Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash Page A

beautiful world out there.”
    â€œI guess they’ve grown apart from us.”
    She seems to want us to ask about this.
    â€œBe nice to have a manageable place in town, don’t you think? And a little cash to take care of Mr. Berner,” I say.
    â€œSometimes I think that’s just what we need, and then we just can’t seem to say so long to this place. You know how that is. You go to sleep and you wake up, and you’re still here.”
    I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Berner points the way and lets me loose in her house.
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    I think about us sitting there in the Berners’ living room and it makes me angry at them. There’s no reason to be so trusting in a world like ours. A couple of months ago I read an article about an old couple that let a man into their house supposedly to fix their stove. They didn’t even have a problem with their stove, but they trusted him, and when they let him inside, he pulled a pistol on them. He made them lie down on the ground. He took everything they had in the house, and before he left he must have thought they’d had a long enough look at his face because he shot them both dead. I wander through the cold drafty rooms of the Berners’ house and I think about us being homicidal maniacs. We’re invited guests, in their house, and there’s no one around to hear us or see us. No witnesses. And there’s plenty here to rob. I sold at an antique shop one summer, and the Berners have possessions lying around that would bring a decent price: old snow globes; a gilded music box, mahogany it looks like; a tall grandfather clock with Westminster chimes and the wrong time, standing in the corner like a forgotten cathedral; a 1950 Winchester 12-gauge in an otherwise empty gun rack; a reading lamp with a silk shade and glass bead fringe. I flick the switch but then I see—there’s no bulb. There’s beautiful stuff here that doesn’t look like it’s been touched for years. Would they miss it if it was all gone one day? In the drawers of a maple chest in the dining room there are dusty porcelain teacups so thin they might crack the instant you lifted them to your lips.
    We could steal everything in this house if we wanted and they probably wouldn’t notice.
    In the bathroom I pick up crystal and silver perfume bottles, a magnifying glass with a mother-of-pearl handle that rests atop a pile of ancient Life magazines. I pocket one of the perfume bottles, covering it with tissues taken from their nightstand.
    On my way back, I hear Eddie laughing too loud and saying, “You’re exactly right. You’re a hundred percent on the mark.”
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    Eddie gives them his card before we go, and he holds Mrs. Berner’s hand in his. “If you decide you need a change, give Randall here a call. I think we can work a nice deal for all of us.”
    He turns to me. “I’ll wait for you in the car,” he says. He wants me to establish myself here. It will be my sale.
    It will be easy. They’re already leaning our way. They even like us, for God’s sake. On my way out the door, I pull the perfume bottle out from the tissues and I hold it at my side, right there for them to see. Eddie’s out in the car waiting. I stand in the doorway.
    â€œIs there anything else I can answer for you?” I say.
    She sees nothing.
    â€œNo,” she says. “But I’m feeling sure there will be.”
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    Eddie has me going it on my own so that he can move to other properties. In the last year, he’s managed to buy two thousand acres of woodlands and waterfront in the Adirondacks, and our company has bought around seven times that. And these people really need the money from the looks of them. Ninety thousand dollars buys a new car, flat-screen TV, stereo and disc player, medicine and food for the next three years and a house on Collins Street, a block from the general store. Eddie’s