Lola said, “He claimed he hadda go to the bathroom.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna have a look,” she muttered grimly, “and he’d better be in there.”
She went out of the room. Kerrigan groped through the haze of his drunkenness and told himself to make a rapid trip to Rita’s house and drag Tom out of there. But as he lifted himself from the bed, the floor seemed to slant and he had trouble staying on his feet.
And as he moved toward the door, the whisky in his veins made it several doors instead of one. He was still trying to find the right door when Lola re-entered the room.
“He ain’t in the bathroom,” she announced through tightened lips. She glared at Kerrigan. She said accusingly, “What are you and him up to?”
He sat down very slowly and carefully on a chair that wasn’t there. Again he was on the floor, wondering what had happened to the chair.
Lola studied him for a long moment. “How many quarts did you drink?”
He shrugged kind of sadly. “I didn’t have much. Guess I can’t hold it.”
“The hell you can’t. From the looks of you, you’re holding a gallon.”
She took hold of his wrists, pulled him up from the floor, and put him in the chair that he hadn’t been able to find. “Now then,” she said, “I want some information. Where is he?”
Kerrigan stared dumbly at Tom’s wife and said, “Maybe he went for a walk.”
“At this time of night? Where would he walk?”
The whisky fog came drifting in. Kerrigan blinked several times and said, “Maybe he got lost.” He gazed longingly at the bed and thought how pleasant it would be to go back to sleep.
Lola studied him once more and saw he was in no condition to give sensible answers. She gestured disgustedly and turned her back to him.
Suddenly she snapped her fingers. Then her head turned from side to side as she made a hasty examination of the room.
“Sure enough,” she said. “His clothes ain’t here.”
She started to take deep breaths. Lola was about to lose her temper on a grand scale.
Despite his drunkenness, he managed to say, “No use getting sore about it. After all, it’s a helluva hot night. Maybe he went out for a bottle of beer. To cool himself off.”
“I’ll cool him off,” Lola said. “I’ll break his goddamn neck, that’s what I’ll do.”
She started to move around the room, searching for a suitable weapon. Kerrigan winced as he saw her lifting a thick glass ash tray, hefting it in her hand to test the weight of it. Apparently it wasn’t heavy enough. She slammed it to the floor, then darted to the open closet and reached in and pulled out a long-handled scrubbing brush. The business end of the brush was an inch of bristles and a two-inch thickness of wood.
Lola had a firm grip on the handle of the brush. She held it with both hands, aiming it at empty air and taking a few practice swipes. Then, wanting a better target, she looked around for something solid. Kerrigan heard footsteps in the hall and he thought, It’s gonna be crowded in here.
The door opened and Tom walked in. An instant later there was a loud whacking noise and Tom yelled, “Ouch!” Then there was more whacking, more yelling, and considerable activity. Tom was trying to run in several directions at once. He collided with Kerrigan, bounced away, staggered sideways, and received a wallop from Lola that spun him around like a punching bag. He tried to crawl under the bed, but there wasn’t enough space between the springs and the floor. He was much too bulky to squeeze through. The flat side of the brush landed on him and in a frenzied effort to get away from the blows he gave a mighty heave with his shoulders, so that the bed was raised on two legs. He heaved again and the bed fell over on its side. Lola kept swinging the brush and Tom was asking her to wait just a minute so they could talk it over. Lola’s reply was another whack. The sound resembled a pistol shot. Tom looked at Kerrigan and shouted, “For God’s sake, make her stop.”
Kerrigan shrugged, as though to say there was no way to stop Lola once she got started. He grinned stupidly, drunkenly, and then he started toward the door. But again it was several doors, and it seemed as if the ceiling were coming down. He couldn’t stay on his legs. The floor came up and he was flat on his face. The dazed grin remained on his lips as he heard the continued uproar. Somehow the noise of the violence was softened in his whisky-drenched brain. It was strangely soothing, almost like a lullaby. For a hazy instant he tried to understand it. But the feeling was so pleasant, so comforting, it told him to fall asleep, just fall asleep. And as the blackness enveloped him, he sensed there was nothing strange about it, after all. It was merely the sound of the house where he lived. It was as though he’d been away and he’d come back, and it was nice to be home again.
13
In the darkness of the alcoholic sleep, he drifted through a glass-lined canal that had the labels of whisky bottles on its walls. The labels were varicolored and there were too many colors floating past his eyes. He told himself to stop looking at the labels, he’d soon be getting a headache. But then the glass became wood and there was no canal at all, just a dark alley and some moonlight showing the sides of the wooden shacks. He followed the path of the moonlight as it flowed onto the rutted paving and he saw the dried bloodstains.
“Goddamn it,” he said, waking up.
He could feel a pillow under his head, and he heard someone breathing beside him. Before he looked to see who it was, he sat up, groaning and holding his head and wishing he had an ice bag. He blinked hard several times, and suddenly his eyes were wide as he realized this was Bella’s room.
His head turned slowly. He looked at Bella. She was sound asleep, resting on her side. It was very hot and sticky in the room and she wasn’t wearing anything.
The window showed the dark gray-pink of early morning. On the dresser the hands of the alarm clock pointed to four-forty-five. He told himself to get out of bed and go into his own room. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing only a pair of shorts. He glanced across the floor, searching for his clothes, and saw shirt and jacket and trousers draped carelessly over a chair, Bella’s dress on top of the heap.
Moving carefully, trying not to make any noise, he climbed out of bed and headed toward the chair. It seemed as if a ton of rocks was pressing down on him and crushing his skull. As he reached for his clothes, he stumbled forward, hit the chair, knocked it over, and went down with it.
He cursed without sound, getting up very slowly. Then he had his shoes in one hand, his shirt in the other, the jacket and trousers dangling from his arm as he walked unsteadily toward the door.
He was only a step away from the door when he heard Bella’s voice. “Just where d’ya think you’re going?”
“I got my own bed.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. He groped for the door handle. His hand closed on it.
“Listen, louse,” Bella said. She was off the bed and coming toward him. She gave him a shove that sent him away from the door. She pointed to the bed and said, “Get back in there.”
“You talkin’ to me?”
She put her weight on one leg and clapped a hand to her hip. Then, shifting slightly, so that she blocked his path to the door, she said, “You might as well make yourself comfortable. We’re gonna have a discussion.”
“Not now,” he said.
“Right now.” Her eyes dared him to make a move toward the door. “We’re gonna have it out here and now.”
“For God’s sake.” He pointed to the alarm clock. “Look what time it is. I gotta get some sleep. Gotta get rid of this hangover.”
“That’s what I want to talk about,” she said. “How come you got drunk last night?”
He didn’t reply. He dropped the shoes to the floor, flipped the clothes aside, and walked slowly to the bed. As he sat down on the edge of the mattress, his hands were pressed tightly to his temples, as though trying to squeeze the whisky fog from his brain.