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the sales manager, who
could eke out a few more dollars on an offer; who would then T.O. the
customer to the finance people. ("Which is where the real money's
made," the sales manager, Billy Klein, cheerfully confided.)
    The
lot was a new/used operation down along the flat stretch of
Commercial Road between Belltower and the suburban malls. Tom
sometimes thought of it as a paved farm field where a crop of scrap
metal had sprouted but not ripened—everything was still sleek
and new. The weather turned hot on Wednesday; the days were long, the
customers sparse. Tom drank Cokes from sweating bottles and studied
his system manual in the sales lounge. Most of the salesmen took
breaks at a bar called Healy's up the road, but they were a fairly
hard-drinking crowd and Tom wasn't comfortable with that yet.
Lunchtimes, he scuffed across the blistering asphalt to a little
steak and burger restaurant called The Paradise. He was
conserving his money. He might make a respectable income on
commissions in an average month, Klein assured him—assuming he
started selling soon. But it was a grindingly slow month. Evenings he
drove inland through the dense, ancient pine forest and thought about
the mystery of the house. Or tried not to.
    Two
possibilities, his
mind kept whispering.
    You're
insane.
    Or
you're not alone here.

    Thursday
night, he put three greasy china plates on the counter next to the
stainless steel sink and went to bed.
    In
the morning the dishes were precisely where he had left them—as
smooth and clean as optical lenses.
    Friday
night, he dirtied and abandoned the same three plates. Then he moved
into the living room, tuned in the eleven o'clock news and installed
himself on the sofa. He left the lights on in both rooms. If he moved
his head a few degrees to the right he had a good view of the kitchen
counter. Any motion would register in his peripheral vision.
    This
was scientific, Tom reassured himself. An experiment.
    He
was pleased with himself for approaching the problem objectively. In
a way, it was almost exciting—staying up late waiting for something
impossible to happen. He propped his feet on the coffee table and
sprang the tab on a soda can.
    Half
an hour later he was less enthusiastic. He'd been keeping early
hours; it was hard not to nod off during commercial breaks. He
dozed a moment, sat upright and shot a glance into the kitchen.
Nothing had changed.
    (Well,
what had he expected? Gnomes in Robin Hood hats humming "Whistle
While You Work"? Or maybe—some perverse fraction of his
mind insisted—creatures like rats. With clackety claws and saucer
eyes.)
    The
"Tonight" show was less than engaging, but he wasn't stuck
with Carson: the local cable company had hooked him up last week. He
abused the remote control until it yielded an antique science fiction
film: Them, featuring
James Whitmore and giant ants in the Mojave. In the movies radiation
produced big bugs; in the neighborhood of failed fission
reactors it mainly caused cancer and leukemia—the difference,
Barbara had once observed, between Art and Life. He was nodding
off again by the time the ants took refuge in the storm drains of Los
Angeles. He stood up, walked to the kitchen— where nothing had
changed—and fixed himself a cup of coffee. Now, mysteriously,
it felt late:
no traffic down the Post Road, a full moon hanging over the back
yard. He carried his coffee into the living room. It occurred to him
that this was a fairly spooky activity he had selected here: making
odds on his own sanity, sometime after midnight. He had done things
like this—well, things this reminded him
of—when he was twelve years old, sleeping in the back yard with a
flashlight or staying up with the monster flicks all by himself.
Except that by now he would have given up and found some reassuring
place to spend the night.
    Here,
there was only the house. Probably safe. Hardly reassuring.
    He
found an all-night Seattle station showing sitcom reruns. He
propped himself