The Wilding by Benjamin Percy

along its shore until he reaches a fallen tree broad enough to scuttle crabwise over, into the woods again, now closing in on O.B. Riley, her road, her neighborhood, her.
    Something is shifting inside him. Since meeting the woman, Karen, he has had what can only be described as feelings. For the first time in a long time he feels like more than a machine of reflex, more than someone who only wants or does not want. In this case there is want, unquestionably, but underlying the want is a certain human tenderness, maybe. It is a maze of emotion whose end he does not know and whose course he follows through the woods.
    He is outside, leaning against a squad car, his hands cuffed behind him. A pool of pink vomit steams at his feet. His mouth tastes like acid. His mind is blistering. A block-shaped officer stands nearby—another twenty yards away, scribbling on a pad, speaking to Troy and Jim, who stand with their arms crossed. Night has settled over the city. Despite the streetlamps, the headlights, the alternating flashes of blue and red thrown from the squad car, the shadows are thick enough that everyone looks like a threat, all the people walking along the sidewalks staring at him, their faces sharp and toothy, their shirts and jeans dark, so that they appear to blend into the night, to fade and reappear from one instant to the next. A car full of teenagers roars by and, red-faced, they howl out the window at him like skinned jackals.
    His forehead throbs in time with his heartbeat. His vision rises and falls on yellow waves of drunkenness. He doesn’t feel angry anymore. He feels numb, deflated. So when he hears Troy speaking—when he hears Troy trying to convince the officer not to arrest him, saying, “You can’t go from no law to law. You can’t”—he isn’t thankful so much as hopeful that soon this will all be over, soon, and then he can sleep.
    Her house looks different in the dark—squatter, more forbidding—its windows square sockets of yellow light. He crouches in the bushes, thinking he is in the right place, but it isn’t until he glimpses her inside—ponytailed, frowning—that he scurries on all fours into the yard and huddles next to a hedge that runs below the picture window.
    He rises inch by inch, so as to appear part of the landscape, and once over the sill peers in the window, beyond the living room, and spies her standing framed in a lamplit doorway. It is as though she is packaged by it, waiting for him.
    The moment is fleeting. The kitchen sits to the left of the living room and from it comes a man—a tall, thinly built man with his shirt tucked into his pants despite the late hour. He has his right hand in his pocket and from the way it bulges beneath the khaki fabric Brian imagines him a coin jangler, the type who rolls quarters and dimes around with his fingers, making a song. He addresses Karen without looking at her directly, his eyes flitting back and forth between her face and the floor. Brian cannot perceive his words—they come across only as a low-voiced murmur—but he can read in Karen’s expression an obvious distaste.
    This is the husband responsible for locking her out—the idiot, she called him. He certainly looks like an idiot. He looks like an insurance salesman who reads the Wall Street Journal and plays golf on the weekends and keeps careful score with those tiny pencils. Brian feels assaulted by his presence. He looks wrong in the house—he looks wrong next to Karen—like a mismatched piece of furniture.
    The man turns to the window as if he senses Brian’s searching stare. But Brian does not duck or scamper off into the woods. Yes, he knows the man cannot see him, can see only a window full of night that reflects a ghostly image of his living room—but even if he could, even if the sun were high and an alarm sounded, Brian would remain footed to this property, unafraid.
    The key gives him that sense of access, ownership. He can picture himself inside the