Unhinged_by_Rick_Reed

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The next morning, I lay in bed for a long time, hoping the sleep that had eluded me the night before would come back once Ernie left, like a wily lover slipping into bed after the husband has left for work.

But sleep didn’t come. And I rose to see our huge glass wall smeared with rain. Lightning flashed, followed a few seconds later by the low roar of thunder. Feeling like a zombie and that I actually was sleepwalking, I forced myself from bed and slogged the long journey (all fifteen or so steps) to the kitchen, where Ernie had thoughtfully left a half pot of coffee, still warm. I poured myself a mug, moved to the window and stared down at the pedestrians as I sipped. Those without umbrellas moved, naturally, a lot faster than the ones who were lucky enough to have them.

A flash of bright red caught my eye just outside our entrance door on the street level below. I watched as Paula rapidly opened and closed the scarlet umbrella to free it of water and then, like a dog, shook her own frizzy mane of hair. She ducked inside, and distantly, I could hear the creak and slam of the heavy vestibule door.

Maybe, I thought, grimacing at the bitter taste of the coffee, Paula knew something that would make it clear why I had experienced odd waking dreams two nights in a row about a person I had never seen. Maybe not, but I suddenly felt determined to discover more about my predecessors.

I knew she didn’t want to talk about them, and perhaps her history with Tommy and Karl was painful, but something told me that knowing more about who had previously inhabited our apartment might make living there a little easier for me. Life in our new home had certainly not gotten off to a very good start. I had to do something. Talking to Paula was about as good of a place to begin as any.

I dressed quickly in an old pair of black jeans and a matching T-shirt, slid into flip-flops and headed toward my next-door neighbor’s. In the hallway, I noticed that the lightbulb that had been flickering the night before now glowed steadily and that I had neglected to bring along Paula’s Fiestaware plate, which had been my excuse for visiting her this morning.

“It might also help if you washed it before you brought it back to her,” I mumbled, groping for my keys.

Back inside, I headed toward the sink and stopped. “Oh Jesus, did you do this, Ernie?”

The plate lay next to the sink, sparkling clean, without even a trace of the muffins it had held.

It was about as likely for Ernie to wash a plate before leaving for work as it was for the Chicago Bears to make it into the Super Bowl, or the Cubs to the World Series. Possible, but highly unlikely.

I looked at the plate, so innocent, yet chilled by it.

I knew I hadn’t washed it, and if Ernie hadn’t, who had?

I didn’t want to consider the possibilities. I grabbed the plate and set off again.

Paula looked surprised to see me. She opened the door wider, and she grinned. “You come to see me? How nice!”

“Actually, I just wanted to return your plate.” I handed it back to her. “The muffins were delicious.” Paula stepped in to admit me and then closed the door behind us. Her apartment was about what I’d expected. Crowded with thrift-store furniture, scarf-covered lampshades, and vintage movie posters on the walls. Not much bigger than our own home, Paula’s did not have the benefit of our glass wall. She had only one window, which looked out onto the flat rooftop of the adjoining building, an auto body repair shop. Still, her place looked homey and warm with the lamps lit. It smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg.

A cat rubbed against my leg, and I looked down to see the fattest calico I had ever laid eyes on. She peered up at me with adoring green eyes, purring.

“That’s JoAnne. She’s a complete w***e. Don’t encourage her.” Paula moved toward her kitchen and set the plate on a counter. “I was just makin’ myself some tea…Earl Grey. Have a cuppa with me?”

“Sure.”

“Go ahead and sit down at the table, and I’ll be mother.”

I sat at an old porcelain-topped table positioned next to the window. Paula busied herself making the tea, pouring it into a ceramic pot that looked like Wedgewood, and getting together a creamer and sugar bowl.

She joined me. “It’s nice to have company.”

“No work today?”

“I have Tuesdays off. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Makes for a nice weekend,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Paula poured tea and coyly asked, “One lump or two?” even though the “sugar” was little blue packets of artificial sweetener in a bowl. We sipped for a while, quiet, at last two strangers with not much to talk about.

How could I bring up Tommy and Karl without seeming nosy? What right did I have to know anything about them anyway? But there was this lingering hunch I had—that they had something to do with my weird dreams. They had to.

I noticed, among the stacks and stacks of books scattered around the room, that several of them were on ghosts and psychic phenomena. Even the novels leaned heavily toward the occult with the holy trinity of horror well represented: Anne Rice, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz.

I had my in. As casually as I could, I asked her, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Paula grabbed my hand. “Oh yes, honey. I think those who have departed are all around us.” Her eyes lit up. “I have studied this stuff—been to several séances and I never miss Ghost Hunters. Why do you ask?”

“Well, ever since we moved in, I’ve been having these weird dreams.”

Paula got up and got herself a ceramic ashtray and a pack of Marlboro Reds. “Filthy habit, I know.” She sat back down and lit up. “You want one?” The cigarette bounced up and down in her mouth.

I shook my head.

She inhaled extravagantly, then blew the smoke over my head. “So tell me about these dreams.”

I told her a little about them, their reality, of the sad little man who had appeared to me. “They were so real, it doesn’t really seem right to call them dreams.”

Paula examined the glowing end of her cigarette. Outside, there was a bright flash of pure white light and then an almost deafening crash of thunder. In seconds, we could hear the drum of a steady and hard downpour. Paula looked to her rain-smeared window.

She spoke quietly. “Tell me about the short guy.” There was something in the way she said the simple sentence that made me feel like she knew what was coming.

I described him—the buzzed hair, the sores on his skin, the bad teeth, the dirty clothes, all somehow brought up to another level by large, sad brown eyes.

Paula’s gaze flickered away from me, and it looked like her own eyes had become shinier. Were those tears? Angrily, she shouted, “Get out of there!” And JoAnne leaped from a laundry basket in the corner of the room and ran toward the bathroom, casting suspicious looks behind her at both of us. Paula snorted, took a puff, and a swallow of tea. When she looked back at me, she seemed more composed. But I had seen raw pain flicker across her features and I wondered why.

“You saw Tommy.”

“Tommy?”

“Tommy Soldano. He lived in your apartment before you moved in, with his boyfriend, Karl. Like I told you.” She smiled broadly, her cheeks reddened with warmth. “Oh! I used to have so much fun with those guys. They were lunatics! We used to do everything together. I drank a lot of dirty martinis with them at Big Chicks and saw a lot of bad, bad movies at the underground film festival every year. We all used to volunteer.” She snuffed out her cigarette and her eyes took on a faraway cast; she was remembering. “We had some good times.”

“What happened to them? Why did they move out?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I thought I told you I didn’t like to talk about this.”

“You did, but I thought maybe these dreams…” I let her complete my sentence.

“Yeah. What you saw, that had to be Tommy and that has to mean something.” She shook her head. “Although I don’t like what it might mean.”

I didn’t know if we were going to dance around the issue all morning, so I decided to simply be blunt. “What happened? I don’t mean to upset you, but did Tommy die?” Maybe I had seen a ghost.

Paula shook her head. “Actually, I don’t know.”

I c****d my head.

Paula gnawed at her lower lip and moved the cigarette pack back and forth, as if she were debating whether she should have another one. Addiction—and nerves, I suspect—won out and she lit up. “Tommy disappeared.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “He was just gone one day. Karl claimed he had no idea what happened. That he simply woke up one morning to find Tommy gone, along with all his clothes and belongings.” Paula shrugged. “Of course, there was an investigation. Tommy’s family came around, asking questions. I remember his sister Amanda was particularly worried. She said it wouldn’t be like her brother to just walk away, no matter how bad his life had become. He talked to her almost every day.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I suppose people did walk off the jobs of their lives without looking back, but it seemed like a rare thing. I had never personally known anyone who had done it or anyone who even knew someone else who had.

“What do you think happened?”

Paula c****d her head. “I don’t know. Karl and Tommy changed during the last year they were here. They changed a lot. And not for the better. So I guess you could say I no longer knew what would be in character for either of them.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Paula angrily exhaled twin plumes of smoke through her nostrils. “Ah! They got into that s**t all you gay boys think is so much fun. Christ! I’m always pickin’ up those tiny Baggies off the sidewalk!”

“Meth?”

“Yeah. Crystal. Tina. Whatever the hell you call it.” She got up from the table and went to a chest of drawers along the opposite wall. She dug around in one of the drawers, then another. She mumbled, “s**t. Where is it?” Finally, she found what she was looking for, I guess, and returned to the table. She handed a snapshot to me.

It was Paula and two guys. One of the men was tall, stocky, with streaked blond hair and a crooked smile that reminded me of Ernie’s. The other guy—well, he must have been Tommy because he was—no question—the guy I had seen in my waking dreams. But this Tommy was different. He was vital. Aglow. Really handsome. His skin was clear, his eyes bright. His hair glistened in the sunlight, long, dark, and wavy. He had a smile that I knew must have been infectious—it beamed and radiated joy. He wasn’t rail thin; if anything, he was a bit pudgy, but the weight looked good on him. His skin, which appeared tanned and spoke of a Mediterranean heritage, was unmarred by sores. And his teeth were perfect and white, a dazzling contrast to his olive complexion.

He was a looker. It was hard to believe he had become the sad, unhealthy-looking wraith I had seen in my dreams.

“That was taken a couple of years ago. Pre-Tina. Down at Hollywood Beach one Sunday. It was like the perfect day.” Paula’s eyes were bright with tears again. She looked at me. “Is that the guy you saw?”

I nodded. “Except he didn’t look so good.”

“I know. That s**t ate him alive. Fast. Both of them. They were such good boys. Such a happy couple. And then they started in with that s**t. At first, it was just on the weekends. Then, they stopped doin’ stuff with me. They started havin’ guys over at all hours of the day and night. Missing work. Men in and out of the apartment like it needed to be fitted with a revolving door.” She made a tsk sound. “That wasn’t them. It was the drug.”

Paula and I were quiet. It made sense. The pantomimes I had seen were the movements of someone smoking crystal meth through a pipe. I had never done the stuff myself, but had been around guys who had. I should have figured it out sooner. And the phone call? In retrospect, what I had overheard now sounded like the desperate pleas of an addict to his dealer.

“Such a shame. I know several guys that s**t has done a real number on.” I tentatively put a hand over Paula’s, and she turned her palm up so it rested against my own. Her hand was damp with sweat, but I didn’t move away. I squeezed her hand. “Was anything ever resolved?”

“No. Karl did the missing-persons thing and, with Tommy’s family, went through all the motions. I even helped him put up flyers on streetlights and in neighborhood stores with Tommy’s picture on it. There was talk of a reward, but nobody had any money.” Paula frowned. “He never turned up.” Her breath quivered a little as she said, “Neither did his body.”

She let out a big sigh. “So a little part of me still hopes. Maybe Tommy will show up again one day and I can give him hell for scarin’ the s**t out of everyone.” Paula slowly shook her head and said, barely audible, “But I don’t like the fact that you saw him. That can’t be good.”

I didn’t know that I had any comforting words. I tried, “Maybe there’s just some of his energy hanging around. You know, like some sort of psychic vibration and for some reason my dreams just tuned in on it.”

Paula looked thoughtful, as if mulling it over. “It’s possible.” She looked faraway. The cat wandered over, and Paula scooped it up and hugged it. When she looked up at me again, her eyes were red. “I got a headache. I think I’m gonna lay down.”

“Sure.” I hurried from the apartment, feeling bad that I had stirred up so much s**t.

What had happened to Tommy?