And then she fired her parting
shot. "And not only that," she said, as if "that"
hadn't been quite enough, "you snore horribly!"
"I do not," I said.
"I definitely do not snore." I was talking to her back.
"You're making it up!" I was talking to the door. "Someone
else would have mentioned it!" I was talking to myself.
Mistakes were made, relationships
fell apart, and hurtful things were said. Life was like that.
In the days that followed, I rearranged
all the furniture. I threw out everything in the refrigerator. I bought
newspices -- savory, anise, cumin, cracked black pepper -- and packaged
macaroni and cheese and powdered soups. Anchovies. Things Joanna didn't
like. I left the toilet seat up all the time and dropped my clothes
wherever I took them off. I got a new haircut and collected brochures
for a getaway to Panama. I looked at a red convertible but didn't
buy it.
Her crack about me snoring wouldn't
leave me alone, probably because it poked something that had always
worried me. My father had snored. I remembered listening to him snore
all the way down the hall and around the corner. I always thought
it must be awful to be in there with him. Maybe it ran in the family,
like baldness or alcoholism.
The solution, once it hit me,
seemed obvious. I would record myself sleeping. I had nothing that
would record such a long time, so I went to an audio store and bought
an expensive machine that would do the job. I used some of the money
I'd saved by not buying the red convertible.
I set it up on the dresser across
the room at the foot of the bed. I poured myself a nightcap, drank
it during the eleven o'clock news, brushed my teeth, turned on the
recorder, got into bed and squirmed around restlessly for over an
hour, listening to the possibly imaginary whir and hiss of magnetic
tape moving through the mechanism.
The next day, there was no time
to check the tape as I hurried through my morning ritual and left
for work. I was tempted, but I couldn't afford to be late. Then I
got busy and didn't think about it again until bedtime the next night.
I made myself a complicated drink
and a plate of crackers with anchovies and cheese and sat down on
the foot of my bed. I don't know exactly what I expected. I was a
little apprehensive. I stretched up and switched on the machine.
There were the sounds of me changing
positions and sighing as I tried to get to sleep. I listened and ate
a few crackers then stood up and held down the fast-forward button.
There were long periods of silence.
No snoring. The house was quiet, too, with that late night stillness
that isn't really so quiet when you finally listen, and the two silences
got mixed together until I was listening hard and eating crackers
and not caring about the crumbs in my bed.
I continued sampling a moment
here and there and then moving on.
"Ah ha," I said. "I
knew it."
There was a long embarrassing
fart an hour or so into the night, but absolutely no snoring. I heard
something move in the kitchen like stuff settling in the plastic trash
bag, a totally familiar sound. In fact, I couldn't tell if it was
on the tape or had just happened in real time. I heard the house creaking
and the distant sounds of traffic and once an auto horn. Several hours
later, a siren screamed in the distance, and my sleeping self moaned.
The 3:00 a.m. train went by, five miles to the south. I had stopped
hearing that whistle a long time ago. It was comforting somehow to
hear it again. I speeded the tape forward.
I was home free.
Joanna had been jerking me around.
But then a woman said, "Shush!'
and giggled softly, and I gasped and jerked my hand up and drenched
the front of my shirt with my drink.
I looked around wildly, thinking
it was Joanna talking, thinking maybe it hadn't been on the tape,
thinking maybe she was standing right behind me, but most of me knew
she wasn't there. And the superspeed scenario I played in my mind
where she'd sneaked into my bedroom last night to talk on my tape
was stupid. Besides it hadn't even been her voice.
"Just look at him,"
the voice whispered.
I could hear someone moving around
in the room. The rustle of clothing, the bump of a leg maybe hitting
the side of the dresser or the chair by the window.
"Sure," a man whispered,
"he's adorable."
The woman giggled again.
Then nothing.
I carefully put my glass down
on the floor. I felt cold. My ears were ringing and my breathing was
fast and shallow. I pulled off my wet shirt and threw it at the bathroom
door.
The tape still moved but was silent.
I sat there listening for maybe
an hour. Then I told myself I had imagined the whole thing. I got
up and rewound the tape and played it again.
"Just look at him,"
the woman whispered.
I spent the rest of the night
listening to every inch of the tape. You would think listening to
over eight hours of tape would take more than eight hours, but I made
good use of the fast-forward button, and by morning, I was pretty
sure that little snatch of conversation was all there was.
I considered calling in sick,
but then I would probably fall asleep, and I wasn't ready to fall
asleep yet. I showered and shaved and got dressed.
Things were too bright outside.
The feeling was like an old memory of all-nighters in college and
crawling out into the daylight finally and feeling like everything
must surely be an elaborate set in a movie about someone else. I remembered
the way Abby, my first true love, looked in those days, warm young
woman, zoomed in tight, big distorted nose, morning close up, sleepy
head, kiss kiss, an echoing dress-store dummy somehow moving, smiling
too big, too many teeth. Good morning, Sunshine. And later, the coffee
so deeply black and hot against my own teeth. Eggs over easy so you
can paint bright yellow daffodils with your toast. Thick slabs of
bacon.
"You're doing the Zen breakfast
thing, aren't you?" Abby bumped me with her shoulder. We sat
side by side at the counter because the place was always too full
to get a booth in the morning.
Where had she gone? I remembered
dreaming over and over again that I had accidentally killed her and
hidden her body in a closet or out in the barn or under the bed, and
for years and years and years I was forced to take care of it so no
one would ever find out. I finished school and got good work, met
a woman named Louisa, married her, fathered children, lost them but
got weekends, met Joanna, all the time playing a complicated juggling
game involving plastic bags and big trunks to keep Abby's body hidden.
I suddenly wondered if that was
Abby on the tape.
"More coffee?"
"What?" I snapped out
of it long enough to nod and smile at the woman with the coffee pot.
"Yes, please."
I looked around. This was not
the diner from my past. This was the restaurant down the block from
my office. I never stopped in here for breakfast, but judging by the
remains on my plate, I had stopped in for breakfast today. I glanced
at my watch. I was late. I finished my coffee too quickly, burned
my mouth, left a tip, paid the bill, and hurried off.
Out in the bright morning crowd
of busy people all moving so deliberately toward important tasks,
I knew very well I hadn't killed Abby and kept her body hidden all
these years. That was just something I had dreamed more than once.
But I was drawing a blank on just what had happened to her. I couldn't
really bring her face into sharp focus in my mind. That probably wasn't
her voice on the tape.
At my desk, I made a mental list
of the things that might be happening to me. The most obvious was
that I was losing my mind. Next, I might be haunted; the voices might
be ghosts. And finally, there was the conspiracy angle -- someone
really was sneaking into my bedroom at night and watching me sleep.
But if that were true why hadn't Joanna complained about spooky visitors
instead of making up a story about me snoring?
I didn't feel crazy. In fact,
after the sleepless night, my mind seemed unusually sharp. Everything
was bright and moist. I could see every hair on my arm. I could still
taste the bacon from breakfast even if I couldn't remember eating
it. I could hear my co-workers talking in low tones across the room.
There was nothing to do about
the supernatural. If that was what was happening, there was no defense.
That's what makes it the supernatural in the first place. It's not
like an understandable force that is simply too powerful, like a bully
you can overcome by pumping iron and eating your Wheaties. There is
no kung fu you can do when it comes to the supernatural. It is irrational
and absolutely unpredictable. If there were rules that worked, the
supernatural would be science. The truly supernatural must be truly
meaningless.
That only left conspiracy, but
I couldn't imagine how it would be possible.
Nevertheless, my exercise in logic
made me feel a little better, and in spite of the voices and in spite
of a sleepless night, I got caught up in work and by early afternoon,
I realized I'd forgotten all about the tape. That realization reminded
me of the tape, of course, and I laughed, and everyone gave me a funny
look, and I just shook my head and said, "Nothing. Sorry. Just
a thought. Nothing."
For dinner, I stopped in at the
same restaurant where I had had breakfast. Then I went home and wandered
around the house picking things up and putting them down again. I
turned on the TV.
TV was often my meditation. The
challenge was to make a coherent program out of a single utterance
or exclamation or exploding building or whatever from each channel.
No matter what was happening, you could linger on a channel no longer
than a sentence. You had to pay attention, and it took hours to get
a meaningful exchange, but once I did get a something meaningful,
everything fell into place. The universe became a Buddha smile, and
I reached a place of blue clarity. Hours passed, and while I could
not remember exactly what the experience had been about, I felt as
if I'd accomplished something by the time I stopped and pushed the
dirty dishes to one side so I could rinse a glass and pour a couple
of fingers of scotch and put a fresh tape on the fancy recording machine
in the bedroom. I could have just recorded over the old one, but I
wanted to avoid ambiguity. I gulped down the scotch, brushed my teeth
and undressed. I switched on the recorder, and got into bed.
"I'm going to sleep now,"
I said out loud so I'd have a reference point. I snuggled deeper into
the covers and passed through the bed and into a dream in which all
the people I had lost to death were back again, but changed. Not exactly
zombies, just back and a little different. In the dream I had to make
allowances for them. I'd say things like, "You'll have to excuse
her, she's been dead." I'd say things like, "The way he
moves certainly is not creepy, he was dead only yesterday."
They would all come over to my house where I would feed them and teach
them things and they would pretend they didn't know me and wouldn't
seem the least bit grateful for my help, but I would forgive them
because they'd been dead and were now trying to get back into the
swing of things.
The next morning I called in sick.
Judy, who took my call, wasn't surprised. "You didn't look so
hot yesterday," she told me.
I popped open a beer and rewound
the tape.
Forward, pause, play. Snort, moan,
honk, fart, shuffle, shift, yada yada yada. Forward, pause, play.
"He's paralyzed," the
woman whispered.
"How can you tell?"
the man asked.
"Look at his eyes moving,"
she said. "There is a mechanism that paralyzes his body when
he dreams. Otherwise he might get up and walk around."
The man chuckled.
"Careful with that,"
the woman said.
"I just need to rest,"
the man said.
"You shouldn't . . ."
"Shush," the man said.
She sighed. "Okay, make room
for me, too," she whispered. "Careful with the covers. Okay,
I'll take the front. Easy, now, easy."
"If he wakes up now,"
the man whispered, "he'll be looking right into your face."
"Hmmm," she said.
"Can he smell your breath?"
"Hmmm," she said.
"I'm going to pinch him."
"Don't!"
"Just joking," the man
whispered.
Then nothing.
My heart was beating too fast.
I listened to the silence and small night sounds until my beer was
gone. I crushed the can and stood up and hit the fast-forward button.
The voices didn't occur on the
tape again.
I checked all the windows and
all the doors but I knew they were okay. When I got home, I always
made a quick tour of the house to make sure there were no intruders
lurking. I always locked the bathroom door before getting into the
shower. I didn't go to bed without putting the security chain on.
The movies have trained us not to make too many stupid mistakes. I
had always felt secure in my own house. I'd lived there for years.
I knew every inch of the place.
I went around carefully tapping
all the walls looking for secret passages. I knew it was stupid. I
just couldn't think of anything else to do. There was no way anyone
could get in when I was asleep. How would they know when I was asleep
in the first place?
I needed a second opinion. I had
to let someone else listen to the tape. But who could I trust? Maybe
a stranger would be better. But how would I get a stranger to listen
to a tape and how could I trust what they said?
I knew who should listen to the
tape. I had known from the moment I came up with the idea that someone
should listen to it. I sat there staring down at my shoes, saying
over and over again, "Just do it. Just do it." Okay. I got
up and ran the tape back to the points just before the woman first
spoke. I took it out of the machine and put it in a box and wrapped
the box and addressed it to Joanna at her office. I didn't know where
she was living.
I wrote a note. "Joanna,
please listen to this and tell me what you hear."
I called the messenger service
I sometimes used at work. An hour later the messenger arrived, and
I gave him the tape and some money.
There were other things I could
do while I waited. I put a fresh tape in the machine. I found a sack
of flour back behind my new spices. I could spread it all over the
bedroom floor and see if there were footprints in the morning. I opened
the bag. But wait. If I spread the flour now, I would probably step
in it many times on my way to the bathroom, which reminded me to open
another beer. I took the beer and the flour into the bedroom. I put
the flour down by the recorder. I would spread it just before bed.
Maybe Joanna would have called before then, though. Maybe whatever
she had to say would solve the problem.
"Oh, yeah," I'd say.
"That's it. Boy, is my face red. I should have thought of it
myself."
I could do something else, too,
but it would take more courage. I could leave them a message. The
danger in that was that they didn't seem to know that I could hear
them. What would they do if they found out? I was completely helpless
in their company. Maybe I shouldn't let them know that I knew. I was
a kind of eavesdropper, really. Maybe they wouldn't like it.
They might find out anyway. One
of these nights, they might notice the tape machine. And surely if
I spread flour all over the floor it would tip them off.
The day passed. I ate stuff from
cans for lunch. I got no reply from Joanna. I must be pretty far down
on her priority list these days.
I couldn't find anything else
to eat for dinner so I skipped it. There was still beer, but not too
much.
I meditated with the TV for a
few hours but never could achieve meaning. Around eleven I decided
I really would leave them a message. It was night again and too quiet
and bedtime and I had to do something. I tore a piece of paper from
a notebook and wrote, "Who are you?" in big bold letters.
Now what? Should I pin it to my
chest? What if they didn't find it? I wadded the paper up and tossed
it in the trash.
I could write really big letters
on the wall.
I dug through kitchen drawers
but found nothing I could use to make big letters. I checked the bathroom.
Women never leave a place without a trace. Maybe there would be a
lipstick. There wasn't. So much for generalizations.
I had pink stomach stuff but it
looked too runny, and I had colorless roll-on deodorant, so the wall
wouldn't sweat, but you'd have to smell the country fresh letters
to puzzle out the message.
Ah ha. An old old bottle of tincture
of merthiolate. Good god, I bought that before I met Abby. What was
the expiration date? Most of the label was gone, but it looked like
1980. I had put the stuff on countless cuts. It still had a nice sting
to it. This was one of those products that one bottle lasts you a
lifetime. The company had probably gone out of business.
I stood on the bed and, using
the little plastic applicator, started my message again on the wall.
Rats. The applicator was too small. It would take forever. I poured
merthiolate into my hand and smacked my hand onto the wall and dragged
it down and up and down and up in a big dripping orange double-u.
Okay. The rest went pretty quickly.
Who are you?
If they looked at me, and I seemed
to be pretty much all they did look at, they could not fail to see
my message.
My hands were orange. The orange
stain wouldn't come off with soap and water. To hell with it.
How about the flour?
Okay, okay. But do it carefully.
Get undressed first. Start at the bathroom door and work your way
back to the bed. Yes, like that. When you get to the bed just toss
the empty flour sack out of the bedroom and get into bed. That's it.
Nothing could move across there without leaving a mark. Good. Good.
Goddamn it, you forgot to pee.
I plopped down on the bed. I tossed
the empty flour sack over the side. I took a deep breath. Then I walked
straight across the flour to the bathroom. One straight path. I would
use the same one coming back. Anything off that path would be my visitors.
Except that after I used the bathroom
and carefully walked back to the bed, I realized I would need one
more path to the dresser so I could turn on the recorder. Okay, one
more. I walked to the dresser, turned on the machine, and walked back
to the bed. Two paths. Footprints going in both directions. I got
into bed.
I stared up at the ceiling, feeling
like an absolute idiot. I would have to get up and make another path
if I wanted to turn off the light. I got up and walked to the light
switch and flipped it off. Then I made my way back in the dark. I
knew I was not keeping a straight path. And as I walked, it occurred
to me to wonder how they would see my message in the dark. I had probably
ruined the wall for nothing. I stopped and closed my eyes to think
about it. If they could see me, they could probably see the wall,
but what about the orange letters? Would orange letters be visible
to ghosts who could see in the dark? Maybe it would be like red light
to fish. You put a red light in your aquarium and the fish all think
it's night and you can watch them and they don't know you're watching.
I opened my eyes and stumbled
forward and saw the street glow through the bathroom window and realized
that I'd gotten way off the path back to the bed. The flour seemed
mostly pointless now.
I turned, and then stood peering
through the dark at the bed. It didn't look entirely empty. Those
shapes could be my pillows. The slight movement I saw, like the quivering
of a horse after a good run, might be just the kind of thing you see
in the dark. I took a step back.
"Aren't you coming to bed,"
she said.
I cried out.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to
startle you."
"Joanna?"
"I heard the tape of you
snoring," she whispered. "Kind of a strange apology, but
what the hell. Come on, hop in. It's late."
I sat down on the edge of the
bed. She put her cool hand on my shoulder. I crawled in beside her.
She pulled me in close.
"Is that really you, Joanna?"
I asked.
"Of course, it isn't, you
moron," the man behind me said.
