A Stir of Echoes Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the door. Anyway, I had my own troubles. For a moment I wondered where Frank was, deciding that he was either sleeping in his house or else stretched out on the beach, ogling girls. I shook that off too. It simply wasn't my business.
      I turned and stood looking at the spot where the woman had been. A shudder plaited down my back. I tried to visualize her but it was hard in the daylight. I went over to the exact spot and stood on it, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on my ankles. It was almost impossible to believe that it hadn't been a dream.
      I went into the kitchen and put on some water for coffee. I leaned against the edge of the sink counter while I waited for it to boil. It was very quiet in the house. I stared down at the multicoloured spatter design on the linoleum until it swam before my eyes. In the cupboard I could hear the alarm clock ticking. It reminded me of Poe's story about the telltale heart. It sounded like a heart beating hollowly behind the shielding of the cabinet door. I closed my eyes and sighed. Why couldn't I believe Phil? Everything he'd said had been so sensible-on the surface.
      There was my answer, I decided. What I felt wasn't on the surface. It was a subterranean trickle of awareness far beneath the level of consciousness. All right, it was emotion. Perhaps emotion was a better gauge for things like that.
     
      "I said come in here!"
      I started with a gasp, my head jerking up so fast it sent electric twinges along my neck muscles. For a moment, I actually expected to see the woman in the strange black dress standing before me again.
      "Ron!" I heard then. "I mean now!"
      I swallowed and blew out a long, trembling breath.
      "All right," I heard. "All right. What about that?"
      I couldn't hear Ron's answer. You never could. Elsie might have been conducting a vituperative monologue across the alley.
      "I told you at breakfast, damn it, I don't want your damn clothes laying all over my house!"
      Amusement broke into sound in my throat and I shook my head slowly. Dear God, I thought; her house. She didn't want his clothes lying all over her house. Ron was a boarder there, not the legal owner. A man's home is his castle, I thought, unless his wife makes him live in the dungeon. I wondered for a diverting moment what kind of match Ron and Elizabeth would make. One thing for sure, I decided, it would be the quietest damn house on the block.
      "And what about the oven?" Elsie asked. "You said you were going to clean it this weekend. Well, have you?"
      It made me cringe to hear talk like that. I felt my hands curling up into instinctive fists.
      "One of these days," I muttered, half myself, half imagining myself as Ron, "one of these days. Pow! Right to the moon!"
      My punch at the air sent jagged lines of pain through my head. Laughter faded with a wince. I couldn't stay amused anyway. There was my own problem. It wasn't over. No matter what Phil said, it wasn't over.
      I was drinking my coffee when I heard bare feet padding in the alley. I looked up and saw Elsie come up onto the back porch. Through the film of the door curtains, I saw that she was wearing a black bathing suit.
      She knocked. "Anne?" she called.
      I got up and opened the door.
      "Oh, hi" she said, quickly rearranging her smile from one of polite neighbourliness to one of mathematical seduction. At least that was the effect I got.
      "Good afternoon," I said.
      The bathing suit clung to her plumpness as if she'd been dipped into it rather than pulled it on.
      "Tom, could I borrow those raffia-covered glasses?" she asked. "I'm having some relatives over tonight."
      "Yeah. Sure." I backed away a step, then turned for the cupboard. I heard her come in the kitchen and shut the door.
      "Where's Anne?" she asked. The sound of the question was innocent. Yet, for some reason, I knew it wasn't.
      "Gone to the beach," I told her.
      "You mean you're all alone?"