Four Past Midnight

The first thing he did after letting himself in was to check the answering machine. His heartbeat cranked up a notch when he saw the MESSAGE WAITING lamp was lit.

It'll be her. I don't know who she really is, but I'm beginning to think she won't be happy until she's driven me completely crackers.

Don't listen to it, then, another part of his mind spoke up, and Sam was now so confused he couldn't tell if that was a reasonable idea or not. It seemed reasonable, but it also seemed a little cowardly. In fact, he realized that he was standing here in a sweat, gnawing his fingernails, and suddenly grunted - a soft, exasperated noise.

From the fourth grade to the mental ward, he thought. Well, I'll be damned if it's going to work that way, hon.

He pushed the button.

'Hi!' a man's whiskey-roughened voice said. 'This is Joseph Randowski, Mr Peebles. My stage name is The Amazing Joe. I just called to thank you for filling in for me at that Kiwanis meeting or whatever it was. I wanted to tell you that I'm feeling a lot better - my neck was only sprained, not broke like they thought at first. I'm sending you a whole bunch of free tickets to the show. Pass em out to your friends. Take care of yourself. Thanks again. Bye.'

The tape stopped. The ALL MESSAGES PLAYED lamp came on. Sam snorted at his case of nerves - if Ardelia Lortz wanted him jumping at shadows, she was getting exactly what she wanted. He pushed the REWIND button, and a new thought struck him. Rewinding the tape that took his messages was a habit with him, but it meant that the old messages disappeared under the new ones. The Amazing Joe's message would have erased Ardelia's earlier message. His only evidence that the woman actually existed was gone.

But that wasn't true, was it? There was his library card. He had stood in front of that goddamned circulation desk and watched her sign her name on it in large, flourishing letters.

Sam pulled out his wallet and went through it three times before admitting to himself that the library card was gone, too. And he thought he knew why. He vaguely remembered tucking it into the inside pocket of Best Loved Poems of the American People.

For safekeeping.

So he wouldn't lose it.

Great. Just great.

Sam sat down on the couch and put his forehead in his hand. His head was starting to ache.

2

He was heating a can of soup on the stove fifteen minutes later, hoping a little hot food would do something for his head, when he thought of Naomi again - Naomi, who looked so much like the woman in Dirty Dave's poster. The question of whether or not Naomi was leading a secret life of some sort under the name of Sarah had taken a back seat to something that seemed a lot more important, at least right now: Naomi had known who Ardelia Lortz was. But her reaction to the name ... it had been a little odd, hadn't it? It had startled her for a moment or two, and she'd started to make a joke, and then the phone had rung and it had been Burt Iverson, and Sam tried to replay the conversation in his mind and was chagrined at how little he remembered. Naomi had said Ardelia was peculiar, all right; he was sure of that, but not much else. It hadn't seemed important then. The important thing then was that his career seemed to have taken a quantum leap forward. And that was still important, but this other thing seemed to dwarf it. In truth, it seemed to dwarf everything. His mind kept going back to that modern no-nonsense suspended ceiling and the short bookcases. He didn't believe he was crazy, not at all, but he was beginning to feel that if he didn't get this thing sorted out, he might go crazy. It was as if he had uncovered a hole in the middle of his head, one so deep you could throw things into it and not hear a splash no matter how big the things you threw were or how long you waited with your ear cocked for the sound. He supposed the feeling would pass - maybe - but in the meantime it was horrible.

He turned the burner under the soup to LO, went into the study, and found Naomi's telephone number. It rang three times and then a cracked, elderly voice said, 'Who is it, please?' Sam recognized the voice at once, although he hadn't seen its owner in person for almost two years. It was Naomi's ramshackle mother.

'Hello, Mrs Higgins,' he said. 'It's Sam Peebles.'

He stopped, waited for her to say Oh, hello, Sam or maybe How are you? but there was only Mrs Higgins's heavy, emphysemic breathing. Sam had never been one of her favorite people, and it seemed that absence had not made her heart grow fonder.

Since she wasn't going to ask it, Sam decided he might as well. 'How are you, Mrs Higgins?'

'I have my good days and my bad ones.'

For a moment Sam was nonplussed. It seemed to be one of those remarks to which there was no adequate reply. Pm sorry to hear that didn't fit, but That's great, Mrs Higgins! would sound even worse.

He settled for asking if he could speak to Naomi.

'She's out this evening. I don't know when she'll be back.'

'Could you ask her to call me?'

'I'm going to bed. And don't ask me to leave her a note, either. My arthritis is very bad.'

Sam sighed. 'I'll call tomorrow.'

'We'll be in church tomorrow morning,' Mrs Higgins stated in the same flat, unhelpful voice, 'and the first Baptist Youth Picnic of the season is tomorrow afternoon. Naomi has promised to help.'

Sam decided to call it off. It was clear that Mrs Higgins was sticking as close to name, rank, and serial number as she possibly could. He started to say goodbye, then changed his mind. 'Mrs Higgins, does the name Lortz mean anything to you? Ardelia Lortz?'

The heavy wheeze of her respiration stopped in raid-snuffle. For a moment there was total silence on the line and then Mrs Higgins spoke in a low, vicious voice. 'How long are you Godless heathens going to go on throwing that woman in our faces? Do you think it's funny? Do you think it's clever?'

'Mrs Higgins, you don't understand. I just want to know - '

There was a sharp little click in his ear. It sounded as if Mrs Higgins had broken a small dry stick over her knee. And then the line went dead.

3

Sam ate his soup, then spent half an hour trying to watch TV. It was no good. His mind kept wandering away. It might start with the woman in Dirty Dave's poster, or with the muddy footprint on the cover of Best Loved Poems of the American People, or with the missing poster of Little Red Riding Hood. But no matter where it started, it always ended up in the same place: that completely different ceiling above the main reading room of the Junction City Public Library.

Finally he gave it up and crawled into bed. It had been one of the worst Saturdays he could remember, and might well have been the worst Saturday of his life. The only thing he wanted now was a quick trip into the land of dreamless unconsciousness.

But sleep didn't come.

The horrors came instead.

Chief among them was the idea that he was losing his mind. Sam had never realized just how terrible such an idea could be. He had seen movies where some fellow would go to see a psychiatrist and say, 'I feel like I'm losing my mind, doc,' while dramatically clutching his head, and he supposed he had come to equate the onset of mental instability with an Excedrin headache. It wasn't like that, he discovered as the long hours passed and April 7 gradually became April 8. It was more like reaching down to scratch your balls and finding a large lump there, a lump that was probably a tumor of some kind.