1 Breakfast at Madeline's by Matt Witten Page B

she could run faster. And then she dropped a shoe when she was jumping over the fence."
    Andrea examined i t. "Size eight. She has medium- size feet."
    Andrea is sensitive about her own size ten and a halfs. "Big feet are sexy," I told her.
    She ignored me. "This shoe is stylish. Whoever it is, she has class."
    "Unless it's a he."
    "If it's a he, he definitely has class. But why would anyone wear high-heeled shoes to do a burglary?"
    "I guess if she got caught, she wanted to look her best."
    "Or maybe the bur glary was just a spur of the mo ment thing."
    I nodded. That sounded logical. We were walking up the driveway, but then I halted suddenly and stared. "What's wrong?" Andrea whispered in alarm.
    I pointed. The windowpane on our side door was smashed open, and the door was ajar. Ms. High Heels must have broken in and been inside already when we drove up; then she panicked and tried to sneak back out the door. For the second night in a row, someone had invaded our home.
    "This isn't funny," Andrea said.
    "No," I agreed. I ran inside, crunching glass shards under my feet, and rushed up the stairs, then opened the drawer of my bedside table, looking for The Penn's magnum opus.
    It was still there. We'd come home just in time to save it.
    I sat down on the bed, holding one of The Penn's yellowed old notebooks in my hand. Who wanted this pathetic excuse for a book badly enough to burglarize for it? Gr etchen? But surely a fifty-five, maybe sixty- year-old lady would never be able to run that fast—or would she? Gretchen wasn't exactly a fat matronly type, far from it. But still...
    How about Bonnie Engels, the boxer/theater impresario? Or maybe Antoinette Carlson, the Grant Queen? The two o f them had certainly seemed dis turbed when I showed them Penn's magnum opus at Madeline's. But disturbed enough to burglarize my house?
    Was it the same burglar tonight as last night? Both times Andrea and I got the sense it was someone five six or taller, average weight, wearing something loose. Beyond that we couldn't be sure. It was hard to tell how tall a person was when they were always either crouching, running in the darkness, or bopping you on the head with pressure cookers.
    After Andrea swept up the broken glass, we sat down at the kitchen table eating bowls of chocolate ice cream—we were both ravenous. We were going to call up Dave about the bre ak-in, but despite the heavy in fusion of chocolate and sugar we were both so worn out we could hardly think straight, let alone remember what kind of fish he was. So we decided it could wait until morning, especially since Andrea was worried about my health and wanted to make sure I got a de cent night's sleep.
    We found out later that getting a decent night's sleep is about the wor st thing you can do after a con cussion, because you can slip right into a coma. But at the time we didn't know that. Fortunately, tired though I was, I didn't fall asleep. Instead I lay awake obsessing. Over and over again, like an endless series of television replays, I saw The Penn lunging toward my feet. Even when I closed my eyes I saw it.
    Finally I grabbed a handful of The Penn's magnum opus, got out of bed, and slipped downstairs. I made myself some coffee and took another look at the umpteen gazillion different versions of the preface. I didn't know what I was looking for, but what the hell, it beat counting sheep.
    I carefully unfolded a long sheet of toilet paper on which The Penn had written a preface that began, "It was the k ind of night Snoopy made famous ..." This toilet paper probably dated from the 60s or early 70s, when Peanuts was at its height, before Doonesbury or Calvin and Hobbes.
    I picked up a Marlboro box that had been opened up and flattened out and scribbled on in tiny letters. "It was a cold night, and in the distance Paula Barbie ri and Paula Jones were howling ..." began this preface. Defi nitely mid-90s.
    "It was so cold that night, God would have frozen His balls off, if He