The following excerpt from Set This House in Order is copyright 2003 by Matt Ruff
SECOND BOOK: MOUSE
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4
Mouse is lying in a strange bed, in a strange house, with her hand pressed between the thighs of a man she has never seen before. She doesn’t know what day it is, or what city; she has no idea how she got here.
A moment ago it was Sunday evening, April 20th, and she was sitting in the kitchen of her apartment, checking the movie listings in the Seattle Times. She was drinking a glass of red wine—never a good idea, but she had an overwhelming craving for it, and someone had left an open bottle in the cupboard above her sink. So she poured herself a glass, took a sip, and traced her finger down the column of showtimes, trying to decide between The English Patient and the new Jim Carrey movie.
—and now she is not there. There’s no sense of having lost consciousness; all she did was blink, and suddenly everything is different. Where she was clothed and seated, she is now naked and lying on her side. The fresh taste of wine has become the stale aftertaste of vodka and cigarettes—she doesn’t drink hard liquor or smoke, but she recognizes that aftertaste as if she does both, a lot. The cool roughness of the newsprint under her finger has become the warm clasp of flesh around her hand. And the face of a stranger has materialized, just inches from her own, snoring gin fumes.
She doesn’t scream. She wants to, but a lifetime of losing time—and covering up the fact—has left her skilled at controlling her reactions. She screams inside; outside she only squeaks, a short sharp note like a hiccup. Even this is muted, as her lips clamp together to bottle the sound before it can grow.
It’s a bad one. Losing time is never good—it is a symptom of insanity, which in turn is evidence of what a worthless and terrible person she is—but there are degrees of badness, and finding herself in bed with a stranger ranks near the bottom of the scale. Not that this is as bad as it could be: this stranger is asleep, at least, and only her hand is touching him. Mouse has come back from missing time into tight embraces, into the middle of intimate conversations; once she found a man on top of her, pushing her legs apart, and that time she did scream out loud.
This isn’t that bad, but it is bad enough. And yet even as she thinks that, thinks
what a horrible insane person she must be to find herself in these situations, another
part of her mind she thinks of as the Navigator detaches itself, rises above her
fright and self-
There are ways to tell, though. With her free hand she touches her scalp to see if her hair has grown. Mouse likes to keep her hair short and as plain as possible, but during her blackout periods she forgets this; the sudden development of a hairstyle is often her first clue that she has lost significant time. This time her hair length doesn’t seem to have changed—a good sign. Then she remembers that she bit the inside of her cheek during lunch on Sunday. Her tongue probes the spot and finds the wound still there, still fresh.
Monday morning, then. Most likely. And if it has only been one night, and if she spent most of that night...being with...the stranger beside her, she can’t have traveled far. She must still be in the Seattle area, close to home. That’s both good and bad: good, because finding her way back shouldn’t be too difficult; bad, because she might have told him where she lives.
She tugs at her captive hand. It pulls loose easily, but as she withdraws it her forearm brushes the cold rubbery lump of a used condom lying on the bed sheet. A cry of disgust passes her lips before she can stop it.
The stranger’s eyes move beneath still-
The Navigator gets her moving before fear can paralyze her. She’s light; the bedsprings hardly notice as she slips off the edge of the mattress. She ends up in a crouch on the floor beside the bed and freezes there, listening, but this time the stranger doesn’t react.
Her clothes are over by the bedroom door. Her shoes and jeans are, anyway; she doesn’t actually recognize the black lace panties or the pink tank top, but as they are part of the same pile it seems reasonable to assume they belong to her too. She notes with passing annoyance that there’s no bra. Though she’s small enough that she doesn’t actually need to wear one, she thinks it looks slutty not to. Not that she’s in a position to complain about looking slutty.
She dresses as quickly and quietly as possible. As she does so, she scans the room for other possessions. When you don’t know what you brought with you, you can’t be sure you aren’t forgetting something, but she finally concludes that there is nothing else—and if there is, she can only hope that it’s not irreplaceable.
Dressed and ready to leave, she checks herself in the mirror that hangs on the back of the bedroom door, and notices for the first time the obscene phrase printed across the front of the tank top. At first she thinks it’s a trick—the words must be written on the mirror somehow, as a curse or an admonition to the kind of woman who would find herself sneaking out of this room at dawn. But no—she looks down—the words are on her clothing, on her.
She cannot go outside like this. Her anxiety rising in a tight spiral, she turns and scans the room again. A carelessly discarded sweater lies draped over the top of a dresser beside the bed. It’s not her sweater—it’s too big—but it will serve to cover her until she gets home. She snatches it up, dislodging several small articles from the dresser top; they clatter noisily to the floor. The stranger stirs, and Mouse, clutching the sweater, bolts from the room.
The cramped passageway outside the bedroom reminds her of the side-
What kind of house looks like a train car, but isn’t one? A trailer-
She follows the corridor. Halfway down the trailer’s length, it opens out into a
living-
Trailer trash. It is ridiculous, but Mouse is shamed by the tawdriness of the place, shamed far more deeply by that than by the simple fact of being here at all. For all the times this sort of thing has happened to her, she has never once woken up in a nice house. It is as if the mad spirit that constantly disrupts her life meant to impress upon her that this is what she deserves, that gutter is the best she can aspire to. Never mind that she strives to keep her own home tasteful, orderly, and neat—she will always come back to this.
She has to get out of here. The trailer’s outside door is in the far corner of the living room, by the entrance to the kitchenette; Mouse hurries to it. She puts on the sweater—it fits her more like a poncho, and reeks of beer and cigarettes—and opens the door. A chilly dawn wind blows in past her, rattling the beer cans on the table.
And Mouse thinks: What about a coat?
It was cold last night; wouldn’t she have worn a coat? On the verge of escaping, she turns back again, and spies two coats on the floor in front of the phony fireplace. One of them, a scuffed leather jacket, looks like it might fit her, although, like the panties and the tank top, she doesn’t actually recognize it.
She hesitates. If it is her jacket, she should take it; she wants to leave nothing of hers behind, nothing that might allow him to trace her. On the other hand, she is already stealing the sweater; if the jacket is not hers either, and she steals it too, he might call the police. What to do?
The sound of movement from the direction of the bedroom ends her indecision. She leaves the leather jacket behind and scoots out the door, even as a man’s voice calls sleepily: “Hello?”
Outside, on the trailer’s wooden stoop, Mouse finds a copy of the Seattle Post-
Mouse’s car is parked in the street right in front of the trailer. No question that
it’s hers; it is a Buick Centurion, an unmistakable big black hulk of an automobile.
She bought it used for $1,000 down and forty-
Whoever was driving the car last night has a thing or two to learn about parallel parking. Not only does it have one wheel up on the curb, it is facing the wrong way. But the driver was not totally careless: the Centurion’s doors are all locked, and Mouse can see looking through the window that the keys are not in the ignition. She checks the pockets of her jeans and discovers that the keys are not there, either.
“No,” Mouse whispers. “No, no, no—” She was so close to getting away! She begins to go through her pockets a second time, turning them inside out.
“Hey,” a voice calls to her.
Mouse squeaks. A handful of pocket change goes flying; nickels and pennies patter across the roof of the Centurion like flat hailstones.
The stranger is standing at the top of the stoop. Ignoring the chill, he has come
outside wearing only a T-
Mouse swallows hard. Is he taunting her? The Navigator doesn’t think so; his tone is not malicious, and he seems preoccupied with blinking the sleep out of his eyes. But he does not come down off the stoop or make any move to offer her the keys.
“Listen,” the stranger continues, stifling a yawn. He gestures lazily at the trailer behind him. “You want to come back in for some breakfast? Or if you wait a few minutes, we can go out somewhere...”
Mouse shakes her head, trying not to look scared. But the stranger sees something in her expression; his own expression sharpens with concern.
“Hey,” he says. “You’re not bugging out on me about last night, are you? I mean, I know we were both pretty fucked up, but...you do remember, right? I asked you, I asked you twice, if you were sure you wanted to come back here with me. And you said you did. You said sure.”
Yes, his expression is full of concern. But it is not concern for her, she realizes; it is concern about her. “You remember that, right?”
“I have to go,” Mouse tells him.
“You said sure,” the stranger insists. “I mean, you want to regret it now, light of day and all, that’s your fucking prerogative, but what you said last night...”
“I have to go,” Mouse repeats, louder this time.
“Sure, in a minute. I just want to be clear we both understand what happened. I want to be clear—”
Maledicta the Foul-
Mouse blinks. She has teleported from the curb to the bottom of the stoop. Her hands are balled into fists, and her throat is tight, as if she’d just been shouting. The stranger is staring at her.
“All right,” he tells her, his voice placating. “All right, Jesus, calm down! I’m not trying to keep you here, I just—”
“—fucking bitch!” Mouse is back at the curb, holding the leather jacket and turning a key in the Centurion’s driver’s door. Over her shoulder she sees the stranger, now at the foot of the stoop, staggering in a circle with one hand cupping his groin and the other pressed to the side of his face, which appears to be bleeding. “You fucking bitch, what did you—”
Silence. Mouse is sitting in her car in the parking lot of a bank. The car’s engine is off but the keys are in the ignition; the leather jacket lies on the passenger seat beside her. Outside, the sky is brighter than it was.
Mouse just sits with her hands gripping the steering wheel, waiting to see if the
scene will shift again. She watches a digital clock-
Mouse begins to relax, and as she does, it occurs to her that she knows where she is now. The bank building is new, but across the street from it are a number of older storefronts that she recognizes. She is in Seattle’s University District, not five blocks from the basement flat where she lived when she was a student at the U. of Washington.
She can get home from here. She is eager to do so, to change out of the obscene tank
top and get rid of it, along with the foul-
Today’s list is stuffed in the Centurion’s glove compartment, along with a half-
In one sense, Mouse does not need to be reminded about her new job. She has thought of little else since Friday evening, when she first found out about it. In fact it was mainly to stop herself worrying—to get it out of her mind for a few hours—that she hit on the idea of going to see a movie last night, and took down the bottle of wine from her cupboard.
But last night feels like it was less than an hour ago, and Mouse still has it in
her head to think that her new job starts tomorrow. The list drives home the fact
that tomorrow has become today. Mouse looks at the bank clock again and realizes
with dismay that she does not have time to go home. If she still lived in her old
U. District flat she might make it, she might even manage a quick shower, but her
current apartment on Queen Anne Hill is a fifteen-
“Oh God...” Mouse tugs at the hem of the sweater she is wearing, feels how filthy it is. She looks at the bank clock. “Oh God.” DRESS NICE, says the list, BE ON TIME, but there is no way now that she can do both. She hasn’t even started her new job yet and already she has screwed up.
“You worthless piece of shit,” Mouse says, catching sight of herself in the Centurion’s rearview mirror. She slams her fist down into her thigh, pounding rhythmically, hard enough to bruise: “Worthless piece of shit, worthless piece of shit, worthless piece of shit—”
The bank clock marks another minute gone by. Mouse stops hitting herself; she switches
on the Centurion’s engine and guns it, drives screeching out of the lot. Two blocks
down, stopped at a traffic light, she feels indecision tearing at her again. Which
is worse: to come to work late but well-
A loud bang interrupts her reverie. A big man in a U.W. Huskies sweatshirt, crossing the street in front of her, has just bounced a basketball off the Centurion’s hood. It wasn’t an accident; the man noticed that Mouse was talking to herself and decided to scare her. Catching the ball on the rebound, he laughs, happy to have made her jump.
It is too much. Mouse disappears. Malefica comes, Malefica the Evil-
It does scare him, for a moment. Malefica sees the fear in his eyes. But then he makes a bad mistake: he thinks to himself that Malefica is just a little girl, that she does not really know what she is doing here, who she is messing with. His fear turns to anger; he starts pushing himself up off the hood, meaning to come around and rip open the driver’s door.
Malefica depresses the accelerator pedal again, holding it down. The Centurion rolls forward at five, then ten miles per hour, pushing the Huskies fan backwards. Fear recaptures him. “Hey!” he shouts, the soles of his shoes skidding over the pavement, his palms slapping at the car’s hood. “Hey! Hey! HEY!” Fear becomes terror as he locks gazes with Malefica through the windshield and reads her intention; he throws himself to the side even as she floors the accelerator.
Still gathering speed out the far side of the intersection, Malefica checks the rear view: back at the crosswalk, the Huskies fan is picking himself up off the ground. He is shouting something after her, waving his fist, but it’s hard to look threatening when you’ve just pissed yourself.
Malefica laughs. She is a little girl, yes, but a little girl with a big fucking car, and no one had better try to fuck with her. At the next corner she rolls right past a stop sign, scattering another three pedestrians with a blast of the Centurion’s horn.
—and Mouse is driving east on Interstate 90 towards Autumn Creek, her decision made, though she does not recall making it. The air in the Buick is dense with cigarette smoke; Mouse takes a hand off the wheel to slap at a dribbling of ash on the front of the stolen sweater and nearly loses control of the car.
“Oh God...” Mouse steadies the Centurion and pulls it over into the slow lane. She rolls her window down; the smoke clears, but the rush of cold air does nothing for the sweater, which still reeks. She still reeks.
Maybe she can say she was sick last night. Sick to her stomach: she ate something bad for dinner, and was up half the night with cramps...and too late, she realized that she’d forgotten to do her laundry...
Yes, Mouse thinks, with a thrill of elation. It is short-
Worthless piece of shit...