Duplex by Kathryn Davis Page B

of the house where he grew up.
    One day he woke to find a large white dog on the bed beside him. It lay facing the foot of the bed, its forepaws extended in front of it sphinx fashion, its mouth open, panting. When Eddie made a move to sit up the dog let out a low musical growl, not exactly threatening but not encouraging either. He could feel the warmth of its body against his own through the sheets; when he moved to get closer it craned its head around and looked him in the eye, meaningfully, the way an animal does when it wants a person to do something.
    Eventually the dog jumped from the bed, nudged the door open with its nose, and disappeared. Eddie could hear its toenails clicking down a flight of steps. It wasn’t a real dog—he knew that. It was very old, maybe even a thousand, older than a breastplate of hammered bronze or a virus. With the door open Eddie could see the inside of the stairwell, which was made of stone like his room and had a tall thin window in it showing a slit of cloudy sky. Cautiously he lowered himself to the floor—the bed was quite high, the floor also made of stone.
    The stairwell was chilly, the window without a pane. Eddie walked over to it and looked out. He hadn’t left the room since he first arrived; everything he needed, including food and a slop bucket, was brought in while he slept and removed while he slept. “You are barking up the wrong tree,” his therapist informed him tersely the first time he tried thanking her. “I am your physical therapist.” She seemed to be implying that any other activity was far beneath her.
    I must be inside the water tower, he thought. Growing up, he had only seen it from the outside, its front door sealed with concrete and weeds sticking through the windows. Eddie and the other boys liked to climb to the crenellated top of the tower where they got a good view of the neighborhood, including into the community center where they could watch the girls getting undressed for their ballet lesson. Mary usually tried to hide herself behind a locker, but she wasn’t always successful. The boys stopped climbing after one of them fell and cracked his skull in two.
    Now the stairwell window gave an unbroken view of a wide plain dotted with barbed gray-green shrubs, the earth’s curve at the horizon so faint it was almost invisible but undeniably there, a queenly entourage of clouds in procession above it. Otherwise all he could see were the barbed gray-green shrubs and, if he leaned out the window, a large haystack. The community center must be behind me, Eddie thought, but there wasn’t a window on that side of the room.
    He started down the stairs, moving slowly and cautiously, trying not to make any noise. It wasn’t as if he’d been held prisoner exactly, but he had a clear sense that he would get in trouble if his therapist were to see what he was doing. The stairs went on forever, around and around the inside of the tower. The only actual room in the building, he realized, was the one where he’d been kept, near the roof.
    Eventually he heard two women having what sounded like a heated discussion just beyond the tower door.
    “She’s proud,” one woman said, “in case no one noticed.”
    “She cured my shingles,” said the other woman.
    “Shingles cure themselves,” said the first.
    The lower Eddie climbed, the better his legs worked. He started to move faster, hoping to catch up with the women and perhaps ask them a few questions, but by the time he got to the bottom of the stairwell they were nowhere to be seen.
    It was a fine afternoon and some village maidens were tending their sheep on a grassy knoll at the edge of town. Eddie passed the haystack he’d seen from above and realized it was burning. He passed a rearing horse, saddled but riderless, a group of schoolgirls clustered together, dressed in bright blue uniforms. “Watch out,” one of them said, “don’t let it touch you,” it meaning Eddie, though on reflection it