Willard and His Bowling Trophies
Page 8
“This is it,” one of them whispered, halfway up the stairs toward the first apartment.
“Shut up,” another Logan whispered.
The dice thrown
Bob sat down on the bed and started reading the Greek Anthology to Constance.
“It’s late,” she said, trying gently to protest, but it didn’t make any difference because Bob didn’t hear her. He just kept on reading.
“ ‘A wattle basket full of the stalks of fine white celery,’ ” he read to her. Then he paused and said, “I wonder what a wattle basket is. What’s a wattle basket, honey?”
“It’s a basket woven out of twigs and sticks,” Constance sighed. She slowly closed her eyes. She lay there on the bed with her eyes closed.
“Is this the apartment?” the Logan with the gun whispered as they all stood there on the landing beside the first apartment. The landing was dark, so they couldn’t see any number on the door.
“What’s the number?”
The comic-book-reading Logan who’d answered the telephone was thinking very hard as his brother struck a match to expose a copper number 2 on the front door to the flickering flame of the match.
“It’s number 1,” he suddenly remembered.
“But this number says 2,” was the whispering from his brother.
“It’s number 1, I tell you. 1. It’s 1,” whispering.
“Then the apartment upstairs must be number 1,” whispering.
“Yeah, it has to be. If this is number 2, then number 1 must be upstairs,” whispering.
“What’s number 2 doing down here? Shouldn’t number 1 be down here and number 2 up there?” whispering.
“All I know is that it’s number 1. That’s where the bowling trophies are. Let’s go up there and get them,” whispering.
“OK, but it seems funny to me,” whispering.
One of the Logan brothers was not whispering. All he wanted was a can of beer.
On a slightly drunken evening a few months ago, Patricia and John decided to play a little joke on Constance and Bob by switching the numbers on the apartments while they were out.
They thought that it would be very funny for the first apartment in the building to be number 2 and the second apartment to be number 1.
Constance did not think it was funny when she saw it. Bob was puzzled. “I thought we lived in apartment 2,” he said, staring at the number 1 on the door to their apartment “It’s all right,” Constance said.
“But it seems strange to me,” Bob said.
“Don’t think about it,” Constance said, not liking it but somehow they never got around to changing the numbers back. One thing or another kept them away from it.
The Logan brothers moved stealthily up the next flight of stairs to Constance and Bob’s apartment.
“See, here’s number 1,” the comic-book-reading Logan whispered triumphantly.
“Number 1,” his brother whispered, taking the pistol out of his pocket. He wasn’t saying it to anybody. He was just saying it to himself. It had been three years long enough to be lifetimes and perhaps they were. “Number 1,” again whispered.
There was a moment of silence as the brothers stood in front of the door. They didn’t move. They didn’t say anything. They just stood there.
“Listen to this, Constance,” Bob said. “This may have something to do with us.” Bob had gotten Constance’s attention by saying that.
“ ‘The dice of Love are madnesses and melees,’ ” Bob quoted from the Greek Anthology as the Logan brothers kicked in the front door and ran into the apartment looking for the bowling trophies and the first one in ran down the hall into the bedroom shouting, “BOWLING TROPHY THIEVES DIE!” and shot the two people, one of whom was sitting on the bed reading from a book while the other one was lying in bed, listening to him as he read with her eyes closed.
‘Searching for an octopus’
or Epilogue
Q: What about the Logan sisters?
A: Forget them.