He likes to have the window open, particularly as day collapses slowly into the smells and textures of night. First the traffic picks up, car by car, the way ice crackles and begins to break up in a frozen river. Soon it is the evening rush hour. A drop in temperature, and the hot, sizzling smell of afternoon thickens into a smoky exhaust cover that feels like an old wool blanket against his face. The traffic is the sound of the ocean with shouts and the occasional honk. In his mind they are like the keening calls of terns. He enjoys the beach.
Wind actually starts to move after the rush hour dribbles away into the steady pulse of night traffic. Night insects begin their rituals and radio shows to one another. He has a cricket outside his window. At least, he's pretty sure it's the same one night after night in the same spot. He heard you can tell the temperature by counting a cricket's chirps, but can't remember how it's done. Something with dividing and subtracting.
After spending four consecutive evenings sitting, motionless, by the window of a dying apartment smelling the dying day, he slowly comes to the knowledge that he might be slipping.
No, he does things in the mornings. He goes to bed when the sounds even out and the show is over. God, am I really thinking that way? He wakes up when the sun makes his bedroom too hot and he comes to consciousness sweating, the sheets tying his ankles together, arms flung across the scattered pillows, probably drooling, usually with his face smashed into the blankets or lying on his own balls or God knows what. He always has the fleeting sensation, before rationality resurfaces, that he'd just got laid. Take that, subconscious. You fuck me over all day long, but I get one punch before you come back to grab me by the throat again.
He does things. He always considers trying to make the bed, and every other day or so he starts to shake out the sheets, to find an edge, but the fucking things are rhombuses or octagons or something without rational sides no matter how many corners he counts between his fingers. Never mind. The bed stays in a chaotic shambles of nightmares and sweat and wrinkles permanently pressed by his fists, clutching, as he dreams.
Fifteen steps to the downstairs, hand palm-out at his shoulder but no longer needing to drag against the wall or even to tremble across it as his abused shins and toes cringe from anticipating another day's hard knocks. He can make coffee with only a reasonable amount of fumbling now. The smell soothes him, but the sound of it grumbling and popping in the carafe is better. He stands, head down, against the counter. His toes feel gritty on the kitchen floor.
She had rested her hand on his arm, his heavy, heavy arm, his eyes trembling with real fear and whatever shit they'd pumped into his vein, and her lips were succulent, smiling. There was no need for further conversation. Even now, even as it broke over his blitzed mind, he was transfixed by her; astonished, unbelieving.
You rat, he thought, You're incredible. You're inhuman. A soulless worm-alien from a frozen planet where they eat their own young.
If he'd had another word in him, any last comment on the view, it collapsed back into itself as doom drew near with a tooth-cracking whiny buzz. Shit, he hated that sound, it reminded him of the de—
Worse, worse than the sheet of pain and violet and red that cascaded across his consciousness was the sight of her before they did the other eye. She wasn't smiling now. She was staring at him intently, her eyes glistening, eating him with her gaze. Her lips were parted slightly, and her hand squeezed ever-so-gently on his arm. If he wasn't sadly mistaken, that was her I'm-about-to-get-off-on-this face. Oh yes, hadn't he been holding her leg in an incredibly awkward and heavy position, her lips parted as she thrust against him, his arm trembling from holding up both their weights, when she'd started to make that helplessly feline face?
"What's that face for, hotcakes?" he'd asked her, wondering if his elbow would simply crack and drop them both to the gritty floor, and she'd said—
Oh yes, he had two eyes, didn't he? And again with the drill.
She'd said something as they dragged him up from the table, and he felt the heat pooled in his eyes slithering down his face that felt cold, cold as a corpse's. He threw up and they laughed. He hoped, in some dim corner of his mind that was a little less otherwise engaged, that some of it had splashed on them.
"What's this for?" one of her goons was asking. She sounded bored when she replied.
"Just stick it in his pocket. He'll know when he can think in a straight line again."
A hand prodded at his pocket and then shoved his back.
"There you go, buddy," one of them said from a few feet back, and the words echoed down an impossibly long subway tunnel before bubbling at Sands' ears. They made no sense. What could they mean? Look at it ecumenically, grammatically? Was it Spanish? Sure, he sprechen ze Espanol, but—
His foot struck a step and he tumbled against them. He remembered to fling his hands out before he broke his damn nose. There were nine steps. It was the first flight of steps he ever counted in his life, but it wasn't the last. Not by a long shot.
Then, suddenly, the broiling Mexican sun on his face, on his chest, the smells of the street, and if he could get a breath to go all the way to his lungs he'd be grateful—
"What's this for?" one of the CIA goons had asked when they emptied his pockets for him oh-so-helpfully.
"Ask him," another anonymous voice said, and the key was pushed into his cold palm. Sands burst into giggles. Oh yes, it's perfect, isn't it? Isn't this 24-karat justice? The bitch gave his key back. His giggles became hysterical.
When he woke up a short time later he reflected moodily on how much he was beginning to dislike needles. Christ, they'd jabbed his arm a good one.
"I was just kidding," he called into space.
"Thank god for that," a male voice replied sarcastically.
Oh good, the reality show with the pig whisperer. He let it stay on while he fried an onion and kielbasa together, and figured it was ready when it smelled like food. He ate out of the pan. He left the pan in the sink. He considered it a job well done.
The nightmares still woke him up. This time he spent some time seriously trying to fix the metamorphosing sheets and blankets. He was cranky, muttering into the dark that he only knew by virtue of his own circadian rhythm.
"I don't deserve this," he told his knees. "I'm a good person. I've suffered enough." They were inclined to concur.
"Well, I'm glad we see eye-to-eye," he told them.
"Simmons! Hey there, buddy," he said cheerfully into the phone. You're as blind as I am on the phone, he thought with satisfaction. I could be wearing a tight angora sweater and you'd never know.
Hmm, angora.
"Hello, Sands," Simmons replied. He tried to keep the trepidation out of his voice. "Haven't seen you in a few days. You feeling all right?"
"Oh yes, just peachy. But that's a few dance-steps short of fantastic. I'd feel fantastic, Simmons, if you gave me some good news about travel in my near future."
"I haven't got anything, Sands."
"I think that sentence was cut short, Simmons. You're breaking up. Can you repeat that?"
"I said I haven't got anything."
"I keep hearing you say you haven't got anything, but I know that's not right, because I have a feeling you mean that you haven't got anything for me."
Simmons closed his eyes briefly. "Sands, I know you're eager to get back on the horse, but the fact is I just haven't got a place for you. Be reasonable."
"Yeah, you know, I was just getting a good feel for that horse when suddenly I find myself being a paperweight instead of a federal agent."
"What do you want, Sands?"
"Is this a rhetorical question? I've heard this before and it always turns out to be rhetorical."
"No, Sands, I want to know. What do you want from me? We're both adults here. You turned down the benefits I made up for you, but didn't have an official list of complaints to file. I could have changed it. I can move you around, Sands, if that's what you want. Is it a change of scenery you're after?"
"Maybe it's a change of asshole superiors on the other end of my phone line."
"Just tell me."
Sands had to calm himself. He could tell he was about to get out of hand, and discussions generally soured when that happened.
"Why are you being unresponsive, Sands? Is something wrong? Do you need to talk to someone?"
"Aren't I?"
"A different someone."
"That, Simmons, would be like balm."
"You know what I mean, Sheldon. Someone who can help you."
"Again, Simmons, a fantastic idea. You're pretty crap at that."
"I'll call you back."
"Don't hurt yourself, boss."
"If I send someone over, please open the door."
Simmons was talking to an empty phone line. Sands had hung up on him. Again.
He sat at his window, trying to remember just exactly what an alpaca looked like. Like a horse, kind of, right? But furry. He was settling for something between a shaggy ox and an elk (didn't alpaca have horns? Shit.) when the phone rang again.
"I'll get it!" he yelled into his empty house, and the echo of his voice bouncing off the stairwell frightened him. He decided, actually, not to get it. It shrilled into the rooms like the ricochet of a bullet. He turned from it, put his hands over his ears.
i The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two adjacent sides. Hail Mary full of grace, help me win this stock-car race. For beautiful for spacious skies. For amber waves of pain. For purple mountains' majesty above the fruity plain. Madre de Dios. For beautiful… God… Good bye, Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you? The way you move with every new day, girl I'm— /i
It stopped, but he still heard it throbbing in his ears. Scotch, come on, where are ya, good buddy? He banged his shin on the coffee table when he got up. He bit his tongue. Keep it under control, cap'n. Running a tight ship, sir. All prisoners present or accounted for. And what sort of accounting was done on their part, sailor? Two were shot in the head, sir, and one fed to Jeffrey, sir, he's a cannibal.
Well done, sailor. Carry on. Aye, sir. His hand closed over the Scotch at last and he cut out the middleman, drinking straight from the bottle.