Bound by Antonya Nelson Page B

school events back in Houston, the insulated adoration and devotion of a very biased group. Both Joanne and Ito had gone home to New Hampshire for New Year’s, having declined to visit there at Christmas. They weren’t much alike, Ito and Joanne, one too happy, one too glum, but about their blended family they completely agreed: awful, and tolerable only with a sidekick along. Now it was just Cattie and the soldier in the attic. His name was Randall, but even Joanne, lax landlady, didn’t know if it was his first or last. He paid rent in highly tangible cash; otherwise he comported himself like a ghost, drifting down when everyone else was asleep or away, leaving traces of himself that were nearly imperceptible, occasionally emitting a noise from his upstairs quarters, a strange bump or step, something that might be mistaken for the house itself, a rodent running over its roof, a blown tree limb banging at its siding.
    Down, however, he came on New Year’s Day morning, dressed in a uniform (the new camouflage, pixilated patches of tan and yellow, boots the color of gourmet mustard), carrying a razor and can of shaving cream. In the bathroom off the kitchen he filled the sink and scraped away at his face, having passed through the room without saying a word to Cattie. As if she were the ghost.
    “I can make coffee,” she said eventually. So what? she answered herself.
    “Fine,” he said. She delivered the cup to the lid of the toilet, where he stared at it briefly as if they’d had a misunderstanding. Maybe they had.
    “I’m Cattie,” she said, leaving the small room. So what? He had finished shaving and was peering into the mirror at different tipping angles, noting his own features curiously. Cattie knew the feeling. Avoid a mirror long enough, and you became a kind of curiosity to yourself, some internal idea going smash against the reality, and never in a good way. He was not much older than she, a fact that was made clearer when his cheeks were smooth, when his physique was obviously young—unfinished and still disproportionate—inside a uniform that did not quite fit. He could have been one of the students over at St. Sincere, if he were a photographed headshot rather than a person in motion. His evasive facial expressions and his jittery movements said he’d never been treated as a pampered or beloved child.
    She and Ito had researched and discussed PTSD ad nauseum; this tenant appeared to be a textbook specimen.
    “Randall,” he said; she repeated her name in response. He didn’t seem an enthusiastic drinker of coffee but a resigned one, as if Cattie had ordered him to do it. If Ito were here, he would have begun a peppering assault on this man, querying him relentlessly, merrily: the uniform, the strange hours, the horrors of war—how did Randall feel concerning the Iraqis, and President Bush, and weaponry, and what did he think of conscientious objection? Did he hate those cowards? Ito never, ever ran out of questions. Cattie had some curiosity about Randall, but depended on conjecture rather than inquiry. She was an awkward inquisitor; the practice did not come naturally to her, reluctant as she was to reveal much about herself. About Randall she had decided the day before that it was foolish to be afraid of him. If he’d wanted to do something to her, last night would have been his chance. Her bedroom, that former little boy’s room, had a simple eye-and-hook lock; he could have broken through it with one swift kick, so she’d not bothered to latch it. She didn’t feel fatalistic, exactly, but was operating as if waiting for instructions that made sense to her. This period in her life was a lull, longer than the usual lulls she guided herself through (cavity-filling at the dentist; class periods that bored her; road trips during which she knew she’d be carsick). She’d gotten plenty of advice that didn’t make sense to her, delivered to her daily on her cell phone’s voice mail, but none,