Clearly I wasn’t thinking about anything. I wasn’t thinking at all. I had become a cartoon, a caricature of myself, a Billy Knight with a perpetual erection, little horns sprouting from my head and steam coming from my nose.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat with my head in my hands. As the bed shifted under me Nancy made a slow snuggling motion with her shoulders and asked me, “Hmmmdrble?”
Now I had something else to feel bad about. Nancy was a sweet person. She didn’t deserve a monster like me, somebody so far gone he couldn’t even manage anything more complicated than fishing.
And now I couldn’t even manage that. Here I was, three thousand miles away from my ocean, and I was drowning. I was losing time on a cold trail, hurting Nancy, being unfaithful to the memory of family—oh, God, this was so wrong…
What the hell was I doing here?
I didn’t know. But I knew I had to get out before I did any more harm.
I slipped quietly into my clothes. Nancy didn’t stir again. I was out the door and down the four flights of stairs in just a few minutes.
When I started my rental car to head back to the hotel, the clock said 4:02.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I got back to the hotel room at 4:42. It was still small and smelled bad. But it was home. My back hurt just looking at the tiny warped bed. The room seemed so oppressive that I started to feel noble and justified. I must be doing something right—I was suffering again.
I knew even Ed wouldn’t be at his desk at this hour, but I called anyway and left a message for him to call me. Then I fell out of my clothes and onto the bed, face down. I was asleep instantly, having just enough time to realize that my feet and my head were six inches higher than my navel.
I was having one of those vivid, backlit dreams that make you yell, but there was no one to wake me up and tell me. The ghosts had come back. This time I stood in the center of a ring of their cloaked and hooded faces. They were all dead and they hated me. They were moving in on me so slowly I couldn’t see them move, but every time I turned, they were closer.
I turned one last time just as one of them was reaching to touch my face. Its claw came out of the robe, part machine and part skeleton. One terrifying digit stretched out for my eye.
The sound of the phone ringing jerked me up out of sleep just before the thing touched me.
I sat up. I was sweating heavily. My back felt like someone had been pounding on it with brickbats. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get enough blood flowing into my head to figure out what to do. The dream was so disorienting that I wasn’t sure how to answer the telephone. Suddenly all the normal, everyday things we take for granted were no longer clear and certain but instead had turned into slippery, sinewy, evil possibilities. The world was a snake basket, and I had pried the lid off and seen its writhing contents.
But the phone was still ringing. I was sure it had to be Ed. I was sure that if I just picked it up and said something, reality would click back into place and I would be me again, sitting in a cheesy hotel room in solid reality.
I reached for the telephone. Just in time I remembered what to say. “Hello?”
“Well,” said the honey-and-rum voice on the other end. Then she paused.
It wasn’t Ed. It was one of the shapes from my dream. The snakes wriggled as solid reality tilted sideways.
I guess I didn’t say anything for a little bit too long, because when the voice spoke again it sounded a little irritated.
“Well, don’t knock me over with sweet nothings, Billy,” she said, and I recognized the voice. It belonged to somebody alive.
“Uh, Nancy?”
“Very good. May I ask how many women you might expect to call you this early?”
“I don’t—I was having a bad dream.”
“Good,” she said, and I could hear the satisfaction in her voice.
“That’s what you get for running out on me. You might have been enjoying an eye-opener right now instead of a nightmare.”
“What time is it?” The disorientation was fading, but it was being replaced by a sense of impossibility. The idea that I had been making love with her just a few hours ago was absurd.
“It’s just about seven A.M. and I have to be at the clinic in half an hour. I just wanted to talk to you first.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say about that, so I didn’t. I heard her sigh heavily on the other end. “Oh, shit, what have I gotten into now? You sure had plenty to say last night.”
I felt a panicked sense of my own worthlessness rising up in my throat. I was still stupid from sleep, but I didn’t want to hurt Nancy—it wasn’t her fault.