Sleep Disorder

little LCD screen on it. It was a blood pressure monitor.

'I don't have high blood pressure,' he said.

'Well, let's see. They call it 'The Silent Killer,' Bill. You can have it for years and not know it. And sleep disorders, especially those with snoring as a symptom, can drastically raise your blood pressure. When you snore, you're not getting enough oxygen, see, so your vascular system constricts, to speed blood flow.'

She wrapped the cuff around his arm. 'Don't move.' Then she began pumping a rubber squeeze ball. The machine started beeping.

He hadn't had his blood pressure taken in years. Why the hell should he? Only old people got high blood pressure.

'Look, Annie, I don't have high blood pressure.'

The beeping stopped. 'Bill, you do have high blood pressure. It's 180/110. That's way too high.'

'It could kill you, for godsakes. You could have a CVA.'

'What's that? Like an SUV?'

'Cerebral vascular accident — a stroke, Bill. It could cause an MI, too.”

“What's that? Military intelligence?'

'Myocardial infarction. A heart attack.'

Fuck this shit, he thought. She was spooking him.

But why would she exaggerate?

'I care about you, Bill,' she said. She bent over to meet his eyes and he could read the concern on her face. 'I love you.'

Jesus. He hated the L Word.

'I want you to go see the doctor,' she said.

He was looking down at her impressive cleavage and it occurred to him that if he really did croak from high blood pressure he'd never have his hands on those beauties again. Some other guy would.

'I'll see the doctor.'

Which he did, in spite of his reluctance.

Dr. Seymour was Annie's boss. The guy looked hungover but Bill didn't care. Annie trusted him. The doctor wrote him two scripts.

'One's a diuretic, a water pill. It reduces total blood volume, very reliable for hypertension. But for off-the- roof blood pressure like yours, you need something else too.'

Off-the-roof. That's just fucking great. He did something rare for him. He kept his mouth shut and listened.

'The second pill is called Clonifil,' Seymour said. 'Take it when you get up and just before bed. It's a calcium-channel blocker.'

So much for keeping his mouth shut. 'I don't care if it's a blocker for the New York Jets so long as it makes my pressure go down.'

'Oh, it will.' Did Seymour cut a small grin? 'It'll make some other things go down too. But let's work on one thing at a time. Your health is the priority.'

Bill slumped. He didn't like that line about things going down. 'Can't you get me some of that…'

'The Big Blue? Oh, sure. But not for six months. Your metabolism's got to have time to acclimate to the calcium-channel blocker. Like I said. One thing at a time.'

Wonderful. My dick is dead for six months. Shit. It wasn't right. 'Is it really that bad?'

'Clinically, you have Stage Four Malignant Hypertension, Bill. There is no Stage Five. Zero over zero is what your blood pressure will be if you don't take these pills.'

Bill took the pills. Annie wasn't all that great in the sack anyway and Millie was just a hosebag who didn't always smell good. He could live without it for six months. But there was no way he was going to let R.J. take all those clients he'd spent years setting up.

No way in hell.

* * *

Bill liked order in his life so he bought himself a little plastic pill box to put his next day's meds in. There were three slots inside, one marked MORNING, one NOON, and one NIGHT. He barely had to pay for the meds because they were included in his healthcare package at work. Two bucks per script. He didn't like the idea of having to pop pills — but if his life depended on it? No big deal. The pills would save his life, Dr. Seymour said. And most of the side effects he barely noticed. Save one.

The diuretic made him piss like a racehorse.

Five times a night he was getting up. Annie muttered once in her half-sleep, 'At least when you get up to use the bathroom, you don't snore.'

Calm down, calm down, keep your cool, he thought, bladder throbbing fit to burst. Stay in control. It would be nice to strangle her sometimes but that was just a fantasy.

Hell, she was an excellent cook.

And the medications worked. His blood pressure dropped into the normal zone, which thrilled him. What didn't thrill him was that he continued to snore and talk in his sleep. And he still looked like a truck had run over him every morning when he woke up.

Acclimate, acclimate, he kept repeating. It would all take time. Just like Dr. Seymour said. At least things were getting better, weren't they?

One night he woke on the street in front of his apartment in pyjamas (???alternate spelling?) and a raincoat, and he was kicking some old man's poodle and the poodle was trying to bite him through the pyjama bottoms and doing a pretty good job nipping at him and the old man was shouting.

And the morning after that he woke up with his hands around Annie's throat.

Squeezing.

It was a bright sunny morning, breeze wafting through his twentythird-floor window, everything perfectly normal except he was on top of her, choking her, so far into it she was already way beyond screaming. His eyes flashed open and he felt her fingernails claw his cheek, looked down into a face already turning blue and her tongue like brown meat, protruding like a fat wriggling slug and heard himself bellowing, roaring, glanced up into the dresser mirror from their bed and saw a face that was not any face he knew, crimson-eyed, gloating over her, gloating over his kill-to-be.

The phone rang.

He let go.

And for a moment just stared down at her shocked disbelieving eyes while she tried to fill her lungs again, her right hand fluttering to the deep red imprints on her neck.

He rolled off and answered the phone.

His voice sounded thick, strange, bubbling up through a film of mucus.

'Hello?'

'It's final,' said Laura, icy calm on the other end. 'As of Friday. They'll be serving you the papers. You're a free man. I just wanted you to know.'

'How much?'

'What?'

'What's it costing me?'

She sighed. 'You really are slime, you know that? Are you at all aware that you missed Philip's birthday three days ago?'

'How much?'

Click.

Not even a how you doing? he thought. Well, he wasn't doing too well anyway. But then neither was Laura.

She didn't know it yet but he'd taken out a $500,000 loan six months ago, a second mortgage on the house, neatly forging her name. Now that the divorce was final the house was hers. And according to New York State law so was half the debt. Collection was going to break her and the kid pretty much completely. Surprise, surprise. He'd pay back his half anytime he felt like it after the finalization. After all, he had plenty of money behind the living room