At five-thirty, Sofar sets three egg timers, one for five minutes, another for fifteen, and the third for thirty minutes, then sits on a turned milk crate and files his fingernails, then his toenails, then his fingertips to the point of rawness, making certain there’s nothing left to file. Five-thirty to five thirty-five. It’s the same every day. All in preparation for Hatfield, battle. Five minutes, the first egg timer chimes. Sofar lies on the floor, closes his eyes. Fifteen minutes, he tells himself, that what he’s got to make it through. Fifteen minutes. He concentrates on his breathing, on pulling all things from his mind. He tucks away his thought of Hambone, his longings for Stavroula. He packs it all away. Ten minutes of slipping into the right state of mind.
After Stavroula’s funeral, after his loss, Sofar had a meltdown. The woman he loved was dead, his dog gone, his apartment ransacked.
Morris visited a few days after the funeral. “Mr. Sofar?” Morris called. His door was open, ajar. Morris walked in to find Sofar standing in the middle of the wrecked room, running the jagged head of a broken Hummel along his lips. They were bleeding. “What happened?” Morris asked, frightened.
Sofar slowly turned. “Stavroula,” he said, staring at Morris.
“You okay? Where’s Hambone?”
Sofar dropped the Hummel head and walked into his bedroom, returned with a yellow and orange dress, the colors vibrant and nauseating. He’d bought it for Morris’s mother, as a gift for when she left the hospital. “Stavroula,” Sofar said again, a near chant. He pulled the dress from the packaging, walked it to Morris.
“You okay, Mr. Sofar?” Morris asked. He backed up a step. “You seem kind of not well.”
Sofar paused a few feet from Morris.
“Why’s your place a mess?” Morris asks. “And where’s Hambone?” Morris called for the dog. It didn’t come.
Sofar grabbed Morris, pressed the dress to him. “Stavroula,” he said again, and started crying.
Morris stood still, terrified.
Then Sofar pressed his bloody lips to Morris’s.
Morris flailed, knocking the dress and Sofar to the floor. Morris backed out of the apartment, leaving Sofar, dress in hand, weeping.
It was the last time Morris visited.
The ding of the second timer sounds. 5:45 p.m. Sofar stands, shakes out his arms and legs like a runner reaching for a world record. If Hatfield’s coming, he’s coming now, in the next fifteen minutes. Hatfield’s like some incubus of the late afternoon; he only attacks during that that fifteen-minute window. Outside that realm, Hatfield doesn’t exist.
In the reality called now, Hatfield doesn’t exit either. Not anymore. A month after he turned over Sofar’s apartment and stole his dog—which was some twenty-two years ago—Hatfield sold the building to the Rockworth Real Estate Corporation. He’d grown tired of it all, the work, the running around. He took the cash he got for the building and bought a golf course in Louisiana that sat on top of an old landfill. A year later, he developed strange red boils around his anus and died in a matter of weeks.
Word got back. Sofar heard the news: the building had been sold; Hatfield was dead. But it was a ruse, Sofar was certain. Just another way Hatfield tried to make him lower his guard, to get him out of his apartment. Hatfield was alive, alive and plotting. He’d be back, and when he came back, it’d be between 5:45 and 6:00 p.m.
Wearing his best black wingtips, shoes that have never touched the street, Sofar begins his path, pacing from one end of his apartment to the other at a rate of three lengths a minute, forty-five lengths total, for a total of fifteen minutes.
He has it measured out perfectly. He just had to stay in motion, that’s what matters, to be in motion, to have movement. Fifteen minutes, then the threat will have passed. He’ll be safe for another day once that third egg timer rings. The threat will have passed.
Four minutes pass, then seven, then fourteen. It’s the same everyday. Sofar paces, the soles of his shoes clicking against the worn hardwood floor. He reaches the front of his apartment and sharply turns about. Home stretch. He feels the end approach. The last distance is the most difficult. He wants to run, to reach the other end of his apartment. He wants the timer to chime. Then the elements of his world will once again align for another day.
Counting down, he enters the middle room. Nine steps, seven, four steps remaining. He’s done it so often his steps are synchronized to the timer. Touch the bedroom wall, the chime will sound. Just like yesterday, and the day prior. Just like always.
And as his hand goes out and as his fingers brush against the drywall, he hears the sound. He hears two sounds at once, one familiar, one foreign.
The timer offers its comforting ting.
The front door offers a resounding knock.
Chapter 30
The Trouble with Bliss Page 31