Captain Pike's Ship Log II

This is another segment from a longer, unfinished work.

Karen was watering a hanging plant at the window as he came down the hall into the kitchen. The dishwasher droned it’s warm lullaby – Tom softly cleared his throat so as not to startle his sister, as he approached. She turned and smiled, there was something accepting and resigned in her posture, “I’m really glad you’re here.” She raised her hand up to stop him from rebutting her welcome, “no, now really, Tommy, we’re going to have a fine time, and you will get to know Eric and we’ll just take it day by day, we’ll be all right, we’ll do fine.”
He felt embarrassed, and had to look down at the floor, and then when he looked back at her, she’d turned slightly to glance at the clock on the stove. Just then, he instinctively made a quick scan of the alarm system at the side door. There were several green LEDs and one red one at the upper left hand corner. This probably meant the alarm system was not armed. “I just feel funny, I mean, I still owe you money from back, before….”, he trailed off. Tom felt bad, he’d not meant to “case” his own sister’s house – he wasn’t up to anything. It wasn’t like he was going to rip his own sister off or anything, or was he? NO, he definitely wasn’t. It was just an automatic thing he did – or rather, his sub conscious did, only he knew it – as if he were watching himself in a movie that he’d already seen. Tom hated himself. He almost started to ask about the sliding door to his room, but caught him self short. Why wouldn’t he just ask? She probably wouldn’t think anything. But what if she did? What if it made her nervous? Once when they were kids, she had seen him sneaking whiskey from their father’s cabinet. Later when his father had mentioned the shortage at the supper table, and there had been that deathly silence, he had seen her open her mouth, then she glanced at his stare and went back to pushing her peas around the plate. They had never spoken about that, but he could remember that shocked look Karen had had on her face when she discovered that he was actually stealing their father’s liquor. She’d been good, and he’d been bad. It was easy enough for him to understand her good, but he imagined his bad was simply incomprehensible to her.
“I‘m going to have some of that good sourdough bread you used to like, want me to toast some for you?”, she spun the bag shut after taking out four pieces once he had nodded. She folded the twisted plastic bag end under the loaf and set it on top of the microwave. “We can take a ride out by Green Lake this weekend if you’re up for it”, she said getting the butter out of the refrigerator.
“That might be nice, yeah.”, said Tom, sitting down at the island, he had picked up the flat yellow wire twist tie and began making shapes in it. His eyes were tired and they felt hot when he shut them. They crunched the sourdough crusts and talked quietly in the kitchen, occasionally laughing. He felt comfortable.
After his shower, Tom came back to his room and put on some clean sweat pants and took his wallet and other pocket contents out and set them on the little night stand. “I’m bushed and I am turning in, Tommy, I left the kitchen light on if you need anything”, she said through the closed door of his room.
He had put on the university tee shirt that had been Karen’s husband’s and he opened the door to the darkened hallway, “g’night Sis, and thanks a lot for putting me up, and, …um, putting up with me.” He quietly shut the door and sat down on the bed. He was tired, but his head was just a-going. He picked up the yellow bread tie and allowed himself to stare at it’s pulled out straightness. Then he did a funny thing: he stood up, still in a sort of stare, like a mime, and stepped to the sliding glass door. Using his front teeth, he stripped a half an inch of the plastic material off each end of the little wire tie from the sourdough bread. By twisting each end of the tie around the two tiny terminals of the door switch, he circumvented its function. Now, it wouldn’t matter if the magnet on the door was in proximity of the switch or not – the circuit would remain closed. A small, prideful smile appeared on his face.
He applied a little pressure on the handle and the door slid easily 3 inches open, popping like a convenience store beer cooler. There was no alarm and no sound of the door except an audible flow of air – and then, in the background, of a million ensemble cicadas. The air smelled fragrant and humid. He pulled the door closed again, not latching it and sat down, with his duffel. Inside one pair of socks he removed a leather pouch. He listened briefly for Karen. He heard nothing, the coast was clear. He filled a small, ornate pipe with marijuana from another smaller zip-lock bag. The secret smell of the weed was welcome in the almost sterile air-conditioned condo. Tucking all but his pipe and mini lighter back into the socks, he approached the slider. The door rolled open smoothly and easily. Tom felt his face, hair and neck caressed by the warm, redolent air welcoming him to the outside. It was like being plunged right into the night-dark jungle of Vietnam. His breathing returned to normal after a brief reconnoitering. His body felt cool and alert in the tropical summer night. Tom could hear what sounded like plates being stacked coming from the next house and a motorcycle shifting in the distance. Glancing through the thick shrubbery, he could see warm light coming from various houses in the neighborhood. Some sounds seemed to carry very clearly in the humidity, but were ultimately swallowed up by the roar of the cacophony of a thriving multitude of teeming insects. In fact, Tom himself felt enveloped and became part of the outside. After a few moments of standing silently in the grass, the nearby crickets that had been startled by his stepping out onto the lawn began to resume their trilling, accepting him into their world.