In the dark of his living room, Albert pulled the binoculars up to his face and rolled the lenses until they focused on the chipped wood of his tall brown fence. He leaned forward in the blue armchair and sniffed at the window, nose wrinkling. The musk of outdated furniture was compounded by a foul stench—a rotting odor.
He pressed the binoculars against the glass and squinted into the dark, surveying the perimeter that separated his property from the rest of the neighborhood. Every waking moment—and every resting moment, for that matter—he was in danger. His days were numbered, so he counted them: according to his journal, he had 99 years, 13 weeks, and 11 days to his name. He was proud of that, but he feared that soon, when he was least expecting it, the neighbors would tiptoe into his house, pull back the bedsheets and carry him away. They had taken many of his friends in their 80s, they had come for his brother when he was 90; they must have been salivating at the chance to snatch a man on the verge of turning a century. His back was tight that morning. He did not want to read into it, but as he pulled back from the window, a sharp pain in his spine gave him pause. His dancing days were over, that was certain. He only hoped that his frail body could still muster the strength to protect him when the time came—he counted on it. And he was ready. Like a scout behind enemy lines, he holed up in the blue armchair by the window, just as he had done every day for the past 10 years, and held a keen eye to the house, the yard, and the neighborhood at large.
Albert checked his wristwatch, a gift from his Ruthie. 6:03 a.m. According to the weatherman, sunrise was three minutes ago. The yard was still dark, unintelligible save for the dim contour of the fence, rimmed with red light from the low sun. These early rays cast a soft shadow of the fence on the foyer wall behind Albert. The sharp point of each plank reminded him of teeth. Fangs, more like. He shifted his slight body deeper into the armchair. Above the shadows, a silver-framed portrait on the wall caught his attention. He met the eyes of a younger Albert standing in a dance hall, his arms wrapped around a beautiful woman—Ruthie. The swinging commotion of dancers blurred the backdrop, couples blending into amorphous unity while lone dancers became vague specters. The young couple shared a confident grin. Albert scoffed at their naiveté, but he had to admit there was a certain lightness to them. The younger man’s face was pink with sweat, and Ruthie’s blonde hair fell across her shoulders with a golden glow. He admired his own hair, too. At the time, girls his age had considered Albert good looking, even handsome, but Ruthie was the only woman who still told him so. She was sleeping in their room upstairs and, as far as Albert was concerned, glowing with every ray of her former lightness.
When he fell in love with Ruthie, Albert was 40 and a librarian, pining from behind his desk after the young reader who visited twice a week. Ruthie liked the classics, which was quite the coincidence because that section always seemed to need rearranging, even when it had gone untouched since her last visit. Peering between bookshelves and above the covers of her novels, Albert saw the youth of angels in her face. He conceded that his sneaking around was a bit uncharacteristic for someone his age, but he liked to believe he fell in love with her books instead of her looks: her rosy cheeks and sharp eyebrows which seemed to have a life of their own, tilting and curving with the twists and turns of whatever new plot she consumed. But only after their first date did he realize that while she was a decade younger than him, her maturity and intelligence far surpassed his own. At the time, he tried not to be mushy about his feelings for her, but he would occasionally tell dinner friends that when he saw her in the library, she read with the voracity of a woman ten years her senior. These dinner friends, who had long since been taken by the neighbors, would never know that 50 years into marriage, Ruthie’s touch still made him blush, her hugs made him giddy, and when she pecked him on the cheek it was like coming home for cocoa on a snowy winter’s day.
Ruthie was the one person Albert could confide in when his brother disappeared, the only one he trusted with what he knew about the neighbors: he saw them take Edmund. The folks in town spread rumors that Edmund had died, but Albert knew a ruse when he saw one, and he told Ruthie so. She had wept when he said it, but then she surfaced from his shoulder, her face dry and hardened like a soldier’s. She agreed that protecting themselves from a similar fate—in essence, barricading themselves in—was the proper thing to do, but Albert felt he struck a dissonant chord in her. She dodged his gaze when she said, “I’ll take the first shift.” He saw her crying in the bathroom that night, the door slightly ajar, black drops of mascara dripping from her face and staining the white ceramic sink.
After that night, she kissed Albert less than before, opting more often for a quick hug. Albert missed her typical signs of affection but, if anything, he was surprised their sex life had not declined sooner. They had been married for almost 50 years when Edmund died, and Albert had read that marriage erodes a couple’s passionate love. Or perhaps Ruthie told him that. She read more than he did, and most of what he knew had come from her. He was nothing without her. No more than a vague specter. She was the only friend he had left; all the others, at some point or another, had been taken by the neighbors.
These days, the house was a dormant shell of the home it once was—the kitchen was quiet and still, and the coffee table collected more dust than it did mugs. Albert no longer used the living room to read, nor did he doze on the sofa, bathed in warm sun from the window. He did not wander into the guest room anymore, the office upstairs, or the unfinished basement. At night, he slept by Ruthie’s side and in the morning, he absconded to watch the neighbors. Every day brought the same dreary routine: wake up at six, bagel, watch the yard until all the neighbors have driven off, tea with second bagel, pretend to read the paper, watch through well-placed eye holes, tea with evening bagel, wait for darkness, fall asleep, and hope to wake again. He felt almost safe with this schedule, but a deep sense of impending danger loomed over him at all times. Sometimes, he wished he did not know the horrible secret of what his neighbors did to the elderly, but then again, he was glad he knew better than his missing friends.
A new wave of the repugnant stench wafted through the house. It smelled like cabbage left in the sun, although it carried a hint of meatiness to it. He was reminded of a time in his childhood when he caught a whiff of the same smell at his grandparents’ house. It was the day Whiskers ran away. The parents had found her sleeping under the porch, which was odd because she never slept there, except when she had her first litter. Albert’s mother told him not to go looking under the porch, that Whiskers was an old cat and very tired. This was fine with Albert because the smell was horrible. He could not begin to understand how Whiskers slept in it. After he had his own nap, the parents told him that Whiskers had run off.
Albert pulled away from the binoculars to gather a wider view of the yard. The late sun finally poked its head over the horizon, shedding light on the sidewalk. Down the street, sunshine poured through the monkey bars, burst through the leaves of the oak trees, and ran through the nearest neighbors’ lawn only to stop short at Albert’s heavy, brown fence. He had built the fence the day his brother was taken.
Albert had received a call from Edmund’s wife that day. She said to come quick, Edmund was in bad shape. When Albert arrived, he saw four suited men loading a long wooden box into the trunk of a long black car. He only caught a glimpse inside before the men closed the box, but his brother was in there. Edmund’s face was grey-green, and his head lolled as the men shifted to balance his weight. Edmund’s wife held her nose in a handkerchief by the door, and she didn’t move to stop the men. She just cried as they lifted Edmund into the car and drove away. Albert ran after the car. He got close to it, almost had the license plate, and then it turned the corner. That was the last he saw of Edmund. When he got home that day, he swore never to let his guard down lest the neighbors take him in their box, slide him in their car and drive off, leaving his wife in tears. His sister-in-law called that night and then once more a few weeks later. Albert blocked the number. He could not imagine a world in which Ruthie stood idly by as he was abducted.
Ruthie was a beacon of light in the darkness that life had become. When Albert needed rest, she watched the window. When he was bored, she read him stories. When he crossed his arms in a huff, she put on a Glenn Miller record and danced around the room. He liked it when she swayed from side to side, humming to herself and slipping a hand under his chin. He kept his eyes on the window, but he could always feel her stepping and turning behind the chair, and he would softly smile, feeling the old warmth of memory take him by the hand. She danced just like she did the night they first touched—the night she taught him to dance.
It was a Saturday night, 1935, when Albert found himself standing in the dance hall, hugging the white wall most of the night with a cup of punch in hand. He showed up because it was the social thing to do and, he supposed, he liked to watch the folks dance; it was a vicarious joy. They looked so happy when they danced. He wanted that happiness, but without the wild romping. He ladled himself a punch for the road when Ruthie approached him. She stood square to his shoulder, hands clasped behind her back.
“Do you want to dance with me?”
He recognized her. “You’re the woman from the library.”
She did not bat an eye. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Her candor surprised him. All this time he had admired her from afar, never expecting to be this close to her. And now, when the time was right, he was at a loss for words.
“Do you want to dance with me?” she asked again.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Then why did you come?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Everyone else is here.”
She took his hands and stepped away from his chest. They stared at each other, and she grinned with a twinkle in her eye. He looked at the ceiling, a brown haze of warm lights. Her hands were steady.
“I’m afraid,” he said.
She let go of his hand and stepped away. “I know you are,” she said, backing towards the mass of dancers, eyes still locked with his. “And you always will be afraid as long as you’re alone,” she said, stopping at the edge of the dancers. She reached out a hand to beckon Albert forward. “Join me.”
Albert set his binoculars on the sill. His fingers were stiff. He smelled the persistent odor hanging in the rafters like an overripe pomegranate, pungent, and he ignored it. There was a pang in his stomach around the second button up from his belt.
A hollow gurgle spoke to him from below. He had, in his haste to surveil the neighbors that morning, forgotten to have his routine breakfast. Craning his neck to see over the back of the chair, he cast a longing looking toward the baby-blue kitchenette. The bagel he had missed that morning left a hole in his stomach. But he had to stay to watch the window. The sun shone high outside and a bird swooped past. Albert shuddered. A van drove by. Albert’s finger scratched at a worn hole in the armrest.
Albert hated to leave his post by the window. He was only comfortable when he had an eye on the front yard, where all potential threats politely funneled through the front gate of his tall brown fence. But the neighborhood was quiet in the morning. Only the birds and the worms kept his company at this hour. The chances of the neighbors coming while he was in the kitchen were slim, and he would be fast, but could it also be the perfect moment for the neighbors to rush him? Who would suspect it? Everyone expects crimes to happen in the night, and no one would be there to come to his rescue. Not that anyone would save him. Edmund’s grey-green eyelids flashed in his mind, his wife crying at the door. For all Albert knew, the neighbors were on their way to his house that very moment. For all he knew, some vacuum solicitor would stick his foot in the door, or a missionary his book, or one of those cookie girls her cookies. Any of them could be a kidnapper in disguise, thought Albert, holding the door open for the other neighbors to file in, hoist him up in their box, and leave without more than a light tussle. That said, Albert believed if worse came to worst, he could get the best of a child.
He made no assumptions about what his kidnappers would look like and when they would come. That could lead only to a false sense of security. When his friends were taken, they had been caught unawares, snatched from quilted beds like hens from the roost. Take Gertrude, the knitter: she was 92 when the neighbors took her. He’d heard that she had nodded off with a ball of yarn at her hip when it happened. One could hardly call that a defense. Or what about his brother, Edmund? According to his sister-in-law, sweet Edmund was taken in the midst of a heart attack. Of all times. Or, heavens, Mary Ann, the centenarian. Albert heard through the grapevine that she had called it a night on her 100th birthday when the neighbors took her “of natural causes.” As Albert’s friends were taken one by one, a pattern developed; all of the victims were over 80, ailing, and extremely slow-moving. Hardly a coincidence, he thought. These bastards preyed on the town’s weak and defenseless—pathetic.
Albert sat up in his chair and pressed his ear to the window. It was silent and tense, like every neighbor in every bed in every waking house held their collective breath so that he might forget them or let his guard down or make an error. The fact of the matter was that he had not lasted this long by sheer luck. He was a clever man, and with his trademark wit, he thought of a maneuver that would allow him to get some breakfast and protect Ruthie. For breakfast, he would have the usual: a bagel and tea. Neither needed much attention in the kitchen. The kettle would signal him with a whistle when the water was ready, and the toaster would give a metallic whoosh to report that the bagel was finished. Following that logic, if he prepared the water to boil and set a timer on the bagel, he could return to the window within minutes and wait for his food to heat up. If the neighbors did anything suspicious while he was in the kitchen, made any movement on the house, he would be back at the window in a flash to catch them with their pants down.
He could imagine it. The neighbors would see him abandon the window and think that he had let his guard down. They would encroach on his house like snakes in the grass, maybe have a laugh at his expense. Ho-ho, the leader might say, this will be the quickest snatch of the month. And the neighborhood henchman would laugh, ho-ho, as they carried the long wooden box to stuff him in. Little did they know, by the time they reached his window, Albert would be back in the armchair, waiting for them, and they would see that he had duped them. Turning their tails in defeat, the neighbors would not take a second look as they slunk back to the long black car and drove back to their homes. They would not notice when Albert left his post again, becoming truly vulnerable, to collect his warm breakfast. Giddy with his own genius, Albert allowed himself another indulgent thought. He would boil enough water to make tea for Ruthie. It would take a little longer, but she would be so pleased by the aroma of chamomile that she would surely wake up and plant a kiss on his cheek. Albert padded into the kitchen, gleeful, and clicked on the back burner. Everything was going according to plan. He would be back in the chair in no time. But, just as he reached for the highest cabinet, searching for a box of tea, the doorbell buzzed.
Albert jumped, banging his head on the thin cabinet door. His mouth dried and he grabbed a paring knife. Beads of sweat formed on his back. The doorbell buzzed again, like a moth on a light. Poised in the still kitchen, he worked his feet around to face the sound. He gripped the knife in both hands, its tip quivering at the front door. He bent his neck to see around the stairwell and, through the frosted glass by the door, Albert saw a tall figure. The blurry silhouette of a dark shoulder conjured images of mobsters and hitmen. If worse came to worst, Albert would not get the best of this man. He grabbed a second knife.
The man rapped on the door, and Albert flinched. He felt exposed in the middle of the kitchen, so he moved to a safe crouching spot behind the counter. Easier said than done with knees like his, of the holding-on-by-a-thread variety. He looked around for clues, for something to tell him what to do. The back door was near. He could sneak out and call the authorities. But if he fled, the man outside would take Ruthie before reinforcements came. He rasped and felt his joints moan to be oiled. The man banged at the door and Albert fell to his knees in earnest. God, he never should have left the window.
“Hello,” the man called, his voice flat.
Nice try, thought Albert. He wasn’t going to respond to that.
“Ruth, are you home?” asked the large man.
What did he know about Ruth? Was Albert to believe that this stranger knew his dear Ruthie?
“I have a package for you,” he said.
He’d sooner take a leisurely stroll around the block than greet a man with a package. Albert tried to quiet his breath, but his body betrayed him. The sound of the man’s toe tapping echoed through the hall. Between taps, the house was silent, save for the kettle whimpering on the stove. Albert grabbed the counter and pulled himself up. He clicked off the burner. The ka-chunk of a truck door closing preceded the low rumble of a large engine starting up and trundling off. When he looked back at the door, the man was gone.
Albert crept down the hall. He checked the yard from the front window. It was empty. He stood on the entrance mat, one hand on the lock, his brow pushed against the door as he peeped through the peephole. The distorted picture of the yard looked safe, but he had to be sure the man was not lurking. He was still for a moment, the quiet before the storm, he thought, and then he opened the door.
The sun blinded him, forcing him to draw up an elbow to shield his face from the harsh light. It was his first time out of the house in a month. Cowering under an elbow, he noticed the fresh air. The scent of lilacs wandered into his nose and tickled his brain. He heard peals of laughter from kids on the playground down the street. Cars hummed on neighboring blocks. He noticed that the chip in the fence had worsened. As he moved to examine the fence, he kicked something, pushing it down the front porch steps. It was a small brown box tied with black ribbon.
Albert knelt in the brown grass adjacent to the pavement to inspect the parcel. It was the size of a shoebox. Attached to the black ribbon with twine was a pale note:
Albert, I know you are afraid, but I want you to dance with me.
This was Ruthie’s handwriting, no doubt. He took the box inside and balanced it on the windowsill. He recognized the insignia on the side of the box as Alexander’s Shoe Repair. He undid the ribbon, lifted the top, and pulled out the filler. Nestled inside were his old dancing shoes, the ones he’d purchased for his second date with Ruthie. The layers of dust that had collected on the toes were now gone. The brown leather that had dulled over the years now shone with new light. The laces that had frayed from overuse now strung together without a loose thread in sight. He slipped his heel into the cold leather, and it felt like an old friend.
…I know you are afraid, but I want you to dance with me…
Albert spent the rest of the day wearing the shoes. Dancing them across the floor, sliding and clicking the heel and toe to his own rhythm, settling for toe tapping from the chair when he got too tired to stand. The blue chair seemed to embrace him while he tracked the cars and the passersby. The shoe box remained on the sill beside the glass of dentures. He picked it up frequently, reading and rereading the note. He called upstairs to thank Ruthie, but she did not hear him over the TV. She left it on at all hours of the day and into the night. Albert saw the value of a constant buzz from the TV; the reclusive life could be boring at times, and the sound of a show helped him sleep. He liked giving his neighbors the impression that he watched telenovelas deep into the night. They wouldn’t come for him if they thought he was awake.
By the time the sun had set, the dentures stood in a dry glass, and Albert’s eyes hung heavily. With the sun gone, the evening’s dusky veil unfurled over the house. The pale moon painted the blue chair silver. The dark walls crept in, and they smelled like rotten flesh. In the dim foyer, the spokes of the stairwell rose and vanished into a black abyss. Albert hoped the rooms up there had not vanished, too. It was time for the best part of the day, when he joined Ruthie in bed. Albert checked the locks on each door and window, turned the kitchen lights on to make the house look inhabited, and checked each lock once more.
He pulled himself up the stairs, one hand heavy on the railing and the other holding the shoebox. The odor came to Albert, stronger than before, but he pushed it away. He imagined Ruthie’s smile when she saw he was wearing the old dancing shoes. He thought of how she’d jump from the bed, as spry as she was the day they had first met. He would take her by the hand and spin her about. Their old bones would hoot and holler on the hardwood floor, pulling one another in and then pushing out, holding tension with fingers entwined, oozing into each other as one amorphous figure, like when they were young. As Albert leveled with the landing, he saw the TV light flash white-blue under the door. The stench grew putrid as he drew closer. He thought of the old days. Of Ruthie, her smiling face. The rotten smell burrowed into his head. It pulled him in, and his legs moved of their own accord. He locked his knees to reign in the limbs gone rogue. He hoped Ruthie was not still asleep. Fighting his better instincts to crumple to the floor, he opened the door. The air was sticky—it tasted like iron.
Ruthie sat propped against the backboard, her swollen face lit unevenly by the TV’s wavering white-blue light. Her hair fell like a delicate curtain over her grey-green eyelids. Albert locked the door and the window. Placing the shoebox on his nightstand, he undressed and lay next to Ruthie. Naked. The covers held him softly, and the room was warm.
“I want to dance with you.”