[MP]
While his memory may not be what it had once been, Gerald knew that the box had been shut. Not just shut, but locked. Not just locked, but locked with the second key on the necklace he wore – one for the door to the attic and one for the box.
Now the box was open.
Gerald’s heart skipped a beat, and then made up for it, trip-hammering so hard and fast that it fluttered his shirt front. Gerald had not been in the attic since Elenor left him, and the last thing he had done on that day was to shut the box, lock it, and leave, both literally and figuratively putting the lid on that portion of his life for what he thought was forever.
He knew nobody had come into the attic through his house. That left only two other avenues into the attic, and he moved to check them now.
Gerald surveyed the room one last time, the harsh white light illuminating the far corners, bleaching the aged wood and seeming almost to render the tight attic living space in black and white.
He was alone.
Although he saw no one, his crocodile brain was not reassured. He fairly slunk into the attic, moving quickly to place and keep his back against one of the short walls, one that he shared with the row house next to him. Gerald sidled along the wall, feeling for all the world like a 14-year-old boy who is too old to be afraid of the dark, and yet can’t help but crab-walk up the steps, peering behind himself self-consciously all the time for that thing he knew lurked in the dark. 14-year-old like Hell, he thought to himself, what kind of 14-year-old has a .38 in one hand and drags his cane behind him with the other?
As he traversed the wall, his back brushed the clippings he had mounted to the wall, clippings accumulated across nearly 45 years on the job. He relinquished the wall by an inch so as not to dislodge the fragile newsprint and magazine pages, but even that inch felt like a gaping chasm behind him. His eyes scanned the room, ticking off possible points of entry and possible points of concealment – a useless application of a habit built over a lifetime. The only points of entry were the stairway he had so recently ascended and the other small attic door across from his current destination; the only potential hiding place was under his desk – nobody there – and the box, into which he was most decidedly not ready to look.
It was only when the small attic door in the far wall was almost directly across from him did he realize he had reached his destination. Now he was at a crossroads. He was loath to take his eyes off the room, but he couldn’t very well inspect the door and look at the room at the same time. Well, he supposed he could, but something in him recoiled at the idea of reaching down and touching the door without being able to keep an eye on it.
He sighed, sighed again, and then, groaning nearly as loudly as his squalling joints, lowered himself to one knee. He put his cane on the ground.
He held onto the gun.
The door was metal, the paint faded to match the bland beige Elenor had colored the attic when he announced his intention to convert the space into an office. Before he focused on the door itself, he made a quick inspection of the wall: no cracks in the cinderblocks, no chunks missing or holes where rodents had broken through. A brief glance at the ceiling yielded the same conclusions: given the sun bathing the tops of the row-houses, he would know if the integrity of the roof had been compromised.
When things had started to go bad at the end and he saw the way the neighborhood was deteriorating, he had used a low-tech solution to seal the attic once and for all – or so he thought. He had used a turkey baster to blast water into the locks and coat the hinges until they had rusted solid. Short of a blow-torch or sledge-hammer, the attic should have been impregnable.
It should have been impregnable.
Instead, lying beneath the door were two small talus slopes of rust, one under the lock, and one under the hinges.
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