The car next door woke Alan early. Again. A few minutes after daybreak its engine raced to a whine, then the tires scratched out of the driveway below his bedroom window. The red Saab never seemed to come or go quietly. Always tearing in or out of the driveway too fast, radio blaring, making too much noise. There was something almost angry about the way it came and went at all hours.

He opened his eyes and groaned. When he was sure he couldn’t go back to sleep, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to ease the dry, raw feeling they had when he didn’t get enough hours. Now I’m going to be tired all day, he thought, all because that guy next door is such an inconsiderate jerk. That’s L.A. for you. If it’s not the garbage trucks at six, it’s the hulking guy next door in the red Saab.

Alan worked as a waiter in a pasta restaurant on Wilshire, usually past midnight. He had lived in Santa Monica less than a year and already hated it, but he stayed because he wanted to give acting a serious try. People said he was a good-looking man and he didn’t want to be a waiter forever, so this was the place to be, but the dense California housing and bright morning sun were too much for a guy who was used to the pale daylight and cool air of Seattle. Back home he could easily sleep till noon if he wanted.

Already in a bad mood, he pulled on a pair of running shorts and went into the kitchen, stood at the sink drinking orange juice while he waited for his coffee water to boil. He looked out the window at the house next door and wondered if he ought to complain again, but if his landlords hadn’t said anything by now, they probably wouldn’t.

Maybe he should talk to the neighbors directly, but he’d never met them, didn’t even know their names. After all, he was living in L.A. where you never really knew anybody.

The only thing he’d seen of his neighbors was a woman who watered the lawn constantly and her heavy-set husband who always seemed to be climbing in or out of the red Saab, always in a huff. The man had a brooding look about him and heavy arms that hung from his thick chest and shoulders, a simian in clothes.

Talk about clothes—the woman caught Alan’s attention one day because of the way she was dressed. It was August, and nobody wore much more than a T-shirt and shorts outside. Yet she had on a pair of red rubber boots that went up to her knees and a plastic rain hat, looked like a commercial fisherman in New England. How could she stand to have all that on in the California sun? he’d wondered. She’s got to be burning up under those clothes. When he came home that day, she looked up from her watering and tilted her hat toward him. He nodded politely, but thought, what a strange bird she must be to dress that way.

He’d only been living in the upstairs apartment a couple of months and barely knew his landlords, Jim and Edie, who lived in the main house below. The apartment was in an older two-story house a few blocks east of Lincoln where he’d assumed the neighborhood would be quiet. After the nightly barrage of sound in the restaurant, he wanted to go home to a place where there were no clanging noises or shouts, no crowds and no traffic.

He’d decided he would never get into the industry unless he worked hard and avoided the party life down at the beaches, but now this apartment wasn’t working out. Only thing left to do, he’d tell Jim and Edie again he was going to move out if they didn’t do something about the noise. That’s what he’d do. That Saab had woken him up one time too many.

He went outside and down the stairway to pick up the morning paper, but it was on the ground below the mailbox. As he stooped to pick it up he glanced at the house next door through a gap in the hedge. It seemed ordinary enough, a forties-style pink stucco with green shutters, but there was also a wire cage in the front yard that stood under the shade of a lemon tree. A small wooden house sat inside it, and the cage appeared to be empty. He’d never heard a dog over there. Thank God for that anyway.

A little after nine he put down the paper and coffee, went to the bathroom to shave. A long day ahead, he thought, acting classes tomorrow and an audition to prepare for next week.

He was half-finished with his shave when he heard a woman’s voice call out below the bathroom window. “Jim!” Then again, the voice called out louder, “Jim, are you home?”

He heard a knock on the back door of the house. He put down his razor and turned to the window to listen. The woman’s voice sounded urgent. “Edie? Are you in there?” She knocked on the screen door again so loudly it banged against the frame.

“Edie?”

Then, a moan. “Is anybody home?”

Alan wiped the shaving cream off his face and went to the front door, hesitated when he realized he was barely dressed, then stepped outside onto the landing anyway.

“Hello?” he said. “Who’s there?”

A woman appeared around the corner and looked up at him. He didn’t have his glasses on and could barely make her out. She was probably wearing a business suit.

“Thank God, somebody’s here,” she said.

“Is something wrong?”

“I need help.”

“Well, Jim and Edie aren’t here.”

“Can’t you help me?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Please help me.” Her voice grew emphatic. “Usually, I get Jim or Edie to help.”

He felt annoyed but started down the steps anyway, and when he reached the bottom of the stairs he saw it was the woman who lived next door, the strange bird. She looked different without the red boots and hat. She was about forty and wore her black hair pulled back. In make-up and a suit, she appeared to be a serious lawyer or accountant. He opened the iron gate at the foot of the stairs and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“Thank you,” she said. “It won’t take long.”

“What are you talking about? What won’t take long?”

She paused and composed herself a moment, smoothing the sides of her suit jacket with a downward motion of her palms. “I’m Claire,” she said. Her head tilted toward the house on the other side of the hedge. “From next door.”

“Alan,” he said.

“I know,” she smiled. “Edie told me about you.”

She turned and started out the walk, gesturing for him to follow. “It’s going to rain,” she said with authority. “I can’t leave my rabbits out all day, and I can’t handle them by myself because one of them might get away.”

He stopped and shook his head. “Rabbits?”

She stopped with him, but continued talking as if he’d said nothing. “I really appreciate your help.”

“You want me to help with rabbits?”

“It won’t take but a minute.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t want to get bit.”

“Oh, they don’t bite. I just need you to hold the cage door.”

“I’m not really dressed.”

She smiled at him as if that hardly mattered, and when she did, her lips stretched back and he saw the gums around her teeth. What a weird lady, acting up about her rabbits and the rain.

“Please, it’ll only take a minute.”

He shrugged and followed her through an opening in the hedge to her yard. “By the way,” he said. “You have a red Saab that comes in and out so early.”

“Yes, you’re the one who doesn’t like noise,” she said quickly. Her voice became tight. “That’s my husband’s car.”

She moved out across the lawn before he could say anything else, heading for the wire cage under the tree, her black heels disappearing into the emerald grass with every step. Alan followed her but stopped again when she opened the gate and went into the cage.

“Are you sure these rabbits don’t bite?”

“Oh, they’re very tame.”

She went over to the little wooden house and peered into it. “There they are, my sweeties.” There was a smaller wire cage on the ground next to the house. “We have to put them in this traveling cage so I can take them inside.”

Alan went over and saw a fat white rabbit cowering in the back corner and a darker, mottled rabbit squatting in front of the white one. Both looked at him nervously, their noses twitching.

Claire stooped alongside him and pulled the wire cage closer. “We have to raise the hutch, then reach underneath and get them. The door is a bit too small.”

He looked at her.

“You have to be careful with the brown one,” she said. “If he gets out, he’ll run away.”

“Are you sure they don’t bite?”

“Oh, there is no danger.”

He looked at the anxious rabbits backed against the far corner of the house. “Can I get them by the ears?”

“No. That might hurt them. Just reach in and pick them up one at a time.”

“Me?”

“Yes, while I hold the hutch up.”

He realized then she wouldn’t touch the rabbits. She never touched them. That’s why she’d come over for help. He turned and looked at her again, squatting close beside him in her blue suit, so close he could smell her shampoo. Then she smiled again and he saw the gums around her teeth.

“Okay, raise the box higher,” he told her. She did and he reached underneath it. The rabbits scurried away from his hand but made no move to bite him. They separated and he went for the white one and got it by the fur on the back of its neck. It was a funny feeling, he thought, very soft, with the warm skin loose and rumpled over the bones beneath. The rabbit struggled as he pulled it closer, got a better grip, then lifted it out. Claire pulled the traveling cage closer and the rabbit started kicking, but he managed to drop it through the opening in the top.

“They don’t want to go in there,” he said.

“No, they don’t like being caged,” she smiled.

“Okay, that was easy enough. One more.”

She raised the box again and the mottled rabbit quivered inside. He reached underneath, but the rabbit darted away from him. He leaned in closer and used his left hand to stop it from running and managed to grab a paw with his right hand. He pulled the rabbit toward him, whispering to it gently, trying to calm it down. It was a bigger, heavier rabbit and he grabbed the fur on its back but didn’t get a good hold on the loose folds of skin. The rabbit squirmed too much for him to get a better grip.

“Get the cage open,” he said.

Claire fumbled with the wire door on top.

“Hurry, it’s slipping.”

She got the door open and he swung the rabbit over the opening, but it panicked and started kicking wildly. He tried to get his free hand on its ears, but the rabbit whipped its head around and bit his first two fingers.

“Damn!”

It felt a bit like touching a bee, a sudden stinging pain concentrated in one spot. Alan yanked his hand back and cursed again while the rabbit kicked violently and wiggled out of his grasp. Claire yelped and fell back on her seat as the rabbit landed on top of the cage, then jumped across her lap to the ground. It made two quick leaps for the open gate, then went springing across the lawn where it disappeared underneath some shrubbery beside the house. He shook his injured fingers and squeezed them with his other hand.

“Oh, no!” Claire said, sitting back on the grass in disappointment, her heels in the air. “He’s gone.”

“Well, just where is he going to go?” Alan said. “He’ll probably come to your back porch as soon as he gets hungry.” He squeezed his fingers harder as the pain started to spread. “Why didn’t you just close the outer gate?”

She looked at him with sudden lucidity. “I suppose you’re right.” Her eyes moved to his hand. “You’re bleeding.”

He looked at it and was surprised to see blood oozing between his fingers. He wouldn’t have thought a simple bite would bleed that much.

She pulled her skirt back down over her thighs and stood up. “Come on, I’ll get something for it.”

“No way,” Alan grumbled as he got up. “You’ve done enough already.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve got this way of causing things to happen.” Her tone was suddenly different, not apologetic, but something else he couldn’t identify. “Come on,” she said. She took him by the elbow and led him toward the house.

They went to the back door and stepped inside the kitchen. The house was dark inside and felt strange. It smelled closed up, as if the windows and blinds were rarely open. She went to a cabinet and removed a bottle of antiseptic, groped around until she found a tin box of band-aids and put them on the counter.

“Come over here.” She gestured toward the sink, and Alan went over and put his hands over it while she turned on the faucet. He couldn’t understand her manner. She was again on a different key, all business, sounding entirely new to him.

“Claire, why did you tell me there was no danger?”

Alan looked at her and saw a disconnection in her eyes as if she wanted to answer him but couldn’t. He hadn’t had a chance to study her face before, and now that he did, he suspected a person whose thoughts shifted unpredictably.

“What danger?” she asked coyly, the business- like manner gone.

“The rabbit bit me.”

“That’s not danger.”

She took his hands in hers and slowly peeled back his fingers that were gripped tight around the bite marks. When the bites were exposed she looked at them curiously, raised the fingers closer to her eyes and watched the blood ooze from two pinpricks. Then she looked into his eyes and he saw something there he’d never seen in anyone before. Holding his stare, she raised his fingers to her mouth and wrapped her lips around them. Slowly and gently, she drew his fingers inside against her tongue and sucked on them, drawing the blood out.

Alan felt a kicking sensation inside his chest and his throat clamped shut. He tried to pull his fingers away, but the strength had suddenly left his right arm and the insistent movement of her mouth pulled at him, drew him closer, deeper, until he felt himself slipping, spinning out of control.

“What is this about?”

Then he felt her hand on him, between his legs, and his mind started to spiral. His thoughts blurred, he tried to speak, but there was nothing there other than the question he’d just asked and he couldn’t ask it again. Then her mouth was on his bare chest and he felt a whining sensation inside his head, spinning incomprehensibly fast, roaring; then it became an actual sound, one he recognized. Outside. Not in his head. A car engine outside. Then a car door.

He opened his eyes and turned his head toward the sound. The kitchen door was standing open. She left it open! Heavy footsteps outside. She, in front of him going to her knees now, her mouth open, the lips peeled back, her nostrils flaring wide, and he saw her laughing.

“What is this?” he pleaded.

She looked up at him wildly, screaming with laughter, and threw her head back. “This is danger!”