Downstairs, the kitchen window broke.

I was still lying on the ground where Beth hit me. The carpet behind my head was wet, but when I reached back, there was no gaping hole and goo, just sweat. Downstairs, more glass broke, then crunched, like someone was walking over it. The noise went through my silverware and opened and closed my cabinets. It went through the piles in the kitchen. Then, like a Kung Fu movie, that unmistakable sound of steel, and the noise dragged my Samiriatanium kitchen knife across my marble countertop.

I had time to get up and hide. Jump out the window. Grab the SWINGtron 3000 and defend myself. Instead, I just thought about Beth and our baby and the life I tried to provide. Instead, the ceiling fan circled, riding the breeze from the vents. Instead, I stayed where I was and listened to the noise come up my stairs, step by step by step.

The door to my office opened. More steps. Beth’s office. More. Marley’s playroom. The yoga room. Meditation room. The cedar closet. More steps, then finally my doorway. The orange street light came in from my shutters and reflected off the knife. As the noise stepped in, the digital clock said Today is Saturday, the time is 11:10 pm, and I realized I had slept for two days. I was knocked out for forty-eight straight hours, yet was still as tired as if my eyes never closed.

“Do you know how much that knife costs?” I asked, but instead of answering, the noise jumped on me, its one hand at my throat, the other holding the knife, the tip poking in my chest. It put pressure behind the handle so the tip danced in my sternum.

“Do you know what you did to me?” the noise screamed.

From the street light I saw tears in the noise’s eyes. Spit on his mouth, like little balls on his lips. His hand rocked back-and-forth and my chest bled.

“Did you hear what I said?” he yelled. “Did you fucking hear me?”

“One-thousand, six hundred, ten dollars and eleven cents,” I said. The ceiling fan circled. The noise’s hand stopped shaking. He took the tip off my chest. He looked at it in his hand.

“What?” he said. The knife was over my face, but he wasn’t threatening me with it. He swallowed hard. I could tell he had rehearsed this. Rehearsed what he would say and imagined how I would act when I saw him, saw his face and the horror I would show. But I hadn’t, and I could tell he had never rehearsed what would happen now. The sprinklers outside kicked on. I leaned forward and dabbed the spot on my chest, as if he wasn’t even there.

With his every desire robbed from him, the noise began to dismount when I said, “Your name’s Trenton Levitt,” and he paused. “You’re a clerk at Parish General in Baton Rouge. You’re mother is in a nursing home for Alzheimer’s.” I rubbed my finger to my thumb, smearing the red dab. “You pay the bills by ringing up groceries. Or did.”

Another rotation of the fan.

“Why?” he asked, broken and without violence. His destroyed life the fruits of my labor.

“You told me you stole toilet paper from the bathroom. You told me you used to take home old produce instead of throwing it out. You told me you always got great reviews so you didn’t think it was a big deal smoking dope out back on slow days. I told your boss.”

“Why?”

“Do you know how much that knife costs?”

He looked at the blade.

It’s nothing personal, I said. It’s just business. It’s how I provide for my family, and you, of all people, aren’t going to belabor a man for providing for his family, are you?

Trenton didn’t know what to do. “I’m–I’m sorry–” he said, my head throbbing with his every word. “I’m sorry.” Beaten, he started to get off. Conquered, he started to not do what he came for, my head pounding pounding pounding like war drums. Bomb blasts. Like a baby screaming in my brain. Devastated, I grabbed his wrist that held the knife. I pulled it to my chest, but he pulled away so only the tip hit, dancing on the bloody spot on my chest as the knife shook from his pulling and my pulling.

“What are you doing?” he shrieked.

“You deserve this,” I said, squinting my eyes to squeeze out the pressure in my skull.

“Stop!” he yelled.

“I mean, I took everything from you.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“No one knows you’re here. Look, you’re wearing gloves. No one’ll even know it’s you.”

“Quit!”

“There’s money in my wallet.”

“Let go of the knife, man!”

“You can buy a bus ticket back to Baton Rouge.” The struggle only made my heart beat worse, until I thought my head was going to explode. “You can go to the bank and pull out as much as you want. I won’t mind. Promise.”

“I said!”–Trenton yanked–“Let go!”–he pulled–“Of the!”–he put all his weight behind it–“Knife!” and he fell off and the knife skidded across the floor.

“Come back!” I yelled, pinching my temples, pushing my eyeballs back in my sockets, but Trenton was already down my hall, then my stairs, step by step by step.