Sandra was out when I got home from work because Tuesday is her night for Tai Chi. She'd announced one morning at Lemmy's Bagels that she was sick of being so out of shape and in the following weeks joined a gym, changed her hair, and on her days off she wore skirts as short as in college instead of baggy sweats and old jeans. Her Tai Chi class is over at eight but she goes for drinks afterward and doesn't get home until late.

So I was alone in the house when I walked into the kitchen to hunt down a snack and nearly tripped over a bear. He was sound asleep like a mountain, his humped reflection carrying into the distance of the oven's glass door. His fur shivered in a breeze from the back door he'd left open and dry leaves skittered like mice on the tiles. The lower cabinets were emptied of pots and pans as if the bear had been looking for something and exhausted himself in the process.

I retreated on tiptoe toward the dining room, but backed into the console table I've always hated and spilled a pile of coins to the floor. One quarter spun like a wobbly top before finally coming to rest.

The bear groaned in the kitchen and I cursed my own clumsiness. His head swung around the door frame and a long pink tongue—more agile than I would have imagined—lapped from one side of his snout to the other. He roared, loud enough to tell me that he could roar louder. Loud enough to rattle the awful milk-glass lamp Sandra inherited from her grandmother, and it danced like it might finally fall from the table but I steadied it despite myself.

I'd first seen the bear early that morning, shuffling along the fence at the foot of our yard. He was hunched over ass-end toward me with his tail like a burglar's blackjack flopping side-to-side when he walked. The fence was brand new and unweathered, so his dark body stood against its white slats like a shadow.

I must have left the gate open the evening before while hauling our trash the to the curb, and the bear had wandered in from somewhere. I watched him through the window for a few minutes, surprised to see such a large animal so close to the city: most mornings I only see a few sparrows bickering at our thistle feeder. I wondered if Wahoosik next door had seen the bear, too, and if we'd talk about it while retrieving our barrels once the trash truck had come and he filled me in on the neighborhood gossip whether I wanted to hear it or not.

I thought Sandra might want to see the bear, too, but it took so long to coax her from bed—she's been a much heavier sleeper since starting Tai Chi—that the bear was gone when we reached the window and she asked if I was feeling alright. She yawned, and stretched her arms toward the ceiling so her pajama top lifted up and I noticed that her stomach was flatter and tanner and looked a lot younger than mine, a lot younger than it had just a few weeks before. She pulled a sheer red bra from a shopping bag she'd come in with the evening before, then took her clothes toward the shower and reminded me it was Tuesday so she wouldn't be home until late. I stayed at the window in hopes the bear would return but saw only the rooftops of passing cars on the far side of our fence. Later, at the curb, Wahoosik didn't say anything so I kept the bear to myself.

And now that same bear, I assumed, straddled the threshold between kitchen and dining room, blocking the light and glaring at me with eyes like two orange marbles. If I'd only called animal control. If I'd only done something when I noticed the problem, or had realized there might be a problem instead of just watching the bear in my yard like a fool. With my voice rattling like the leaves on the floor, I asked the bear, "What do you want?" because I didn't know what else to say.

He reached his forepaws in front of his body, lowering his shoulders and raising his rump as he stretched. His claws slipped and slid on the waxed wood and he scuffled to keep himself upright, then snorted and rolled onto his haunches. "Bear," I said, "go outside. You don't belong in my house." I held my shaking hands up before me, afraid to move forward in case I might somehow be seen as a threat, and afraid to back up because that might invite him to chase. I wondered if bears could smell fear the way I've always heard that dogs can. I thought about getting a broom from the kitchen, pushing him out through the door like I would a trapped bat, but the broom was on the other side of the bear and he was filling up the whole doorway. And he was much bigger than any bat.

Then he stood so his head nearly brushed the ceiling and in his bent knees and stooped shoulders I saw the extra few inches he could've uncoiled had we been outside. It must have been my imagination, but the bear looked bigger, somehow, than he had a moment before—like he wasn't just standing but growing, right there before my eyes. He raised a wide paw in front of his body as if mocking my own futile gesture, then he laid it hard on my chest and buckled my knees, pushing me flat to the floor. His front end swung toward me and landed with a heavy thump on each side of my head, and he took two steps forward so his black nose hung inches from mine, dripping bear snot onto my face. The fat of his belly swung against my soft stomach and only blue Oxford cloth stood between us. His breath smelled like meat left out overnight, and it was so hot and so dry in the back of my throat that I nearly choked myself stifling a cough.

The bear loomed above me, blinking as I blinked, the movements of his head following mine as if he were a mirror. His runny nose slid up one side of my face and down the other, then he sneezed a wet cloud and backed away into the kitchen. I lay on the floor, listening to pots and pans clanking and the occasional grunt of a bear hard at work tearing my cupboards apart. Maybe, I thought, he was looking for the right pot to cook me. Then the kitchen went quiet, and I wondered if he'd gone back to sleep or, best of all, found his way out the back door, but I didn't move or get up or make any noise in case it might draw his attention.

A long time passed and the house became dark around me. Before I'd summoned the courage to move, the bear lumbered out of the kitchen and padded right past as if I wasn't there, as if he were in his own house and alone. He turned the corner at the foot of the stairs and I heard him climb up, then the sound of water being slurped from the toilet. A moment later the springs of our bed squeaked and groaned, and the whole house took the weight of the bear and went quiet.

I wondered if I should call the police or perhaps a zookeeper. Then I imagined how the conversation might go, how Sandra had looked at me that morning when I'd tried to show her the bear, and despite the occasional snore from upstairs I started to doubt what had happened myself. We live in the suburbs, with a brand new cedar fence and plenty of houses packed in around us; how could a bear creep into all that, into the house I share with my wife, without being noticed by anyone else? Even Wahoosik, who saw everything and told anyone he got the chance to.

I crawled into the kitchen on wobbly legs, and the floor was cold where he'd rested. I gathered the pots and the pans and the plastic containers into their respective cupboards, then swept out the leaves and locked the back door. With all that cleaned up the bear hardly seemed real, as if he hadn't been there at all. In the fridge I found what was left of a pizza and ate it standing over the sink, watching the empty birdfeeder swing on its pole in the yard. Then I climbed the three steps from the kitchen up into the den and sat in my chair to watch TV and think about what I should do. I was still sitting there when the front door squeaked open and I heard Sandra come in. "Hello?" she called through the dark house. I hadn't turned any lights on, not even above the front door. "Are you here?" There was a click, and a yellow pool spilled from the hallway into the kitchen.

She appeared at the bottom of the three steps and in the light of the kitchen I could see that her blouse was unbuttoned down to the red rim of her bra. "Why are you sitting up there in the dark?" Sandra asked. She climbed into the den and sat on the ottoman at my feet, then wrinkled her nose and looked around. "What is that? It's like a pet shop in here."

She leaned over to take off her shoes and the tail of her blouse rose up her back so a flash of tan skin came and went. She leaned back against me and I gathered the smell of her body, freshly showered after Tai Chi, and I wondered if I'd know the difference between her own sweat and somebody else's, or somebody else's sweat on her body.

"How was your class?"

"Tiring. I'm hella sore." Sandra laughed. "Where'd I pick that up?"

I imagined her Tai Chi instructor saying her kicks were hella good, his karate jacket open halfway down his waxed chest. She'd asked me to join her when she started Tai Chi but I'd declined then and it seemed too late now to catch up. She swung her feet onto the floor and asked if I was ready for bed then reached out her hands. I let my weight settle into my back so she had to do most of the work.

On the stairs I remembered the bear. I almost said something to Sandra, but didn't know how I'd explain letting things go on so long without asking for help when I should have. I paused as she stepped over the landing, teeth clenched and eyes closed, but the next sounds I heard were the click of a lamp and a drawer pulling open so I followed her up. Sandra was in our bedroom to my right, so I turned left toward the spare room.

The bear was asleep on the floor like a dog, and light from next door fell through the window across him. My briefcase was wrapped in his paws and he'd chewed all the leather away at one end. I reached over his body to lower the shade then stepped out of the room. I nearly pulled the door closed, but then had a better idea: I crept down to the kitchen and left the back door open wide so the bear could get out in the night. Sandra would never know he had been in our house and in the morning things could go back to normal.

She went right to sleep, worn out from chopping and kicking or whatever she did Tuesday nights, and I read a few pages by my book light's dim glow but my eyelids were soon heavy, too. Then a soft thump and a creak came from out in the hall, heavy steps moving closer and the ragged hiss of his breath. I hadn't closed our bedroom door, because we never do and I couldn't think of a way to explain it.

I looked across the hump of my wife's sleeping body and the bear caught my eye from the doorway, a shiny-eyed shadow beyond the weak light of my lamp. His face hung on the edge of the room like he'd been waiting there for me to notice and as soon as I did he came in all the way. He yawned so wide that his jaws opened straight up and down, then he blinked once or twice before snorting.

"Go away," I whispered. "Go away, bear."

The bear didn't even look up.

"Bear!" I said, a bit louder.

This time he noticed, and peeled his lips back from his teeth and I saw scraps of leather between them. He rumbled as if he was going to growl, so I laid an arm over Sandra the way my mother used to reach across me when she was driving and came to a stop. When he rumbled again his mouth didn't move, and I realized the sound had come from his stomach. That made me relax for a second, before I realized that his being hungry might make things worse.

The bear yawned, smacked his lips, then paced three times in a circle at the foot of the bed before collapsing onto the rug. If I leaned forward a little I could see the dark mountain range of his body beyond the prairie of blankets. I sat in the glow of my book light, wondering what I should do. Then Sandra stirred and rolled over to face me and snored. "Shh," I said with my eyes on the bear. I pulled the blankets tight around her body as if they would offer protection, then I slid down beneath them myself and turned out the light. The room was hot and smelled rancid, but I was afraid to open the window because the frame rattles and I didn't want to wake up the bear.

I watched the elm branches outside as they moved with the wind, and eventually I drifted off and dreamt we'd pitched a tent over the treeline somewhere, Sandra and I, and crawled into our two sleeping bags zipped together as one after a strange sunset that sank in the north. We blew out the lantern that hung in our tent then curled our bodies into each other and as my dream-self, too, cast off into sleep he felt something laid on his feet like a thick, heavy blanket. I woke to find the bear's torso sprawled over the blankets and pinning my legs to the bed. His teeth glowed red in the light of our clock and its LED numbers reflected in his open eyes.

I whispered, "Go back to sleep, bear." I closed my eyes and pretended to snore, hoping to set an example, but the foot of the bed sank and the springs squeaked and the bear's weight shifted onto my thighs. "Get down," I hissed, but Sandra rustled and murmured as if she might wake so I didn't say anything else. I squeezed my eyes shut as the bear settled, and was surprised at how warm he felt -- his body heat was so relaxing that despite myself I fell asleep.

When I woke strands of sunlight were winding into the room through fogged glass beaded with moisture. I was looking down on the elm tree and it took a moment to realize the angle was strange because I was on top of the bear. He'd crawled under the blanket, under my body, and lifted me onto his back. Now I hung over the fatty curve of his shoulders with my cheek on the mat of his fur. He was snoring away with his head on my pillow; a pink crescent of tongue showed behind his teeth and one eye was half-open but rolled back in his head like an onion.

"Sandra! Wake up!" I said in a loud voice because things were out of hand now. "A bear's stolen my space in the bed!" Without turning over she mumbled back, "What do you expect? He's a bear. Don't you have to get up for work?" I looked at the clock, and she was right: the alarm would go off in a minute. Carefully, so I wouldn't wake him, I slid down the bear's back to the floor. I turned off the alarm before it sounded then padded to the bathroom to shower.

When I came back to the room to get dressed, my wife had rolled under the bear's heavy arm and buried her face in his fur. Sandra's hair shivered each time he exhaled but it didn't seem to bother her, so I dug my underwear and socks from a basket of laundry, slid one of my suits from the closet, and crept down the hall to see what was left of my briefcase. As I backed my car out of the driveway a little while later and waved to Wahoosik standing on his front stoop, I spotted a wad of gray newspaper stuck in the grass, blown over from somebody's trash can the morning before. So I opened the door and pulled it into the car, leaving my yard as spotless and green as the other lawns on our street, as spotless as it was when we bought it.