Remote Control will no longer be serialized here. But don't worry. You will be able to read the entire story at www.textnovel.com where it is being serialized from the very beginning.

The advantge is you can now subscribe to read each chapter on your cell phone or you can read it at Textnovel.com. A chapter will be posted daily until the story is complete.

Read REMOTE CONTROL on Textnovel.com.

~Cheryl Kaye Tardif

“Be careful what you wish for,” they say, but for forty-four-year-old Harold Fielding, who unfortunately isn’t one to listen to such good advice, those words will come back to haunt him.

Harold-Harry-always rebels against the norm. In fact, he says, “Wishes are like saying grace-something to be said before every meal.” So he wishes at least five times a day, while growing exceedingly fat.

However, good ole Harry has an excuse.

“If I wish hard enough,” he tells his wife Beatrice, “my wishes will eventually come true.”

Harry’s a TV fanatic and, surprisingly, fairly intelligent. He spends about ten hours a day parked in front of his ten-year-old Sanyo television with the remote control in hand, while watching shows on just about everything. The next day, he can tell you all about it; his recall is nearly perfect.

He never once contemplates actually working a forty-hour week and earning money. He’s already maxed out the VISA and MasterCard, plus a small bank loan that Beatrice knows nothing about. And now he’s waiting for his fortune to fall in his lap. Sadly, there’s no room there, so whatever good luck finds him usually ends up in a puddle on the floor.

Harry’s good with puddles. He’s a plumber by trade, when he bothers to do a job. The truth is, he’s been having trouble maneuvering under kitchen sinks; his stomach keeps getting in the way. Six months ago, he was depressed, which made him eat more. He’d almost lost faith that there is something better for him…somewhere…out there, and then fate stepped in.

After a chance run-in with an old classmate (Harry nearly knocked him down a flight of stairs when they passed on a landing), who happens to be very wealthy and who recommends one book, Harry’s life changes forever.

The Secret sits on the shelf behind the toilet. Harry reads it while relieving himself of the pounds of food he’s eaten each day. Since he’s always there a while, he can usually get through five or six pages a visit.

“I’ve read it now from beginning to end at least five times,” he boasts to his friends.

Of course, he hasn’t quite figured out that one must work towards receiving the good things in life, whether by deed or thought. He just figures that if he wishes for something, he’ll attract it. Eventually.

Be careful what you wish for, Harry.

...

On this fateful Friday night, Harry is sitting in his favorite recliner, the one with the sagging springs and torn leather footrest. He scowls at the television and balances a bowl of popcorn on his gargantuan stomach. Not an easy task.

“I wish to be rich and famous,” he says, just as he does at least twice a day. A handful of greasy popcorn follows and his stomach rumbles in rebellion.

Harry wants everything out of life-recognition, an inexhaustible supply of money and the perfect family to share it with.

He glances over his shoulder at his wife. Beatrice is ironing his work shirt for tomorrow, a pinched expression on her face. He studies her for a moment. She’s wearing her regular work outfit-a skirt and jacket in dove gray. It would look great, he thinks, if she was twenty years younger. Beatrice is thirty-nine. And why won’t that woman do something with her hair? Beatrice has grown out all the blond hair color he likes. It’s now a rusty gray, which she twists into a lump at the back of her head and fastens with one of those clamp thingies.

“You finished work early,” she says without looking at him.

“It was an easy job.”

Harry lets out a resounding belch in b-minor. The ominous sound is followed by a crescendo of sour pepperoni breath. It reminds him that there’s still a half bag of mini pepperoni in the fridge.

Beatrice looks up. “Why not take on a few jobs a week, Harry? We could use the money.”

She’s holding her breath. He knows this because when she says money, it sounds like buddy.

“You’re making enough for us to get by on, Bea,” he says. “’Sides, I’m waiting for my lucky streak to kick in.” He doesn’t want her to ask why he’s been taking a hundred dollars out every week. “You have faith in me, dontcha?”

Beatrice returns to her ironing with a loud sniff. She’s annoyed. He can tell.

“It’s gonna happen soon,” he says, more to himself. “I can feel it. My luck’s gonna change, and when it does, you’ll be sorry for doubting me.” He laughs. “And I’ll say, ‘I told you so.’”

He pushes the nearly empty popcorn bowl onto the end table beside his recliner and leans forward, grunting and shifting, trying to right the recliner. Finally, the footrest kicks into place. Then, with a deep breath, he grasps the arms of the recliner and throws his body forward and upward, and-ta-da!-we have lift off. Harold Fielding is standing.

With huffing breaths, he lumbers toward Beatrice.

...

“He’s one step from the grave,” her mother had told her just last week. And Beatrice has to agree.

She hears his heavy breathing moving closer but doesn’t want to look at him. She doesn’t want to see her reflection in his eyes, to know that her dull brown eyes rested in emaciated pits of shadowed skin, caverns that bespoke of countless sleepless nights.

It’s Harry’s fault. He snores loud enough to wake the dead. Sometimes he stops breathing for so long that she holds her own breath so she can listen. Is he dead? And every time, she jerks when a gasping, strangled choke rises from the depths of Harry.

She lifts her chin and finally looks at him. Her husband. The man she married over twenty years ago. ‘Til death do us part.’ She scowls. Well, how long is that going to take? And as quickly, she takes it back.

Harry wasn’t always like this. When she had married him, he had a bright future ahead of him and plenty of plans. They were going to build their own home, have three children and live in style. None of these dreams have come to fruition. The house they started building collapsed into a sinkhole when it was nearly completed. They had one daughter who moved out the day she turned eighteen and is now backpacking across Europe with a known drug dealer named Felipe. And as for living in style…?

She glances around the sad looking room. The sunflower wallpaper-circa 1970s-is peeling in long banana peel strips from the walls in the kitchen area. The dinette set is something they found on Kajiji.com, purchased from a couple who were moving to Toronto. Harry has already broken two of the four chairs.

In the living room, the matching couch and armchair in pastel periwinkle sink so low to the ground that it looks as if they will get sucked into the floor and earth below. Another sinkhole perhaps? A wayward spring sometimes jabs Beatrice in the thigh when she sits in the armchair, and the cushion is as flat as a pancake. Harry’s girth has taken care of that.

As her husband approaches, his massive belly flops over his pants and appears below the hem of his t-shirt. The waistband of his dirty track pants disappears beneath the drooping mass of dough-like flesh that hangs below his crotch. Oh, and there’s his bellybutton. You could hide a bar of soap in that. His limbs are short and thick, tapering at the wrists and ankles, then flaring out into misshapen hands and feet that are always swollen and red. He scuffles and shuffles rather than walks, stopping to catch his breath every so often. Think of a gigantic Galapagos tortoise moving across the sand and you’ll get the picture.

“Our savings is nearly gone,” she says softly.

...

The only sound in the room is a ripping fart that Harry forces out as he passes her. He’s been into the mini pepperoni sticks again, with a platter of eggs, it seems-by the noxious potpourri that simmers in the air.

“Maybe you can teach some extra classes at the college,” he replies.

Beatrice bites her tongue. She already works full time teaching at an elementary school, plus she teaches the occasional adult class at Grant MacEwan. The college is already booked for courses for the next six months.

“I really think it’s time you find more work,” she persists.

“I wish you’d stop saying that.”

He moves to the fridge, grabs another beer and waddles back to his recliner. He wipes his perspiring brow with the back of a chubby hand. His fingers look like sausages ready to explode from their casings. Then he reaches into the bowl of popcorn, flops back into his chair and picks up the remote control, thereby completing his exercise regime.

Beatrice clamps her mouth shut.

When is the last time I saw him without that godforsaken remote control in hand?

She remembers. Last spring, they’d taken a plane trip to New Brunswick to visit Harry’s ailing mother. It wasn’t a cheap trip either; they had to pay for three seats-two for Harry.

And how long has it been since we’ve gone to a movie?

The last time, poor Harry wedged himself into the theatre chair so tightly that it took Beatrice, three attendants and some of that fake butter topping to dislodge him. On the drive home, she saw him wipe his fingers over his greasy jeans and lick each plump digit. It was obscene.

She misses the old Harry. The slimmer one.

When’s the last time he kissed me or told me he loves me? How long’s it been since we made love?

She shakes her head. Sex is completely out of the question. The last time they tried, she ended up with a dislocated hip and two fractured ribs, not to mention acid reflux symptoms that lingered for days afterward. They even tried to be adventurous, with her on top, but that only made things difficult to locate, and the last thing Beatrice wanted to do was go digging around under the sweaty layers of stomach and between Harry’s cellulite-dimpled, thunderous thighs. Plus Harry can’t lie on his back for long anyway. He might pass out.

So why does she stay with him? After all, their daughter is grown and has flown the coop, leaving behind a tired old hen and an obese rooster who has no more “cock-a” in his “doodle-do”.

She watches him now, a longing in her heart, wishing so desperately that he would return to the Harry she once admired and loved. Can it be that that man is gone permanently?

...

Beatrice recalls the day they were married.

The wedding was simple and sweet, and it took place a few months after college. Harry, decked out in a three-piece Armani suit that he’d borrowed from his brother, looked like the popular football jock that he was; Beatrice, wearing an elegant white dress cut low in the back, was the class valedictorian. She’d been so happy back then…and so in love. And Harry? Why, he’d literally swept her off her feet in a short five months.

Now he can barely lift his own feet.

They’d had such innocent dreams for their future together. She was going to teach wonderful, sweet children to read and write, maybe even homeschool their three equally wonderful and sweet offspring. Harry would own a plumbing company, hiring at least ten contractors, and they’d specialize in new homes. They’d target all the local builders and coax them with special deals. They’d all make a fortune.

But instead, reality had given her a classroom of unruly, spoiled children, a hectic schedule and one child of her own whom she’d had no time to homeschool. Harry’s company lost customers daily because of his poor work ethic and the three contractors he’d hired last fall had all quit. Better pay elsewhere, they’d all said.

Beatrice catches sight of her reflection in the mirror above the dinette table. What happened to me?

Her thin lips are pursed in discontent as she flicks a look over her shoulder and stares at the protuberance in the recliner. Things have got to change around here, she thinks.

She hangs Harry’s shirt over a wooden chair. “Goodnight, Harry.” She pauses in the doorway.

In answer, her husband of twenty years points the remote at the television and switches channels.

Beatrice can’t take much more of this.

She turns away. I wish that things would change.

Be careful what you wish for, Beatrice.

...

On this night-the night that ‘IT’ happens-the weather takes on the frightening quality of an orchestra gone awry. A merciless, miasmic symphony of heat and humidity is brewing, churning the heavens into a hazy, hellish hue of burnt amber. Bitter black clouds as dense as tar pits clash overhead. Hot rain is spat out, a trumpeting torrent that splatters and spreads into running rivers, flooding the grass and streets. Jagged lightning spears are thrown down to earth, landing with precision in a field of sleeping cattle, then on a power line, causing the lights in Harry’s rented abode to flicker. Thunder booms through the tiny two-bedroom house and an enraged wind drums on the doors, windows and the stove vent.

A pile of long overdue bills that Beatrice has left on the coffee table flutters to the ground, caught in a fluted draft that seeps under the front door and across the living room, and Harry shivers. The electricity in the air makes the hairs on his arms stand at attention.

“Goddamn storm,” he mutters.

He knows that Beatrice is probably tossing and turning in the bedroom down the hall, but he isn’t finished keeping his ever-vigilant watch of the small screen before him. There’s fifteen minutes left of the hockey game and he’s got a vested interest in the score. He’s wagered a thousand dollars he took in increments of one hundred from their savings. One thousand dollars for the home team to win.

And he has a feeling…

The doorbell rings. His pizza is here.

He pays the delivery guy, who yawns sleepily and hands him the two-for-one box.

“Keep the change,” Harry says, handing the guy a twenty.

The man gives him a scowl. “Thanks, buddy. I may be able to pay for the gas with that…uh,” he looks at the receipt, “forty-eight cents.”

Harry closes the door and waddles back to his chair, clutching the pizza box like an excited child holding a Christmas present. He opens the box, inhales about a thousand calories in one breath and downs a pizza in record time. He’s starting on the second one when something crackles.

Harry jumps. “What the-?”

The lights wink again. Off, on.

“There’d better not be a power failure,” he yells at the television.

The game is in the final minute.

“Come on! Get the goddamn puck, you assholes. Now, shoot it!”

He holds his breath, watching as the tiny puck on the screen glides across the ice toward the net.

Closer…closer…

...

Without warning, the TV goes fuzzy. Static hisses at him and Harry hisses back.

“Ssson-of-a-bitch!”

He changes channels with the remote, but every channel shows the same gray, stagnant static, so he clicks back to the game. Still nothing.

Harry heaves himself from the recliner, then pauses to catch his breath.

This is not the time for the stupid TV to act up.

Harry needs to know the score. He has to know if he’s just made them ten thousand dollars richer, or if he’ll have to find a way to cover his tracks-and hide the money loss.

“Aw, for crying out loud! I wish to God I knew the score.”

With the remote control in one hand, he approaches the television with trepidation. He pushes the channel up button, and as his other hand-or fist, actually-makes contact with the box, he switches the channel back to the hockey game. Simultaneously and unbeknownst to Harry, a bolt of lightning sears the cable dish on his roof and a surge of electricity races down through the wiring and into his old television.

He feels a minor tingling sensation in his fingertips. Then a sharp jolt of pain courses up his arm.

“Beatrice!” he yells.

His voice sounds funny, as if he’s in a deep cavern. His vision blurs and darkness wraps him in a cloak of oblivion. Sounds fade in and out, waves of voices on a restless sea.

The TV must be back on, his subconscious tells him.

He blinks. Then he gasps. What was that?

A face swims in front of him, too large for the television. A man’s face. He has dark blue hair.

That’s not right, he thinks.

He blinks again. And glimpses a crowd of people hovering over him.

Am I dead?

His vision clears and beyond the crowd, he sees hundreds-no, thousands-of screaming people.

“Where the hell am I?” he bellows.

But Harry knows exactly where he is.

...

He is standing now-after much assistance-and as he gazes across the stadium, his eyes rest on the hockey net at the other end of the ice rink. The home team is just setting up for a power play. The same scenario he’s already witnessed at home, while sitting in his recliner with his popcorn and beer.

“Excuse me,” a woman says beside him. “This is yours.”

She presses a small black object into his hands. Harry’s remote control.

He’s stunned. And very confused. “But how did you…?”

“You dropped it when you fainted.”

“I fainted?” He rubs his forehead, squinting as a sudden pain flashes through his temples.

Well, this is just wrong. I, Harold Abner Fielding, do not faint.

While he tries to make sense of it all, his hands habitually caress the remote control buttons. When he grazes the volume button, he applies more pressure than he initially intends. The result nearly makes him pee his pants. The volume in the arena increases.

“Must be a coincidence,” he mumbles.

He pushes the volume decrease button and the surrounding sounds diminish to a bare whisper. Flabby fingers stroke his ‘long lost lover’, pressing the mute button. The arena is eerily silent, yet all around him, people go through the motions of screaming, jumping up from their chairs, stomping their feet and whistling at the dueling hockey teams. It reminds him of those old black and white silent pictures with the incomparable Charlie Chaplin.

He laughs, but no sound is emitted from his throat.

“You suck!” he silently yells at the guy beside him.

The guy gives him a nasty scowl.

Apparently, the remote only gives Harry the effects. Everyone else hears just fine.

Experimenting more, he presses the rewind button. It’s a hysterically funny sight watching people move backwards, only slightly slower than normal. He glances at the woman behind him and immediately wishes he hadn’t. She is regurgitating an all-beef hotdog smothered in mustard and onions.

His stomach heaves, so he turns around and resumes fiddling with the remote. Fast forward gives him the expected results. The channel buttons do nothing that he can see.

Distracted by this unexpected turn of events, he halfheartedly watches the final minutes of the game. As the puck makes its way across the center line, he catches sight of the “memory” button on the remote.

“Now what does a remote have to remember?”

He pushes it.

...

Zzzz-zap!

A blinding flash of light pierces his eyes and he clamps them shut. When he opens them, he finds that he is standing next to the television in his stuffy two-bedroom rental. The remote control is at his feet and a burnt plastic odor lingers in the air.

What the hell just happened here?

He shakes his head, trying to free the cobwebs of his mind. He obviously imagined everything.

Good God, Harry. You’re losing it, buddy.

He laughs. It starts off as a self-deprecating chuckle, then bursts into a full blown Jell-O belly laugh. Above his own laughter, he hears a thunderous cheering. The hockey game is in the last three minutes and the crowd is screaming wildly.

The puck inches near the net, and Harry sees imaginary dollar signs. His bet is going to pay off.

“Shoot!” he screams, trying not to think of what just happened.

The puck hits the side of the goal net and ricochets between one player’s feet, and the buzzer sounds. Game over. The home team has lost.

And so has Harry. He’s just lost one thousand dollars.

He lets out a cry of frustration. “Goddamn losers!”

Leaning over-which in itself is a huge undertaking of clumsy choreography, a few squats and grunting wheezes-Harry finally retrieves the remote control from the floor. He places a hand on the top of the television, to steady himself as he rises and at the same time he changes channels with the remote.

In the barest blink he recognizes a documentary on the Arctic.

The next nanosecond, icy water engulfs him and his head dips beneath a watery grave. Pushing to the surface, he flounders and screams. “Help me!”

But there is no other sign of life, and his own is crawling out of him in an icy blue trail.

Jesus Christ, I’m drowning!

He almost opens his right hand. And then he remembers. The remote.

Teeth chattering, he prays harder than he’s ever prayed. “Please let this work. Please!”

He can barely feel his death-tinged fingers, yet he manages to cradle the remote in one hand as he pokes at the memory button.

He’s instantly transported back to the safety of his living room and the clock on the wall tells him that the game ended about ten minutes ago. He could have shrugged this off as another ‘zoning out’ period except for two things-he is ice cold and dripping wet. Arctic water pools around his feet, while his teeth continue clattering loud enough to wake the living dead.

Or Beatrice, at the very least.

She appears on cue in the doorway, her weary eyes blinking to adjust to the light, her arms folded across her tattered gray housecoat. It was blue when he’d bought it for her last Christmas.

He watches her, wondering how long it will take her to realize that all is not right.

“Harry?” Blink…yawn…gasp! “What in God’s name is going on here?”

...

Beatrice searches the room for the source of the water. There’s no leak in the ceiling and the kitchen sink isn’t overflowing. So where’d all that water come from?

Her eyes narrow in suspicion as she steps closer to Harry. “Did you go outside?”

It’s the only thing that makes any sense to her, yet the rain had stopped about half an hour ago.

Harry gives her his ‘you’re so dense’ glare, then releases an exasperated sigh. “Of course I didn’t go outside.”

“Then why are you standing in the living room soaking wet?”

Ignoring her, he pushes past and waddles toward the bathroom.

“Just like a man,” she mutters. “Avoid the question and run away.”

While he’s gone, Beatrice cleans up the water on the hardwood floor. She searches for the remote control so she can turn off the TV, but it’s nowhere to be found.

“Harry?” she calls out. “Where’s the remote?”

He appears beside her, the remote firmly grasped in one hand.

She holds out her hand.

“I’m not done watching TV,” he says.

“But it’s almost eleven-thirty.”

He looks at her, raises his eyebrows. “And your point is?”

“You always go to bed by eleven when you have a job in the morning.”

“I know.” He glances at the television. “But I have a plan that is sure to make us rich.”

She rolls her eyes. Another one of Harry’s ‘plans’. Oh goodie.

“I have an idea,” he continues, “that’ll make you wish you’d never doubted me.”

“What I wish,” she snaps, “is that you’d stop all your wishing once and for all. I wish that you’d stop pressuring me to work more hours and figure out a way to fix this mess we’re in. In fact, I wish that you’d just leave me alone!”

Beatrice turns on one heel, but his portentous words follow her.

“Be careful what you wish for, dear Bea.”

 

...

Harry is desperately afraid. Afraid that he’s imagined everything, that he’s had a stroke or something and temporarily blacked out. Terrified in a way that makes his heart race with anticipation that maybe, just maybe, he hasn’t dreamt it up after all.

There’s only one way to find out.

It’s now just past midnight and Harry has changed his clothes, toweled off his hair, and his skin has returned to its normal color of malnourishment. Leaning forward as far as his tire tube belly allows, he sits in his recliner and contemplates how he can use his new best friend to make all his wishes come true. His pudgy hands are glued to the remote, as if his life depends on its close proximity.

“Okay, RC,” he says. “Let’s see what you can really do.”

Now don’t forget how smart Harry is. He’s already thought this through. If everything that happened was real, then he has somehow found a kind of portal. And portals can be very useful-if one can figure out how to use them.

“I was transported to the same hockey game I was watching on TV,” he says. “I was actually there. Then I changed channels and went to the Arctic, just like the documentary.” He shivers. “Bad move there.”

Needing something safe to test his theory on, he channel surfs.

“There!”

The screen shows dozens of digital cameras, flat screen TVs and laptops. Tonight’s news is featuring a piece on the grand opening of a Best Buy store in southeast Edmonton. According to the reporter, the grand opening sale is on ‘NOW’.

“Then NOW is the best time,” he says with a wry grin.

He never stops to wonder what will happen if he selects a commercial that has been pre-recorded in a store that is now closed. But he does do two things. He wishes and waits.

Nothing happens.

“What the hell?”

He holds the remote out in front, points and changes channels quickly, from a beer commercial back to the Best Buy ad, wishing with all his might for fame and fortune.

Still nothing.

He turns the television off, then on, and tries again. Point…wish…click channel button.

Disappointed that he’s still sitting in his chair, he says, “Why won’t you work?”

Scowling, he scratches his chins and replays previous actions in his head, thinking of everything he could have possibly done.

Finally, he smiles. “Ah-ha! I touched the TV.”

Thankful he hadn’t reclined his chair, he begins to rock. One…two…three! Up he goes.

Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.

As a last thought, he grabs a hooded jacket he’d flung over the couch earlier that day. He doesn’t bother to zip it up-he couldn’t have even if he wanted to. But he does pull the hood over his head and fastens the top snap under his chins.

He shuffles to the television and touches the faded black plastic. Making his wish, he switches back to the Best Buy commercial. In a single heartbeat, he sees his arm and hand disintegrate.

Then Harry vanishes completely.

...

He’s staring into a pitch-black cave. It takes a few moments for his eyes to adjust, and when they do, he realizes that he’s inside the Best Buy store-after closing. Not even a night janitor is around.

“It works!” He jerks as his voice echoes through the cavernous building with its high, open ceiling.

Harry is stunned. He’s tempted to hit the memory button and return home to collect his thoughts. But then it hits him; he should be collecting something else. He’s standing in a store filled with expensive electronic equipment. Stuff worth thousands of dollars. Per shelf. Stuff he could keep-or sell. And best of all, there’s no sign of a break-in, and there’ll be no evidence of his departure.

He glances up, sees a security camera sweeping the area and pulls the hood tighter. “Security!”

Chuckling at his brilliance, he stares at his good friend RC and strokes the small black box. “Can I take really something back with me?” He remembers something. “Well, I brought back some of the Arctic Ocean, didn’t I?”

Makes sense to him that objects can be transported just as easily as water.

“This’ll be a reconnaissance trip,” he decides, thinking of the movie Ocean’s Eleven with George Clooney and a host of other big name actors. “It’ll be a dry run, and I’ll be Clooney.”

He waddles down one aisle, grabs a Canon camera and wraps the strap around his neck. Then he shoves four small digital cameras into his jacket pockets, two per side. He grins. With a skip and a bounce in his step-well, as much as his three hundred and sixty pound frame will allow-he lumbers into a second aisle and scoops a laptop up with one hand.

Then he sees it, the most wondrous thing in the store.

A forty-two inch Panasonic flat-screen TV.

Shuffling toward his treasure, he practically salivates at the sight, and he makes a decision that will make one of his routine wishes finally come true. He hugs the flat-screen, squeezes his eyes shut and says a quick prayer.

“There’s no place like home,” he says.

He tries to click his heels, but his marshmallow thighs won’t let him.

So he presses the memory button on the remote instead.

...

Harry stands motionless in his living room. His pockets are stuffed with stolen loot and the flat-screen he’s holding makes his arms ache. He rests his new treasure on the couch and groans at the physical exertion. He stares at it and his jaw drops. A drip of drool slides from the corner of his mouth, down his chin and disappears into the unshaven folds of his face.

Harry’s eyes widen in comprehension. “I did it.”

He realizes something and puffs up his already expansive girth. He’s no longer just Harold Fielding, plumber extraordinaire. Now he’s a thief, a criminal, a wanted man.

He grins and holds himself more erect. It feels good to be wanted, to be somebody special. A tingle of anticipation gives him a delicious shiver as he thinks of the police investigation that will follow. They’ll wonder how someone got in and out without touching the doors or windows.

They’ll think I’m amazing.

He empties his pockets. “And I am amazing.”

He can’t believe he made away with it all. And he didn’t even set off the Best Buy’s alarm.

Harry gasps. Maybe the press will give me a special nickname.

“Maybe they’ll call me The Disappearing TV Thief.”

Laughter escapes from his mouth, his bulky belly doing ‘the wave’ as it ripples with each laugh.

He covers his mouth with fat fingers.

What to do now…

He must have an excuse for having all this state-of-the-art equipment. Now what can he tell Beatrice? Maybe an uncle passed away and left him-no, that wouldn’t do. Beatrice knows he doesn’t have an uncle.

He snaps his fingers as an idea hits him.

Harry grins. “I’ll tell her I won everything. In a lottery.”

She’ll never know the truth. She’d never approve of it.

Suddenly, Harry hears a sound that makes his heart stop.

Footsteps.

Good God, Beatrice is awake!

...

Beatrice peeks around the corner and sees Harry sitting in his recliner, his eyes wild looking and his face flushed. He’s wearing a jacket, which is odd since it’s the middle of the night and the house is toasty.

“Harry, what’s wrong? Are you ill?”

“No.”

She notices that he’s covered in an oily sheen of perspiration. “Should I call 911?”

He shakes his head, his breath coming in quick pants. “Bad dream.”

Beatrice looks at him for a long moment. “Come to bed, Harry. You’re going to be too tired to work tomorrow.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “Or should I say, today. It’s almost two.”

“I’ll be up in a minute.” He gives her an innocent looking smile and a sweat bead rolls down the side of his face, cascades down his three chins and drops on his shirt.

Her eyes narrow. What’s he up to?

She follows his gaze to the closet. “What’s in there, Harry?”

“Where? What are you talking about?”

“What are you hiding in the closet?” she demands.

He shoves himself from the chair, wobbles, and says, “I’m not hiding a thing.”

She doesn’t believe him. He’s too interested in that darned closet. Can’t keep his eyes off it.

She walks toward the closet door with the intention of exposing Harry’s secret. Probably half a dozen assorted flavors of potato chips and a bulk package of chocolate bars.

She scowls. Or more dirty magazines.

She’d already found his stash in the garage and made him burn them outside in the fire pit.

Men!

“Really, Bea,” he insists, “it’s nothing. I can’t help where I was looking.”

She hesitates in front of the closet door.

“Why don’t we go upstairs,” Harry says. “We can have some fun.”

He raises and lowers his brows in an attempt to be suggestive, but Bea isn’t interested in his idea of fun, the kind that always leaves her unfulfilled, with cracked ribs.

“No, Harry. I’m more interested in what’s in here.”

She reaches out a hand, touches the doorknob and turns it.

...