Free The Secret Society of Demolition Writers by Marc Parent Page B

constipated they can be really miserable,” she said. “Maybe Robinette is creatively constipated.”
    Brian laughed but said some people are just mean, plain and simple. He thought about the girl he had briefly met in the house. Growing up in that place with that father, how would she turn out? How would she make it through? He wondered where the mother was.
    When he got up to clear the plates Brian first touched his wife’s swollen belly. They were less than a month away. He was excited and scared. Scared about the money, mostly.
    “Hey, Robinette’s daughter’s name is Lucy,” he called from the sink.
    “Does that change your mind about it?”
    “Not if it’s a girl. I still like it. And that house? It was the Blankenship place.”
    “Really? What was it like inside? I’ve seen it from the outside.”
    “It was big. In the kitchen I saw two of everything, even dishwashers. I guess Arthur Blankenship’s old man was the guy who put the safe in. When he built that place with money from the plant.”
    After dinner Brian spent time in the workshop in the garage and posted a report on the Le Seuil safe on the Box Man website. On the chat list he posted a note asking if anyone else out there had ever encountered such a safe and then signed off to go to bed.
    Brian dreamt of darkness with swirling motion. Movements like wisps of smoke and then, for a just a moment, they came together to form a face he did not recognize as man or woman, adult or child. Then it was gone and he woke up.
    “What is it?” his wife whispered.
    “A dream. Just a bad dream.”
    “What was it about?”
    Laura always asked about dreams. She thought they were important.
    “I don’t know. It was more like a feeling. A bad feeling.”
    He got up and walked the house, checking every lock. This was his routine but it wasn’t comforting. He had the best locks money could buy but he knew how to pick and break every one of them. He knew there were other people with the same skills. He could never feel totally secure.
    He sat in the kitchen in the dark and drank a beer. He wondered if he was paranoid like Robinette. He wondered if he would become like the writer once his own child was born. He started humming the Kinks song.
Paranoia will destroy ya
. . . .
    He took the beer into the nursery and looked around in the dark. The room was completely outfitted and ready, save for the things that Laura wanted to be sex specific. They’d had a disagreement. Laura wanted to know early on whether it was a boy or girl coming. Brian wanted to be surprised. So she knew and he didn’t. She had done a good job of keeping the secret.
    Brian’s secret was that he wanted a girl. He didn’t want to find out beforehand because he feared if he learned he was the father of a boy he would lose his edge of excitement, that he might actually become depressed before the baby was even born. The reason he wanted a girl was that he considered his own life and thought that it was too easy for boys to get messed up, to go down the wrong path. With girls there seemed to be more two-way streets. They could turn around and come back if they wanted to. With boys it was all one-way streets. No turning back.
    BRIAN PICKED UP a complete-change-of-hardware job the next day. It was an old Victorian in the Heights. Eight doors, including the garage. All Medeco locks and Baldwin brass. It was a six-hour job. That and the markup on the materials made it a good day. He came home relaxed, a big check in his wallet. He and Laura went out to eat at the Bonefish Grill. They figured that when the baby came they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Might as well do it when you can.
    But that night wasn’t perfect. The dream came back. He saw the face form in the darkness again. A face made of cigarette smoke. In the dream it smelled like his burning drill. He awoke and sat on the side of the bed. He felt Laura’s hand caress his back. Being pregnant had made her a light