HELP RACHEL
Ted lifted the phone receiver. His hands trembled so much he tossed it out of his hand. The high-pitched pips started up a few seconds later. Ted gazed down at the fallen phone and said, "Hi, Rachel? Just thought you ought to know the Old Man's duh-duh-dead." He laughed, slapping his chest. Get real Ted, my boy, let's have a trifle more coordination between mind and tongue. "Get Hughie and get out of the house, Rachel. Don't ask me why, I don't fucking know, but it's something that the Old Man set in motion years ago and if I sound crazy, well, then I guess I am, but just get out for a while, get as far the fuck away from Draper House as you possibly can."
Sounds sensible enough, Ted, my boy, now all you got to do is pick up the phone and call her and then maybe it'll be copacetic. "I ain't sayin' no." He barely recognized the whispery voice that came from his throat.
He left the phone where it was.
Nope, can't really call her up with this kind of news. Call the cops?
Not a great idea with a dead body in my bedroom. Particularly one this far hammered away. Cops might not be too sympathetic to my plight.
He wandered back out to the living room feeling as if a grenade had rolled right into his condo and blown up in his face. Yeah, that's right, I got shards of the old Man's insanity in my skull. In the freezer, he found a half-full gallon of vodka. When Ted decided what he would do, where he would go, he took the bottle with him.
Driving was easiest for Ted when he was drunk. With a little medicine in him he didn't have to worry too much about where he was headed. He'd dressed quickly, almost forgetting his shoes in his eagerness to get out of his place (don't go back in that bedroom again, Ted, m'boy, you don't need to double-check to see what is dripping all over the white carpet). In blood: HELP RACHEL.
Uncharacteristic of the Old Man even in death, even after death. Hell, Ted thought as he dropped his car keys on the sidewalk for the sixth time, who'd the Old Man ever help in his life?
The hard part about being drunk so early in the day was getting the keys in the door of the car. Damn it, they make these things too small and slippery.
The vodka had made it all go down easier, just like it had when the Old Man had cracked. Cracked, but not yet hammered. It was all crazy, but vodka helped Ted over the rough spots of credibility: I ain't sayin 'yes and I ain't sayin' no, I'm just sayin' maybe. Finally he managed to unlock the car door without dropping the keys; he opened the door wide and checked under the seats for wasps before sliding in behind the wheel. His eyes blurred with tears. He tried turning on the windshield wipers to slash his tears away, you are drunk, son, you sure you didn't hammer your own head in?
He started the car, swerving to avoid a boy riding by on his bike. HELP RACHEL. Hallucination -that's what this whole damn thing is. You didn't see the Old Man dent himself silly and then keep yapping away like a manic schnauzer, you been walking in your sleep, Tedward, you been drinking too much of the Russian poison and dry humping your pillow, lusting after your brother's wife. You just want Rachel to need your help, you want her the way you want every toy you've ever had and now you feel guilty 'cause it's your asshole brother's wife and you're a sinner and now guilt going into overdrive on the fuel of Absolute -ain't sayin 'yes. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator as the light at the corner of Q Street and Connecticut turned yellow; his silver car swerved, screeching as he turned up Connecticut Avenue, pedestrians scattering, shouting curses. Ted barely noticed them. The wasps? Well, bugs always get in places in the summer. That’s it. They just squeezed through a crack last night and the Old Man swallowed them while he was snoring.
I ain't sayin' no. He waited at the light on Columbia Road, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He glanced over at a girl in a VW Bug that had pulled up next to him.
He could still smile, that was good. See? I haven't cracked, I can be a regular guy.
The girl, a pretty redhead, wrinkled her nose and quickly looked the other way. Like he was the most repulsive thing on the face of the earth.
Fuck you, too, sweetheart. Ted brought his gaze up to the rearview mirror. All he saw were his eyes: bloodshot. And in those eyes a certain wildness. The girl must've seen that insanity there in the baby blues.
The eyes of someone out of control.
A madman.
Just sayin' maybe.
The light turned green.
At Hammer Street, on the edge of the park, Ted spun the wheel into the curb, going up onto it and then down to the road again. He parked his Mercedes with a ridiculous amount of care for someone who had stopped giving a fuck.
I won't pretend to know what's going on. Maybe they'll put me away like I should've put the old Man away weeks ago, before his madness started rubbing off on me.
But I'll get Rachel out of there and then show her what in my apartment. And if the old Man is back there laughing his head off at the clever trick he played on me, then they can give me some more booze and I'll go off and be a bona fide alcoholic for the rest of my natural-born days.
But if I take her home and there's a corpse and blood on the walls, then she can have me put away and she will be safe. Rachel, in bed, dreaming. In her dream someone was at the door. Knocking. Calling her name. Was it Hugh? She went to the door in her dream and opened it. It was not Hugh standing behind the dream door but a black man in a dark shirt and pants, a top hat on his head. When he opened his mouth to speak to her she felt as if she were being sucked into the mouth, and the mouth became a dark cave whose monstrous teeth became rows and rows of babies, their clicking talons raised to her, their mouths like balloon lips, opening and closing to drink her milk. Ted smashed his vodka bottle against the front door of Draper House.
"Rachel! It's Ted! Open up!" The stone balustrades on either side of the steps seemed to have grown around him, fattening each time he shouted for her. He was standing in a cold, shadowed spot, there at the entrance, and the sunlight reached everywhere on the street and in the park, everywhere except this front porch and these steps and this door. When the door finally drew open, its wood squeaking against the floor of the lower hallway, it was not Rachel Adair standing behind it, but someone who invited him in nonetheless.