Mark Trainer

    "The hardware for that front door you found--is it back in the tool room?"  Neil was at his desk in the unfinished basement.  When they moved into this row house on Capitol Hill, he'd offered to set up his workspace down there.  In the year since the move, it had become a familiar site, Maura crouching halfway down the steps, her face in the corner where the banister met the ceiling.
    "It's still on the door.  In the garage."  A couple of months earlier, at a salvage warehouse, Neil had spotted an original twelve-light, one-panel entry door--the very kind their row house would have had installed in 1922--original hardware and all.      
    "I'm taking those drawer pulls to be dipped and thought maybe we should do the door hardware, too."
    "You want me to get them?"
    Maura looked at her watch.  "Just be quiet out there.  i don't want any more chats with Art."  Neil had once taken out some recycling in the early evening.  The next day Art Shipman, the dad of the family two doors down, had let Maura know he and Krista would be super-grateful if they could avoid dumping the bottles and cans when the little guys were getting to sleep.  Maura and Neil were somewhere between talking about kids and trying for kids.  Art and Krista, with their girls trailing behind them to the car for a Sunday outing to Rock Creek Park, should have made a good case for kids.      
    Neil grabbed Phillips and slot screwdrivers, vise-grips, and a flashlight.  The garage was a matter of three strides from the house over the tiny back lawn.  Theirs was the only one on the alley, little more than a tin-covered wooden frame with a door that didn't lift up.  They'd secured the entry door facing the house with a small hardware-store lock that had rusted over the winter and wouldn't click shut.  Neil hadn't replaced it yet, instead leaving it hanging from the latch unsecured, looking like it was serving some purpose.  But as he approached, he saw the latch hanging unfastened--no lock.
    He'd probably forgotten to put it back last time he was in there, but in the city you could never be sure.  Reaching for the door, he thought about how he thought about these things--so determined, even without anyone watching--to neither under-react nor overreact.  He didn't want to feel embarrassed of himself a few moments from now when he found only gardening tools and the tomato cages in there.  Inside, it only took the smallest disturbance in the play of light through the one small window to make him certain there was someone in his garage.  He gripped the flashlight with the fleeting question in his mind of whether he'd have the courage to swing it if he needed to.
    "Who's there?" he spoke in a dry, guttural voice.
    There was a scramble of motion.  "It's me, Neil.  It's Art."
    Neil tried to remember who he knew named Art.  He turned on the flashlight to see Art Shipman crouching behind a bale of straw Maura had bought to help the vegetable beds winter over.
    "What are you doing, Art?"  As he moved toward him, he saw Art maneuvering his khaki shorts up.  There was a box of tissues and a camp blanket.  "Jesus, Art.  What the hell?"  Neil demurely averted the flashlight's gaze to the salvaged exterior door while Art arranged himself.
    "I'm really sorry, Neil," said the voice in the darkness.  "Our house.  It's a crowded place."
    Neil noticed the desiccated leaves from last autumn that had collected in the corner.  "I'm going inside," he said.  He stepped out and closed the door behind him.  He reentered the house through the basement and returned the tools and flashlight to the tool box.
    Maura was lying on the sofa in the living room when he came up.  The television was on.  "That was quick," she said.  Neil made to sit on the sofa, and she pulled up her legs to make room for him.  "How'd that go?"  Two cops over a body in some thoroughly unrealistic realistic police procedural.  "That go okay?" Maura tried again.
    "Too dark," Neil said.  "I'll try again in the morning."