Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes

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СКАЧАТЬ the gold-plate handles and the silk-lined space inside. Not the kind he buried his momma in. But that’s morbid thinking, and the day is bright and all laid out ahead of him and he’s got a whole house to go through.

      A different man would have slept in one of the beds upstairs, but the family took the big mattress with them and it wouldn’t feel right to sleep in one of the little kids’ rooms. Besides, it’s one of his special talents. He’s got a knack for sleeping anywhere, anytime. Worked it up in the assembly line making screws, where if you were smart and motivated and very sneaky, you could take on the work of two men for an hour or two, while the other guy caught some shut-eye, and then switch it up. Bosses didn’t like it, but long as the work got done, what did they care? He finds he sleeps better if it’s really noisy. Conditioning, they call it. Drills and bolts and the whine of heavy machinery? That’s pure lullaby to him. The birds twittering outside to greet the sunrise don’t make the cut.

      Something crashes in the kitchen. He bolts upright, smashing his head on the underside of the table. Damn. Shouldn’t have got complacent, even with the door locked behind him and a kind-of permission.

      He tried to do it real polite. He stood on the corner across the way, while the family packed the car, loading everything into a station wagon and a U-Haul trailer. They strapped the mattress to the roof and a table to the mattress, upside down with its legs in the air like a dead bug. The kids went into the house and came out again, carrying boxes in relay, while the afternoon shadows stretched out. The wife kept glaring at him, like the foreclosed notice in a plastic folder taped to the door was somehow his fault. The kids, too. Shifty glances at him and then back at their folks, except for the toddler of course, who wanted to play in the boxes. Real cute little boy, getting underfoot like one of those wind-up toys that keeps going.

      TK tried to be nonchalant about it. Taking his time to roll a cigarette and smoke it. He didn’t mean to make them freak out. But he couldn’t walk away and leave it to chance, either. Someone else might happen along. And sure, that seems unlikely in this neighborhood where theirs is the last house standing among overgrown lots and burned-out wrecks, and he only chanced on them because it’s what he does; wander the city looking for luck. TK is no stranger to terrible coincidence. Ask his momma, and her twin sister who got her killed.

      ‘Leave it alone,’ the husband muttered, pulling on the ropes to make sure everything was tight as. But it was boiling up inside her, the whole time he waited, trying to make it seem like he wasn’t.

      ‘No,’ she said, handing the toddler off to her man and striding toward TK across the yellow grass, her little fists balled up like she was a pro-footballer instead of five-foot nothing. The husband started after her, then realized she’d immobilized him by handing him the baby.

      TK dropped the cigarette and ground it out. No manners in breathing your poison in someone else’s face. Nor in littering, nor wasting tobacco, even the cheap stuff. He picked up the stump and pocketed it. When he stood up again, she was in his face, hands on her hips, spitting outrage. Not really at him, but sometimes people need a stand-in. He’d seen it often enough, at the shelter, at meetings. He could be that for her.

      ‘Can’t you even wait till we’re out of here, you … vulture!’ Her voice cracked as she said it, but the insult bounced right off him. He doesn’t know much about vultures outside of what he’s seen on TV, hop-hopping to get at some dead carcass. If he’d had a choice, he’d have told her he’s more like one of the city’s stray dogs. Because they’re shameless opportunists and you can cuss them out much as you like, they’ve learned not to take it personally. The lone animals anyway. It’s when they pack together that you got a problem. Only takes one mean dog to wind up all the others into biting teeth and snarls. But he’s a solo mutt and he knows how to wag his tail a little.

      ‘I’m sorry to see you go, ma’am,’ TK said, calm, looking her in the eye. ‘Used to be that it was only the nice white families moving out of Detroit.’

      He’d knocked the indignation right out of her sails. Good manners will do that; turn a situation around. You got to treat people like people. Something his momma taught him, along with how to use a gun, and what the minimum going rate for a whore was.

      ‘Yes, well,’ she said, angrily brushing at her eyes, ‘tell that to the bank.’

      ‘You don’t worry about your things, ma’am. I’ll make sure everything finds a good place and a purpose.’

      ‘Thank you. I guess.’ She sounded bitter. She shouted across at her husband, who was about to lock up, ‘Leave it! It doesn’t matter anyhow. Right?’ She looked at TK for confirmation, of more things than he suspected he was able to give. But he tried anyway.

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, solemn. ‘Good luck.’

      ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘You’re the one who’s staying.’

      ‘All right?’ the husband called over.

      The car doors slammed, but they left the house open for the dusk to go creeping in – along with any shameless opportunists who happened to be hanging around.

      TK waited until the U-Haul lights had disappeared round the corner before heading in and locking the door behind him. Flicked the light switch, but the electricity was already cut off and he took the executive decision, one he regrets now, with the noises coming from the kitchen, to wait till morning to see what was left.

      Something shatters. Glass or crockery. Which makes TK think it’s not a looter. He doesn’t like to use that word. That implies theft, and he’s never stolen a thing in his life, not even when he was a kid and all fucked up. He’s in asset reclamation and redistribution. Also career consultation, IT support, peer counseling, recycling and, when he really has to, mopping up at the party store on Franklin. Which might seem like a strange place for a recovering alcoholic to work, but it keeps him honest, and he never accepts money from underage kids looking for someone to buy them a six-pack of Coors the way some homeless do. Or as he prefers to think of it: domestically challenged.

      The noises in the kitchen sound clumsy. Scuffling. Maybe a drunk. Or something else. He crawls out from under the table, feeling for the pepper spray he carries with him. Expired, but you can’t always believe what you read on the side of the box. He has a blade hidden in his walking stick, a jerry-rigged thing he made himself, but pepper spray has always served him better, especially against feral dogs, long as you’re upwind and not backed into a dead end, which he has been in the past, but only once. Thomas Michael Keen learns his lessons quick.

      He moves quietly toward the kitchen, flicking the safety off the spray nozzle, holding it up, facing the intruder. He peeks round the kitchen door. The kitchen is in a state. Cupboards hanging open. Food spilled all over the floor. No way the woman who told him off on her lawn would leave her house like this.

      A furry bandit face pokes out from behind one of the cupboard doors, its mouth matted with bright blood. TK swears. And then the raccoon goes back to licking at the strawberry jelly on the floor, among the shattered remains of the jar that once contained it.

      ‘Go on! Shoo! Get outta here!’

      The raccoon raises its head and looks at him. He runs at it, waving his arms and yelling. ‘Scoot your furry butt!’

      It bristles, and then thinks better of it and dashes for the cat flap. With a swish of cold air and a thwack of plastic, it’s out into the dawn, running for its life. And they both have a story to tell.

      Briefly, TK considers crawling back under the table and going back to sleep until the sun’s up proper, but he’s shot СКАЧАТЬ