"Yes?" And his voice was really wrong again. Like he was coming down with a major cold or something. Almost a full octave lower than what he was used to.
"You're going to have to stop the hammering, Mr. Dumont. We're getting complaints down here. I'm sorry."
"Hammering?"
"Yes. And the shouting, too, I'm afraid."
Bill's joints locked up. "Shouting?"
"Yes, sir. According to the neighbors' complaints. And there were quite a few of them."
"What was I shouting?" Bill insisted.
"Something about blondes, I think one neighbor said."
Terrific. Millie was a blonde, one of many in his life. God knew what else he'd been bellowing about.
"Anyway, Mr. Dumont. It's a little early for things to be so loud. If you don't keep it down I'm going to have to call the police. And whatever you're hammering — are you building furniture or something?”
Think, think. "A knickknack rack that my sister brought me from North Carolina. I had to put it together. She's a blonde, by the way. I guess I got a little pissed at her when the joints wouldn't align. Sorry." Pretty bad comeback he supposed but it would have to do,
"Sure, Mr. Dumont." A pause. "Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, fine, and I'm really sorry about this. It won't happen again.”
“Okay, Mr. Dumont. Have a good day."
He hung up, careful not to slam the receiver down. Fuck! Shouting? Hammering? He switched on the hall light, thinking okay, now we'll see and walked back into the bedroom, switched on the light there too and pressed REWIND on the recorder.
And for the first time saw his hands, his forearms.
Covered with blood. Not sweat. Blood. Some of it crusted over and some of it fresh, especially across the knuckles — and then he looked at the headboard where the tape hissed its way through the recorder. Then he looked a few feet left of the headboard, above the night stand. Something was missing.
What was up there? What was gone?
The picture. On the wall above the nightstand, there'd been a photo of Annie he'd taken on the ferry. Big smiles, big boobs, big happy love-eyes. It was gone, replaced by bloody knuckle marks in the sheetrock. Christ, even the nail the picture had been hung on was driven into the wall — no wonder his hands were so savaged.
His eyes went to the floor. The photo lay face-up on the carpet, frame destroyed, glass shattered. Annie's smiling picture torn and ruined.
I'm losing it, he considered. And at that precise moment he really felt he was. He'd never been like this in his life. He'd always been in control, always. You had to be if you wanted to accomplish anything in this world.
He ran to the bathroom and turned on the water. The right hand was worse so he scrubbed it with his left. Calm down, calm down, he kept telling himself. He had to maintain control. What happened? What the hell happened?
He'd got pissed off at Annie, so he'd got up in his sleep and started beating the daylights out of Annie's picture. Shouting at it. As if it were her.
Had to be that.
He looked up in the mirror. The face peered back at him through swollen eyelids. He looked…
Bill had to admit it. He looked insane.
His heart was thudding; it felt like something dying in his chest. Slow, hard beats. His chest felt tight, twingy. He thought of cords all twisted up, and then he remembered what Annie'd said about heart attacks and strokes. He sat down on the bed — the urine-soaked bed — slapped on the cuff and began to pump. His blood pressure was sky-high.
The sun was just coming up in the window. He took deep breaths repeatedly, then went to the kitchen, opened his plastic pill box and took his morning medication. Closed his eyes, took more deep breaths. Relax, relax, he kept telling himself. Then a big glass of orange juice, which definitely hit the spot. In a few minutes he began to feel better, less tense. The cords began to unwind.
All right, he thought. Take it nice and easy. You're together now. Whatever the problem is, fix it. Take control.
"And the problem," he said aloud, "starts here."
He snapped down the PLAY button on the recorder.
Dead air at first. Then intermittent hitches of snoring.
Then lots of snoring. Deep, sonorous breathing sounds that repelled him, disgusted him. Jesus Christ! he thought. It sounded like somebody drowning!
And then there were moans — my god! He did moan! As though something or someone in his sleep were squeezing him, tormenting him, making him sound old and weak and whiny. It was nearly as bad as the snoring.
And then some kind of bubbling sound, long, drawn out. Under any other circumstance it would've been funny, it would've been fucking hilarious. It could've been one of those Candid Camera things. Some guy asleep making more noise than a ward full of convalescents. Yeah, hilarious until he remembered that he was the one making the noise. It's loathsome.
Then more snoring.
More moaning.
Combinations of both.
Then…
Finally he started talking. "I heard you got it all figured out," he said. And then something that was much too soft to hear or for the recorder to pick up, unintelligible.
Then he said, "You should have seen it coming."
It was impossible to tell how much time elapsed between phrases since the recorder only activated during speech or sounds loud enough to trip the machine's sensor.
"You should've heard the Grateful Dead," he said, "they played that Peter-and-the-Wolf song. You know the one. 'All I said was come on in.'" More. "This gun sweats when it gets hot, it does."
And "It's a noisy room.”
And "It was me and Lou Rawls. They had us locked up in there with nothing but milk bottles and soup."
What the fuck? It made no sense at all.
Then…
"What a bunch of dipshits. What a bunch of hosebags. I know, I know. They think I’m stupid?"
Who could he be talking about?
"The bitches. They're all bitches."
All at once Bill had a pretty good idea who.
"I'll show 'em." A very dark chuckle. "Oh, yeah. You gotta be on the ball to make it in this world. You gotta be in control. You eat or get eaten. You take or get taken from. Nobody takes from me."
Bill agreed with this philosophy of course. They were his own words He smiled. Asleep or awake he stuck to his guns.
Then his smile faded at the next utterings.
"Yeah, I showed 'ern. I got all their shit, all of it, the bonds, the collection, right behind the couch, the stupid bitches…"
A long long series of snoring and moans followed.
"Fuck," he said. "Jesus wept." The very worst thing he could possibly say in his sleep, he'd said. He stood stock still, eyes unblinking, unbelieving. But then he relaxed again.
What am I shitting a brick about? he thought. Last night I blabbed where the loot was, sure, but Annie wasn't here. She walked out on me!
Of all the nights he could run his mouth he'd picked the one night she wasn't there!
Still, though…
He should check, right?
Bill didn't consider it paranoia or insecurity on his part. It was simply prudence. There was no way that Annie could've heard this revelation. She was gone.