BRIAN

He wears the hair mask and nothing else when he goes to the hallway closet to drag out his dumbbells. He knows sleep is a long way off for him. And he knows that when he feels the poisons building up inside him, the best solution is to throw some weights around. He learned this in the military, the mindless rhythm of weight lifting, the therapy of it. He picks the weights up, he puts them back down, pleasuring in the heavy breathing, the clank when he slides another plate on the bar, the bright red explosion when a capillary bursts in his eye.

The dumbbells weigh forty pounds each and he slings them up and down, working his biceps. The veins rise jaggedly from his neck and forearms. Beneath the mask his breath goes hoo-hee, hoo-hee.

The television is tuned in to one of those shows where a poor family gets its home ripped apart and built again to suit its needs. Right now the host, a hyperactive man with bleached blond hair, is running through the demolished house with a bullhorn, yelling at the construction crew in a happy, psychotic voice. “We’ve got to hurry, people. We’ve only got two days to change this family’s lives.”

He does push-ups. He does military press. He does squats and lunges and calf raises. He does triceps extensions followed by shoulder presses followed by upright rows followed by lateral raises, the weights growing heavier in his hands, making his palms go as red as the tip of his erection throbbing before him.

He gets a beer. And then another. He drinks between sets and the living room takes on a hazy dreamlike quality. When he finally sets down the dumbbells, the show is nearly over. The family—six kids and a single mother with cancer—cries when touring its new home. It has a big-screen plasma and an aquarium built into the wall and a fire pole that reaches from the second story. Everyone has his or her own bedroom. The host has his arm around the mother, who smiles with tears racing down her cheeks. “This is a new beginning,” she says. “This is the life I always hoped for.”

Brian shuts off the television and examines his reflection in its darkened screen, his muscles now pumped up with blood, trapped beneath his skin. Then he goes to pull on the rest of the suit.

The drive takes ten minutes. In town, the streetlights give off tired circles of light at regular intervals, soon replaced by the darkness of the outlying roads. He has to focus to keep his wheels trained precisely. More than a few times he swerves onto the shoulder and the cinders tacking and clinking against the wheel startle him into correcting his course. He parks a hundred yards away, on that same service road as before. When he gets out of the truck and moves into the woods, toward the house, he doesn’t hurry or throw anxious glances over his shoulder. The night feels like such a familiar place for him. And the suit makes him feel invisible.

The living room window swims with watery blue light cast by the television, like a nighttime pool. He creeps up to it and peers inside. He cannot find her at first. He looks for her in the usual places, on the couch, the recliner. Then some movement catches his eye and he rises up a little to find her on the rug, doing crunches. She wears a black sports bra and yoga pants. She is watching a food show, some sort of competition involving people with knives and white chef smocks. Her face is scrunched up in a look of pain, but she doesn’t pause, doesn’t rest, just keeps pulling her knees to her chest, holding her arms out for balance. Brian watches her do at least fifty before she finally falls back to the floor with a thump.

Brian ducks behind a bush when a car grumbles by. Then he climbs the porch, trying to step as softly as he can. He expects the doorknob to be locked, and it is, and so he slides the key from his pocket and works it into the knob, which turns with a soft click. And just like that he is in the house, standing in a short hallway with a coat rack and mirror in it, the same collection of shoes he saw before. Outside another car goes by, its headlights sweeping across the house and making the mirror flash. Right then Brian’s reflection moves from shadow into light—the mask on his face suddenly evil and snarling—and he almost screams.

Instead he takes a deep shuddering breath. As he does he can smell the smell of Karen: something lemony underlined by sweat. It’s the kind of smell he imagines a taste for.

The lights are all off except in the kitchen. Just ahead of him, to his left, an archway opens into the living room. He peeks around it and takes in the layout of the room. Bookcases line the walls. A couch with laundry piled on it and a recliner with an end table carrying an unlit lamp. The television in the corner. And Karen on the floor, hurrying through another set of crunches.

Her body is angled away from Brian so he can step into the room without being observed. She makes a little contended grunt with each crunch, her noise and the noise of the cooking show hiding his footsteps as he moves forward, crouching behind the loveseat. In the dim light of the television her skin looks soft, pale, like the inside of a wrist. Brian imagines clearing his throat to announce himself. He imagines what would happen next. She would scream and grab something—a lamp maybe—to brain him with, but then he would peel off his mask and she would say, “Oh,” and he would say, “Yes, it’s me,” and she would set down the lamp and look at him curiously—anxious, yes, but curious more than anything. After she scolded him, saying, “You could have knocked,” and after he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry. I just wanted to watch you. I like to watch you,” she would make a drink for both of them and before long he would lean in for a long sweet kiss that grew into something hungrier. The thought excites him. His erection is jammed painfully against his pants.

And then the phone rings.

At first Brian thinks the noise comes from the television—the two-note chime sounding similar to the local Z-21 weather warning—but when Karen reaches for the remote and the television blinks off, Brian ducks behind the chair just as Karen jumps from the floor. She hits the chair in her passing and it rocks back and Brian catches it with his hand. He tries to hold his breath, to seem as if he is part of the room, when Karen appears next to him, looming over him in the near dark.

Brian feels stinging spots on his skin, certain she can see him. But she can’t. Her eyes are foggy from staring into the light of the television. And she is moving across the living room now, through the archway, down the hallway, into the kitchen, where her phone calls to her.

Brian tries to move quietly when he hurries to the other side of the chair and crouches down. He can hear the scrape of the phone as she lifts it off the counter, the click as she flips it open, her voice saying, “Hey, Rachel,” and then, “Did he?” and then laughter.

Brian feels suddenly cut off, separate from her. His erection withers. The beer is wearing off, replaced by tiredness. He feels the urge to run, to return home and take a cold shower and crawl into bed, alone. Alone is where he is meant to be. The laughter in the other room continues. It oppresses him, makes him feel limp, somehow defeated, her connection to someone else. He knows he could never make her laugh like that.

He rises from his hiding place and then spots on the couch the folded clothes, her underwear stacked into a neat pile, some of it lace, purple. He grabs one, and then a few other things, a shirt, a skirt, whatever rests on top, before he retreats from the room, sneaking his way out the door, clomping down the porch, hurrying to the place where he parked his truck.

He is careless in his rush. He runs up the road instead of through the woods. His fast breathing fills up his mask and drowns out the noise of the world, including the engine of the truck, the crunch and hum of its tires as it moves toward him. About a second before it turns the corner, he notices a glow, growing brighter. And then the truck appears thirty yards ahead, its high beams arresting him. Maybe it is the beer, which has settled over him like a heavy cloak, but he doesn’t react quickly enough. He simply stands in the middle of the road, holding up one arm to shade his eyes, until the brakes squeal and the truck lurches to a rocking halt. Only then does instinct kick in and he reels into the forest.

The truck stays there for a long time and from a far-off vantage in the trees, Brian crouches, growling, Stupid, stupid, to himself, so stupid.