A Noise Downstairs(74)

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Look,” Bill said, “how do you feel right now? Right this second?”

“Shaky.”

“But shaky enough to go into a hospital?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.”

“You bet I’m right. Whaddya say you give it a couple of days. I have to go out of town tomorrow—shit, it’s already tomorrow—but when I get back, you and me, we’ll get together, do something to take your mind off all these things. But not squash. We’re not putting that head of yours at risk. How does that sound?”

Paul nodded slowly.

“Are you there?” Bill asked.

“Yeah,” Paul said. “Okay, I’ll do that. I’ll give it a couple of days and see how it goes. Charlotte’s taken the typewriter away.”

“There ya go,” Bill said. “You hang in there, pal.”

Paul handed the phone back to Charlotte and turned to face Anna, who was now standing by the kitchen table.

“You can go home,” he told her. “I’ll be okay.”





Forty-Four

Charlotte stayed up most of the night with Paul, waiting until he finally fell asleep. Rattled as he was, he eventually lost the fight to exhaustion. Once he’d succumbed, Charlotte slipped into bed next to him.

Every time he moved or made a sound, she woke up.

Just after seven, she sensed he was fully awake, and asked, “How are you?”

He said, “Did all that really happen?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He quickly turned over and looked at the bedside table. Seeing nothing on it but a lamp and his clock, he said, “I thought it might have come back.”

Charlotte had nothing to say to that. It wasn’t clear whether Paul was attempting to make a joke. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m sorry I put you through all that.”

“It’s okay,” she said, raising up on her elbow and turning to face him. “What does it mean, exactly, that you’re saying you’re sorry?”

He turned his head slightly to look at her. “I don’t know. I guess . . .”

“You guess what?”

“I know I may have looked like I was sleeping all night, but I was awake a lot, too. Thinking.”

“Okay.” Gently, she asked, “And what are you thinking?”

“That maybe Anna—Dr. White—was right.”

“Right about what?”

“That maybe I should be admitted.”

“You want to go into the hospital?”

“I don’t want to, but I’m wondering if it’s the only thing that makes sense. But I keep thinking about what Bill said, that once they have you in there, they’ll never let you out. If I could go in for, I don’t know, a couple of days, maybe that would be long enough to figure things out.”

“I guess that’s something you could revisit with Dr. White.”

He managed a nod with the back of his head still buried in the pillow.

“You seem . . . almost calm,” Charlotte said. “Certainly a lot calmer than in the middle of the night.”

“There’s only one way to explain this,” he said. “And now that I’ve settled on that, I guess I do feel a little more at peace.”

“And that way is?”

“Think of all the small memory lapses I’ve had. Forgetting where I’d driven. Forgotten texts and messages. The dry cleaning. Not remembering seeing that car across the street, nearly blacking out when I saw a car like Kenneth’s. I must have gotten up in the night and brought the typewriter up and put it next to the bed. I had to. And I don’t recall doing it.”

“So you’ve moved past thinking it . . . did it itself.”

He gave her a sad smile. “I have.” He chuckled. “I mean, try to picture it. A typewriter opening the door. Coming up the stairs. It’s comical if you think about it.”

“I guess I haven’t been able to see the humor in all this,” Charlotte said.

He grimaced. “Yeah, well, I don’t blame you there.”

Charlotte threw back the covers and got out of bed. “I’m going to call in sick today.”

“No.”

“Yes. Any big house deals come along, someone else can take them.”

“No, you don’t have to do that. I’ll be okay. I’ll get in touch with Dr. White and talk to her about whether to go in for, you know, observation or something.”

Charlotte shook her head. “I think you need to listen to Bill on this one. Why don’t you give it a couple of days. Then, if you still feel that’s what you want to do, then do it.”

Paul sat up. “Okay.”

“And you need to call that lawyer back.”

“Call him back?”

“I told you. He called yesterday. He thinks he can get you off with a suspended sentence or something, that there are extenuating circumstances up the wazoo that the court will be sympathetic to. But you have to get it sorted out.”

“When did he call?”

“I told you all about this last night,” Charlotte said.

“You see?” he said. He tapped his head with his index finger. “This needs a tune-up.”