"T" is for Trespass Read Free Page A

owns the house to which my studio apartment is attached. His consternation was clear. “What was that? ”
    â€œBeats me. I heard it just now as I was going out the gate.”
    We stood there, our ears attuned to the usual sounds of morning in the neighborhood. For one full minute, there was nothing, and then it started up again. I tilted my head like a pup, pricking my ears as I tried to pinpoint the origin, which I knew was close by.
    â€œGus?” I asked.
    â€œPossibly. Hang on a sec. I have a key to his place.”
    While Henry returned to the kitchen in search of the key, I covered the few steps between his property and the house next door, where Gus Vronsky lived. Like Henry, Gus was in his late eighties, but where Henry was sharp, Gus was abrasive. He enjoyed a well-earned reputation as the neighborhood crank, the kind of guy who called the police if he thought your TV was too loud or your grass was too long. He called Animal Control to report barking dogs, stray dogs, and dogs that went doo-doo in his yard. He called the City to make sure permits had been issued for minor construction projects: fences, patios, replacement windows, roof repairs. He suspected most things you did were illegal and he was there to set you straight. I’m not sure he cared about the rules and regulations as much as he liked kicking up a fuss. And if, in the process, he could set you against your neighbor, all the better for him. His enthusiasm for causing trouble was probably what had kept him alive for so long. I’d never had a run-in with him myself, but I’d heard plenty. Henry tolerated the man even though he’d been subjected to annoying phone calls on more than one occasion.
    In the seven years I’d lived next door to Gus, I’d watched age bend him almost to the breaking point. He’d been tall once upon a time, but now he was round-shouldered and sunken-chested, his back forming a C as though an unseen chain bound his neck to a ball that he dragged between his legs. All this flashed through my mind in the time it took Henry to return with a set of house keys in hand.
    Together we crossed Gus’s lawn and climbed the steps to his porch. Henry rapped on the glass pane in the front door. “Gus? Are you okay?”
    This time the moaning was distinct. Henry unlocked the door and we went into the house. The last time I’d seen Gus, probably three weeks before, he was standing in his yard, berating two nine-year-old boys for practicing their ollies in the street outside his house. True, the skateboards were noisy, but I thought their patience and dexterity were remarkable. I also thought their energies were better spent mastering kick-flips than soaping windows or knocking over trash cans, which is how boys had entertained themselves in my day.
    I caught sight of Gus a half second after Henry did. The old man had fallen. He lay on his right side, his face a pasty white. He’d dislocated his shoulder, and the ball of his humerus bulged from the socket. Beneath his sleeveless undershirt, his clavicle protruded like a budding wing. Gus’s arms were spindly and his skin was so close to translucent I could see the veins branching up along his shoulder blades. Dark blue bruises suggested ligament or tendon damage that would doubtless take a long time to mend.
    I felt a hot rush of pain as though the injury were mine. On three occasions, I’ve shot someone dead, but that was purely self-defense and had nothing to do with my squeamishness about the stub ends of bones and other visible forms of suffering. Henry knelt beside Gus and tried to help him to his feet, but his cry was so sharp, he abandoned the idea. I noticed that one of Gus’s hearing aids had come loose and was lying on the floor just out of his reach.
    I spotted an old-fashioned black rotary phone on a table at one end of the couch. I dialed 9-1-1 and sat down, hoping the sudden white ringing in my head would