The Night Companion
by Jeffrey Greene
Two months out of college and undecided on a career, Tom Hanauer answers an ad in the classifieds seeking a “night companion.” He discovers to his pleasant surprise that he will be more of a hired conversationalist and chess opponent than a caregiver and that his employer stays up all night and sleeps during the day.
As Tom adjusts to this nocturnal existence, he finds that his employer, the lady of the house, is in a kind of cold war with her estranged husband, a disgraced mycologist who, as a result of his ongoing experiments, has forced his wife and children to devise individual strategies to protect themselves. Tom gradually learns the reasons for the strange behavior of the Morhan family.
Chapter 4: Write Down Your Dreams
part 1
On Monday night, I arrived ten minutes early, carrying a flashlight, and followed the west wall of the house into the downward-sloping back yard. I avoided the big magnolia tree, recalling the explosive crunch the dry leaves made when stepped on, and entered a grove of pines, casting my light about until I found what I was looking for: the bomb shelter. It was a low grassy mound almost hidden by a circle of azalea bushes, with a small covered vent rising up from the center and entwined with vines.
A well-traveled path led through the bushes to a flight of moss-covered concrete steps leading down to an unsheltered porch about six feet square, swamped with an inch of rainwater. The heavy, rubber-sealed door was padlocked and there were no windows. I stood on the last step, six feet or so below ground level, moving the flashlight beam up and down and glancing frequently behind me, not altogether sure — other than to confirm Carla’s truthfulness — why I’d wanted to see it. I was intrigued by the well-used path and the shiny new padlock on the door. Somebody was using it for something. I headed back to the house, stashing the light in the car before going in.
Carla was waiting for me in the hall at the top of the stairs. She was dressed casually in a striped cotton shirt and blue jeans and, with a quick smile, she turned and wheeled herself toward Roland’s room. I’d made the mistake of pushing her chair for her only once. For the first time, the television was silent, but the smell of caged animals was strong when we stopped before the door. She knocked softly.
“Just a second,” said a high-pitched voice. “All right, come in now,” the voice urged. Carla opened the door, and as we crossed the threshold a flashbulb blinded me.
“Dammit, Roland! I’ve asked you not to do that,” she said, blinking painfully.
I heard a suppressed giggle that was almost a burp, and as my sight cleared, saw a thin, barefooted guy with shoulder-length blond hair standing before a dresser holding a Polaroid camera. The print ejected and he laid it on the dresser, raptly watching it develop while he spoke.
“And I’ve told you, Mother, that I keep a photographic record of every person who visits this room. No exceptions.” Picking up a razor-point pen, he wrote with a watchmaker’s care on the border of the picture, speaking each word slowly: “August 24th, 1977, 11:02 p.m. Mother and...” He looked at me for the first time. “What was your name again?”
“Tom Hanauer.”
“Last name spelled...?”
“H-A-N-A-U-E-R.”
“I’m Roland; be with you in a second.” He finished labeling the picture and placed it carefully in the top drawer of the dresser, then crossed the room with a light-footed step, gracefully snaking his way through an astonishing maze of clutter, and kissed his mother on the cheek.
He offered me a small-boned but surprisingly strong hand and, as we shook hands, his large, slightly protruding blue eyes met mine in a grazing glance, then looked away. His face was narrow and delicately-boned like his sister’s, his pale skin as clear and soft as a girl’s, his mouth small, mobile and sensitive.
“There’s one chair,” he said, gesturing as he turned his back and moved away from us. “You can sit in it. Not a lot of room in here.”
“Not a lot of room?” Carla repeated, looking at me with dismay as he led me toward the chair facing a big, wood-console television. “There’s no room, dear. It’s even worse than the last time I was here.”
“That’s not true, Mother,” Roland said from his original place before the dresser. “Nothing has been added or subtracted since your last visit on...” He opened the drawer, consulted a small account book. “August 10th at 9:07 p.m.”
“I won’t argue with your records. I doubt anything could be added to such a complete mess. The room would explode.” She said this in a peevish tone I hadn’t heard before. It seemed to me that she was play-acting, exaggerating an old argument, though I couldn’t tell whether it was for my benefit or Roland’s.
The room was as large as Carla’s, and had its own adjoining bathroom, but its disorder surpassed anything I’ve ever seen. Roland Morhan’s room was a museum of his childhood. I stumbled against citrus crates full of plastic toys and models of planes, monsters and dinosaurs. There were cardboard boxes overflowing with comic books, a rusted chemistry set, stacks of board games, cardboard building blocks, an Erector Set, Lincoln Logs, hobby horses, a tricycle and a bike with training wheels, dipping water birds, drawings and watercolors strewn about everywhere.
There was hardly a square foot of free space in the room, and the walls were virtually hidden by disturbing ink and pencil drawings of terrified or monstrous faces, the mounted skulls of small mammals and reptiles, and insect and butterfly collections. As in Carla’s room, there was a wall-unit air conditioner running full blast, and the curtains were drawn, effectively cutting him off from the outside world.
The smell of ferrets was overpowering, but I had to look for a moment to find them: in a dim corner of the room where his narrow boy’s bed was, their cages stacked up and surrounding it on two sides like a protective wall, the dark, sinuous shapes moving excitedly back and forth.
“Why do you take a picture of every visitor?” I asked.
“There are objects in this room of great value to me, both intrinsic and sentimental,” was the rather pompous reply. “If any of them turn up missing, I’ll be very glad I took a picture of the thief.”
“And what will you do with it?”
“Tack it up on the wall with the word ‘THIEF’ emblazoned over it. Then, I don’t know: put a curse on it, maybe. It hasn’t happened yet. I’ll take appropriate action when the time comes.”
Unsure whether or not I was being kidded, I said: “I was expecting someone who watches TV all day to be fat and lazy.”
“And from what Cathy told me about you, I was expecting something oily and eager to please, with chains and chest hair.”
“What else did she say?” I asked, glancing at Carla, who was impatiently tapping an unlit cigarette on the table. She seemed to be doing her best to ignore us both.
“What do you care what people say about you? Mother likes you. That should be enough. My sister’s in no position to criticize. What you really have to worry about” — and here he exchanged a knowing expression with Carla — “is if she warms up to you.”
“Doubt that’ll happen.”
“Mother! Just go out and smoke the damn thing, will you?” Roland said, making pleading gestures with his busy, expressive hands. “Drives me crazy watching you play with it.” He turned to me. “You don’t smoke, do you? Good. My ferrets don’t like it.”
“I think a little smoke would improve the smell in here,” she said. “But you don’t have to ask me twice.” She turned in the cramped corridor of boxes and headed for the door. I got up and followed her, but she waved me back. “I’ll leave you two alone. Come over when you’re ready, Tom.”
Roland opened one of the cages, lifted out a snaky little ferret and placed it on his shoulder, then sat in his one chair and began consulting the TV Guide. Without looking up, he said: “100 Rifles starts in ten minutes. We can talk until then.”
“You prefer TV to talk?”
He shrugged. “Visitors are rare, TV is like the weather: always there, good or bad. Do I prefer it? No, nor does it prefer me. People say TV is trash. They say that about other people, too. The air outside this room is filled with judgment, like clouds of arrows. I hated school, with its cliques and clubs and in-groups, like a swimming pool full of different species of piranhas.
“Here, I’ve trained myself not to judge what I see. The Love Boat, 60 Minutes, Star Trek: it’s all the same, not good, not bad, just here and on schedule, as reliable as my own pulse. Most importantly, it doesn’t say, ‘Stop watching me; I’m not good for you.’”
“Well of course not,” I said. “It wants you to keep watching and buying what it sells. Forever and ever.”
“But it doesn’t punish you for not believing in it. People see a political threat in television: Big Brother as a game show host. I see a warm fire that never goes out.” He was lying in his chair now, pulling absently on his big toe while the ferret crawled on his chest, a silver filling showing at one corner of his dreamy half-smile.
“I’ll try not to taint your air with judgments,” I said, moving slowly about the room, finding objects that startled memories of my own childhood. I picked up a fortune-telling eight-ball and turned it, watching the message roll slowly into view: IT IS VERY POSSIBLE. I remembered now: one was supposed to ask it questions. On an impulse I asked, “Do you ever go out to the bomb shelter?”
Copyright © 2021 by Jeffrey Greene
