She thought his outfit was cute. Delusional perhaps but cute. The old man wasn’t normal, that was part of his charm. And black is slimming.
The old man’s wife was young but she had a tough job. So, she went to bed real early.
Which was good because he could not stand too much Law & Order. Especially SVU. A slew of children go missing and Benson arrests a suspected kidnapper, a ventriloquist who claims his dummy did the deeds. A psychic claims to know about a missing woman, but is really a serial rapist and murderer a skeptical Stabler discovers. How do you go to sleep to that and have sweet dreams?
He stole down the carpeted hallway, stepped over and around the colossal canine and listened for her snoring. The television was still playing: Snapped. Oh great, more drama where the wife can’t take it anymore and does away with her husband. Often an older man with money, too stupid to sign a pre-nup.
She said she didn’t snore, but to him sorta sounded like snoring. If a large cat was doing it. Oh, yeah, out cold. The woman could do some sleeping, give her that.
The old man wasn’t much of a night-owl himself, to tell you the truth. But Captain Inviolable? The nocturnal sort.
He was wandering around the house quietly so not to wake the little dog, who might find disquieting the idea of a large shape casting raw shadows across the pale walls. If she did awake, either of them, he’d just flow into the Annoyed Stud Muffin and tell her he couldn’t sleep so he was practicing his tai-chi.
Which he actually was practicing. He had his own style. But you probably guessed that. The old man called it Smooth Dog. The goal is to stay limber and fluid while still being able to rip somebody’s throat out. Smooth Dog was not a defensive system, unless you count the first rule of Smooth Dog defense – Strike First.
***
Suddenly, softly, somewhere else in the dark, a voice. Scared the shit out of him.
“I can see right through your pants,” she said.
His wife had more superpowers than he did.