by David Wood
“Quiet.” He listened for several seconds in the blackness. “I don’t hear any people,” he said. “Just the music. Probably some guy who just stumbled home from the pub.”
Amy smirked. She slid back down in the bed. “Forget it,” she said. “Just lie down and try to get some sleep.”
Craig didn’t move. “I can’t sleep like this,” he said finally. “Listen. It’s getting louder.”
It was getting louder. Amy could now make it out. It was the fado she had read about in Craig’s travel guide. Mournful Portuguese music about lost loves and unrealized dreams. Lovely, but not at three in the morning when you were trying to sleep.
All of a sudden, Craig began knocking against the wall.
Amy gasped. It took her a few seconds to catch her breath. It felt as though the sounds were coming from inside her woozy head. She said, “That’s not going to help.”
But no sooner than she said it, the music stopped. The sound didn’t fade out as though the record had ended, it cut off abruptly.
At least she wouldn’t need to stuff cotton in her ears.
She turned on her side. Craig fell in beside her. He rested his hand on her hip and pulled himself close behind her. It was comforting. She couldn’t imagine never again sharing a bed with this man.
She put it out of her mind and let her thoughts drift through the day. The airport in Newark, the seven-hour flight to Lisbon, the cab ride to the Alfama. The near-accident and her bloodied nose. Their first impression of the flat.
She lingered on the email to Amaro and wondered whether he would really show up at four tomorrow as Craig requested. Should she wait at least until then to decide whether to stay?
I already made my decision, she thought. I’m leaving.
But before leaving, shouldn’t she at least see that Craig gets settled in another flat? Another night in Lisbon wouldn’t be all that bad. They could go out for dinner and drinks.
Her mind wandered back into the cellar-like tavern with no name. To Diago, the bald-headed brute whose hobby it was to scare young americanos with stories. And, of course, to Gilberto, the small dark nine-fingered man with fish breath.
Finally she started to drift.
The sudden pounding on the wall reverberated in her chest. At first she thought it was Craig. The noise sounded so close. But then she realized he was as startled as she was, jumping from the bed as though there were gunfire.
“What the fuck,” he shouted.
Amy steadied herself with a few deep breaths. Her stomach was sick and she feared she might vomit. Her head throbbed in time with the pounding on the wall.
With some urgency she left the bed, feeling her way in the dark. As she crossed the room her toes struck the post at the foot of the bed and she cried out. A sharp pain shot up her left leg.
She moved delicately toward the wood dresser, fumbled around and finally found the lamp. She felt for the switch and flipped it on.
The pounding on the wall continued without pause. The hits were spaced not a millisecond apart.
“The walls must be as thin as paper,” she said.
She was surprised by the calm in her voice, because her heart was thumping against the wall of her chest, her stomach threatening to spill its contents. Her toes felt as though they had been smacked with a hammer.
Craig hurled himself toward the wall, slamming his fists and shouting obscenities. A deep red rose up his neck and into his cheeks. His bright blue eyes were wide with hell.
With both hands raging, his pounding was still not nearly as loud or as fast as the pounding on the other side of the wall.
When he finally stopped and turned toward Amy, his voice was hoarse and the knuckles on each fist were raw. “I’m going next door,” he said, reaching for his shirt.
The pounding on the wall continued. Faster. Harder. More intense. As though there were a dozen sets of hands assaulting the wall from the other side.
“You can’t,” she said. “You don’t know who lives there. What if they have a gun?”
Craig shook his head as he sat on the bed, putting his legs through his pants. “This isn’t the States,” he said. “People don’t shoot each other here over noise disputes.” He stood and advanced toward the door.
Amy followed him into the living room. She hurried her steps despite her painful toes. “Please. Don’t go over there. You said yourself, we’ll be out of here tomorrow.”
He unlocked the lock then paused, his fingers curled around the knob of the door. He said, “We have to be able to sleep tonight, baby. Tomorrow’s a long day. We have the movers coming in the morning, Amaro in the afternoon. And we have to look for a new place.”
Amy nodded then ran her fingers along the base of Craig’s neck. “I know,” she said. “We’ll get all that done. Just have a little patience. Whoever that is, they’ll tire out eventually.”
She watched his eyes pinball between her and the bedroom, between the bedroom and the front door. Her mind raced, trying to find something else to say to keep him from going next door.
“You promise?” he said finally. “Tomorrow we’ll look for a new place?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
His fingers fell limply from the door. “All right.” As soon as he said it, the pounding suddenly stopped.
She looked toward the bedroom. An uneasy sensation invaded the silence. She listened intently. No music. No pounding. Not a sound save for their breaths.
“All right,” Then she let him lead her back into the bedroom.
Chapter 7
Craig still couldn’t sleep. He was wired on anger and alcohol, anxious about what the following day would bring. The movers at ten, Amaro at four. And somehow they would have to manage breakfast and lunch in between.
Of course, they would also need to find a new flat. Maybe something in the Estrela. They would need to rent a truck and move their boxes over. And all the while he’d be worrying over whether Amy intended to leave.
He rested his hand on her left hip and immediately felt himself stir in his boxers. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex but it had to be going on three weeks. Amy just wasn’t as receptive to the idea anymore. Not since he had returned from Hawaii. But like everything else, Craig figured that in time that would change.
For now, he averted his thoughts. Focused instead on the incessant ticking of the second hand clock resting on the night table on Amy’s side of the bed. He wondered what time it was, whether he’d fall asleep at all before sunrise. It was possible. But probably not going to happen.
Amy rolled over onto her stomach.
They were god awful bedmates, Craig and Amy. They kept different hours. He stayed awake all hours of the night, she was ritually in bed by ten. He slept beneath the covers, she on top, so that he was often pinned in the same position all night. She thrashed around like a drowning mackerel. He, a light sleeper, was caused by the thrashing to wake at least a dozen times during the night. When he did sleep, he was cool and comfortable. She sweat like Kobe Bryant in the fourth quarter of an NBA playoffs game.
Craig closed his eyes. For all her faults she was still the most perfect thing that had ever happened to him. He was under no illusion. If not for Amy, he’d be back in New York, probably in the same place as Danny. What if she does leave me? he thought. A new surge of anxiety hit him like a brick to the head. I’ll be all alone. Alone the way I was when she left me on the island. A knot formed in his stomach. His neck began to ache. No. I won’t let that happen this time.
(What the fuck can you do to stop it?)
He opened his eyes. He was sweating and his mouth felt full of cotton. He regretted everything that had happened earlier in the night. The drinking, the gypsies, the argument with Amy on the cab ride back to the flat. Even his furious assault on the bedroom wall.
Amy muttered something incoherent in her sleep.
Early in their relationship, when she first started sleeping over at his Battery Park apartment, he had as
ked her questions in her sleep. He started off slowly—lucky number, favorite color, the name of her first pet—then gradually progressed into more personal queries. He learned a lot about her during those unconscious conversations, and often put the information to use during their dates. Sometimes to delight her, sometimes to surprise her. And, okay, sometimes just to spook her out a bit.
The pulsing—thump thump, thump thump—suddenly returned to Craig’s right ear and he finally gave up on sleep.
He moved gingerly from the bed so as not to disturb Amy. Not that she would wake to anything less than an explosion. Then he glided cautiously across the room in the dark.
He closed the bedroom door behind him and flipped a switch. The drab living area was illuminated by a dying forty-watt bulb screwed into the ceiling socket overhead.
He opened his laptop on the table. As he waited for it to boot, he crossed to the front door. He peeked through the peephole at the grim maroon wallpaper that lined the hall.
“Welcome!”
Craig’s heart jumped. He spun from the door to face the living room.
“You’ve got mail!”
The throbbing in his ear quickened with his pulse.
Shit, he thought. He must have inadvertently turned the speakers on. But when? They weren’t on when he checked his email earlier.
Whatever. He wiped off the chair and sat.
A click later he was examining his inbox, searching for a reply from Amaro Dias Silva. Nothing yet. Just a few new items of spam and a message from an old law school chum, which he deleted without reading.
He pulled up a search engine. He typed the terms pulse, ear and throbbing, and clicked go. The search took point-five seconds and returned approximately twenty-one thousand, four hundred entries.
Craig perused the first ten.
It took him all of twenty-six minutes. Self-diagnosis: pulsatile tinnitus. Possible causes included arteriovenous malformations, vascular tumor, aneurism.
Sweat beaded on his forehead. His eyelids drooped and his head felt light.
A few anxious clicks later and he knew all about Betty from Durango, Colorado. And Allison from somewhere in the U.K. They had both suffered the incessant beating, the horrid pulse in the ear. They had both been through a slew of physicians. Both had been repeatedly misdiagnosed. Turned out Betty had a tick in her ear. Allison’s posts ceased rather abruptly. After June of last year she had never been heard from again.
He considered waking Amy. Then he thought better of it. She would only offer an exaggerated sigh and call him a hypochondriac. It wouldn’t matter that the information was staring them right in the face. She’d be dismissive, aloof. She would tell him to calm down and see a doctor if he was so concerned. She’d say there was nothing they could do tonight, so lie down and close your eyes and go to sleep. As though it were the easiest thing in the world.
He slapped the laptop shut.
“Goodbye!”
The pulse in his ear oscillated madly.
He stuck his pinky finger into the ear cavity and felt around.
Is that a lump?
He pulled it out and placed a forefinger on his jugular. He tried to time his pulse. It was fast. Well over a hundred beats per minute.
Of course it’s going to be fast, you dolt. You’re scared to hell you might have a tumor.
(Or an aneurism.)
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
He swallowed hard and clicked his fingers.
Like that, he thought.
He imagined himself slumped over the table. Pictured Amy discovering him four hours later, his skin death cold. His body as stiff as cedar.
Just like that.
Xavier wakes on the floor in the living room, where he finally drifted off some six hours ago. He rubs at his eyes, still sore from last night’s cry. A gray light seeps through the flat’s lone window, signifying dawn. His mother still hasn’t come home. She stayed out again all last night.
It’s Saturday, the first of November, 1755. Xavier recently turned eleven years old, his birthday marked only by an extra piece of fish and an unexpected plate of rice. Not that it matters; birthdays are silly, childish events, and Xavier already considers himself a man.
Her little man. Her paqueno masculino. That’s what she calls him on the good days. On the bad days, she calls him things he isn’t even permitted to think, let alone say. But on the good days, Xavier is his mother’s little man, “the man of the house” one might say.
Xavier’s father disappeared one day, so long ago now that Xavier has trouble recalling his face. That was when Xavier’s mother began the drinking. Began spending her nights at the tavern by the pier, talking to rough men, sometimes even going home with them.
Xavier knows she must have gone home with one last night. His mother doesn’t like being alone. Doesn’t like sleeping alone. But then, neither does Xavier. And that is exactly what he does on nights when his mother doesn’t come home. He curls up on the floor in the middle of the living room, where he can watch the door, and stays awake until he can no longer keep his eyes open. He’s afraid to sleep in the bed.
Now he picks himself off the floor and lifts the shade, letting in light. Xavier is glad it is no longer night. He sees things at night, shadows dancing on the walls. Hears noises coming from the flat next door, even when their neighbor is not home.
He looks down at the narrow cobblestone path three floors below and sees a dog. The dog looks lonely, hungry— tired like him. The dog is sniffing the garbage. Xavier hopes the dog finds something to eat.
He heads into the kitchen, knowing there will be nothing there. His mother stopped cooking once his father left. Stopped buying food at the markets. Once in a while she stops at the bakery and buys Xavier a fresh loaf of bread.
But if Xavier is bad, if he acts out, she takes the bread away and sends him to bed hungry.
In the kitchen, Xavier opens the cabinets. They all are bare, just as he thought. Maybe his mother will be home soon.
He heads to the closet and opens the door, removes a few sheets of paper. Xavier likes very much to draw. He finds his thick lead pencils, and places everything on the living room floor. Then he gets to work on getting his mind off of his stomach.
Chapter 8
Craig sat up past sunrise working on the novel. By night’s end he had written nearly five thousand words, and he felt invigorated, refreshed, even without a moment’s sleep. He could have easily gone on, could have banged out another two thousand words at least, but at half past eight he heard Amy rustling around in the bedroom. He stopped typing, stretched his neck, and cracked his knuckles. It would be a long day, and there was plenty to do.
He scrolled through the twenty-one pages of text. He couldn’t read any of it, of course; Craig typed his first drafts in a Greek font so that he was less apt to censor himself. Being completely unable to revise as he trudged along also helped stamp out the voice of perfectionism—that pesky son of a bitch that drove many good writers insane. Not until an eighty thousand-word draft was complete did he finally change the font into Times New Roman. Then, and only then, did the arduous process of rewriting begin.
When he heard the shower turn on he stood from the table and arched his sore back.
A gray light leaked through the flat’s only window and spilt onto the faded shag carpet. Craig stepped away from the laptop and into the light.
He couldn’t see the sun from their window. They were situated in the shadow of a taller building that somewhat resembled theirs, a structure built so close that if Craig opened the window and spat the saliva would come pretty damn close to reaching it.
Craig stuck his fingers into the jambs and pushed up, but the window wouldn’t budge. He tried again with more force, but the window wouldn’t open, and now his fingers hurt. He cursed the damn thing under his breath and turned away. Then he turned back and stared at the brass do-hickeys just above the window. He laughed at himself when he realized that they were locked.
He turned back to the window. Their flat was located in the rear of the building and overlooked a narrow alleyway, where a small dog skulked along the cobblestones. Not small, really, but scrawny. Even from three stories up, Craig could see its ribs. The dog sniffed at some rubbish and pawed behind some bent metal trash cans, clearly looking for food.
Craig felt a rush of empathy, an overwhelming urge to rush downstairs and feed the dog. If only he had something it could eat.
He thought about Duke.
Duke was the name he had given to the kitten he adopted when he was ten. A tiny black and white ball of fur he had found at an outdoor flea market in North Jersey. The kitten was seven weeks old, given to Craig for free by a kind old woman who cared for stray cats. Craig fell in love with the animal right away, what with his bright green eyes, tiny pink paws, the rapid beating of the kitten’s heart against Craig’s chest.
Craig leaned his forehead against the window so not to lose sight of the dog. The glass felt cool against his skin, like a wet towel relieving a fever.
The dog lifted its hind leg to pee.
As a child, Craig had begged his mother every Christmas for a puppy. He didn’t care what size, large or small. It didn’t matter what kind, beagle or greyhound or golden retriever. Purebred or mutt. It didn’t have to be store-bought; it could have come from the pound. In fact, Craig would have preferred it that way. He’d wanted to save a life if he could. As a matter of fact, it didn’t even have to be a pup; it could have been full grown. So long as it was a dog. So long as Craig could call it his own.
But every year his mother’s answer was the same.