastically, he took the clipboard, accepted the offered pen and signed. She followed suit.
Joel drove up at that moment, parking on the street in front of their curb, and Beth looked up from the clipboard, trying to see through the tinted windows, frantically hoping that he was alone and had not brought Stacy and Lilly with him. He was alone, and for that she breathed an inward sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was for Lilly to see this monster, for him to try and
speak with her, and she thought that if Joel had brought his daughter, she would have run out to the street toward them, waving her arms desperately screaming for them to leave.
“Hey!” Joel was out of the car and walking up to the porch, and it took him a moment to realize what was going on, who was with them. When he did figure it out, his smile disappeared, and his gait slowed. Beth felt dirty, embarrassed, as though she’d been caught doing something shameful.
She handed the clipboard back to the insurance agent.
He took it from her and waved to Joel, greeting him heartily. “Hello!” he called. “Nice to see you again, Mr. McCain!”
Joel scowled as he reached the porch. “What do you want?” he said disdainfully.
“Why, I’m just selling your good friends here some of our valuable physical protection insurance, sort of a catch-all policy that covers a wide range of incidents and activities. You should really think of purchasing some for your family, Mr. McCain. It’ll help you sleep better at night.”
Joel’s face turned visibly pale.
“Unfortunately, I’m on my way, and I don’t have time to go over it with you right now.” The agent put away the clipboard and papers, picked up his briefcase. “Got a busy day ahead of me,” he told them. “Got a life insurance quota to meet. I’m expected to talk to fifty, sixty families before this day’s done.” He smiled. “Wish me luck.”
They wished him no such thing, and the three of them watched in silence as he walked out to the sidewalk, hung a right, and continued jauntily down the block.
2
Hunt awoke with a feeling of dread.
Today was a holiday, so he should have been happy—no work!—but outside, the heavens were gray, a solid ceiling of cloud cover that pressed down on the city and compressed the sky, imparting a leaden feeling to the world below and complementing the feeling of vague unease within him. The holdover from an unremembered dream, perhaps. Or some sixth sense that told him things were not right.
THE POLICY Page 27
