Throwback Thursday: ‘If You’d Like To Make A Call, Please Hang Up’ by Bob Thurber

At ten minutes to midnight Dean stepped out of an airport taxi with a stuffed panda the size of an easy chair. He set the huge bear on the roof of the cab and looked beyond the ragged and overgrown hedges fronting his one-story house. He scanned the windows, checking for movement and light, then he turned his attention to the windows of the neighbouring house. He steadied the panda with one hand and scratched at four days’ worth of beard.  While the cabdriver jotted something on a clipboard, Dean leaned on the taxi’s open door; he worked his fingernails into the flesh beneath his beard as he studied the cars parked along the street. 

The driver said something. Dean startled, but made no reply as he reconsidered the front of his house. 

After a long moment he leaned into the cab and reached across the back seat for an aluminum baseball bat. The bat was wrapped in a cellophane skin. The woman at the gift shop had stuck a flattened blue bow over the price tag. Dean pulled his head out of the taxi and breathed in a mouthful of air. He set the bat across the bear’s legs. 

The driver said, “We all set here, sir?”

Dean picked at a loop of ribbon, stretching the bow back to its original shape. Then he closed the rear door of the cab and stepped up to the driver’s window. He smiled cockeyed and showed the man five fingers. “You wait. Okay? Ten, at most,” Dean said. Then he took out his wallet and paid twice the fare. “Don’t go anywhere, I mean it, ” he told the driver.

While the driver counted his money, Dean secured the bear in a headlock. He walked around the rear of the taxi then up the driveway to the garage. He pressed his face against a window square, caught a glimpse of bare cement floor. Wielding the bat like a machete, he pushed through the high hedges bordering the driveway.

The sky was clear and the moon was full. Dean watched the windows as he circled the house. He listened to the crickets and to the swishing sound his trousers made in the tall grass. The rear porch light was on and the new key was in the window box. It was hard fitting the key in the lock until he put the bear down.  

He used the bat to bump the door open. The moon forced his shadow across the floor, but he waited a ten count, listening, before he stepped into the kitchen, bear first. Seconds later the babysitter snapped on the overhead light. She put a hand to her mouth. Dean raised the bat and stepped forward. But then he recognized her, and she must have recognized him, even with the beard, because she didn’t scream.