Again he didn’t answer, though she couldn’t tell whether it was because she already had her answer or because he’d been overtaken finally by exhaustion or because it had occurred to him that he had no idea what he wanted.
When she returned with her own cup of tea, he was asleep, his head back, mouth open, snoring. It was a thunderous sound, the first time she’d heard it so close, without the ceiling between them. He’d fallen asleep in the act of removing one boot with the toe of the other.
Miss Beryl located the ashtray she kept for Sully in the end table and put it under his cigarette just as the tall ash toppled. When she removed the cigarette itself from between his stained thumb and forefinger, she noticed that Sully slept with his eyes open, the knowledge of which caused her to smile. Old houses surrendered a great many secrets, and in the twenty-some years she’d listened to Sully living above her, she’d concluded that she knew just about everything there was to know about her tenant. But here was a new thing.
Outside in the cold hall, the dog’s chain rattled again, and when Miss Beryl opened the door, the Doberman scrambled with great, spastic effort to its feet, circling itself in the process several times, stepping on its own chain, until it finally located its fragile equilibrium. Then it stood looking at her expectantly, as if to suggest the hope that it hadn’t gone to so much trouble for nothing.
“You might as well come in too,” she told the animal.
The dog apparently understood, because it loped past her, collapsing again with another massive sigh at the foot of the Queen Anne, its nub of a tail twitching in what — who could know? — just might be contentment.