“That must have been interesting.”
“It was damned interesting,” Feverell said, “but who needs it? Too much is still too much. I can’t resist them, I can’t turn them down, but I’ll tell you, I shudder when the doorbell rings.” He sighed. “I suppose it relates to being divorced a little over a year and some kind of performance anxiety, something like that. Or do you suppose there’s a deeper cause?”
“Who cares?”
Feverell stared at him.
“Really,” said Hackett. “What’s the difference why you’re having the dream? The dream is the problem, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so. But—”
“As a matter of fact,” Hackett went on, “the dream isn’t the problem either. The problem is that there are too many women in it.”
“Well—”
“If there were just one woman,” Hackett said, “you’d do just fine, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose so — but there’s always three, and no matter how much I want to I can’t seem to tell two of them to go away. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, see, and it’d be impossible to choose among them anyway—”
“Suppose you only had to make love to one of them,” Hackett said. “Could you handle that?”
“Sure, but—”
“And then you could get plenty of sleep after she left.”
“I guess so, but—”
“And you’d be rested in the morning. In fact, after a dream like that you’d probably feel like a million dollars, wouldn’t you?”
“What are you getting at, George?”
“Simple,” said Hackett. “Simplest thing in the world.”
He got out a business card and scribbled on the back. “My home phone number,” he said, thrusting the card at Feverell. “Go ahead, take it.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Memorize it,” Hackett said, “and when the doorbell rings tonight, call me.”
“What do you mean, call you? I’m supposed to get up out of a sound sleep and call you? And then what happens? Is it like AA or something — you come over and we have coffee and you talk me out of dreaming?”
Hackett shook his head. “You don’t get up,” he said. “In the dream you call me. You call me, and then you go open the door and let the girls in.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“The point is that I’ve got a friend, a psychiatrist as it happens, a very nice clean-cut type of guy. You’ll call me, and I’ll call him, and the two of us’ll come over to your place.”
“You’re going to schlepp some shrink to my house in the middle of the night?”
“This is in the dream,” Hackett told him. “We’ll come over, and you’ll make love to one of the girls, whichever one you choose, and I’ll take one, and my friend’ll take one. And after you’re done with your girl you can go to sleep, and you’ll be perfectly well rested in the morning. And we can do this every night you have the dream. All you have to do is call me and we’ll show up and help you out.”
Feverell stared at him. “If only it would work.”
“It will.”
“There was a Chinese girl the other night who was just plain out of this world,” Feverell said. “But I couldn’t really relax and enjoy her, because the Jamaican and the Norwegian girls were in the other room and, well—”
Hackett clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Call me,” he said. “Your troubles are over.”
The following morning, on his way to work, Hackett gave himself up to a feeling of supreme well-being. He had repaid Krull’s kindness to him in the best way possible, by passing on the favor to another. At his desk that morning, he waited for the phone to ring with a report from Feverell.
But Feverell didn’t call. Not that morning, not the next morning, not all week. And something kept Hackett from calling Feverell.
Until finally he ran into him on the street during the noon hour — and Feverell looked terrible! Bags under his eyes, deeper than ever. Sallow skin, trembling hands. “Mike!” he said. “Mike, are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?”
“No, you don’t,” Hackett said honestly. “You look awful.”
“Well, I feel awful,” Feverell said savagely. “And I don’t feel a whole lot better for being told how terrible I look, but thanks all the same.”
“Mike, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? You know damned well what’s wrong. It’s this dream I’ve been having. I told you the whole story. Or did it slip your mind?”
Hackett sighed. “You’re still having the dream?”
“Of course I’m still having the dream.”
“Mike,” Hackett said, “when the doorbell rings, before you do anything else, you were going to call me, remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“So?”
“So I’ve called you. Every night I call you, for all the good it does.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do, every goddamned night.”
“And then I come over? And I bring my friend?”
“Oh, right,” said Feverell. “Your famous friend, the clean-cut psychiatrist. Whom I’ve yet to meet, because he doesn’t come over and neither do you. Every night I call you, and every night you hang up on me.”
“I hang up on you?” Hackett stared. “Why would I do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Feverell. “I don’t have the slightest idea. But every night I call you and you don’t even let me get a word in edgewise. ‘I’m sorry,’ you say, ‘but I can’t talk to you now, I’m on my way to Cleveland.’ Cleveland yet! And you hang up on me!”
Click!
It was late afternoon by the time Dandridge got back to the lodge. The mountain air was as crisp as the fallen leaves that crunched under his heavy boots. He turned for a last look at the western sky, then hurried up the steps and into the massive building. In his room he paused only long enough to drop his gear onto a chair and hang his bright orange cap on a peg. Then he strode to the lobby and through it to the taproom.
He bellied up to the bar, a big, thick-bodied man. “Afternoon, Eddie,” he said to the barman. “The usual poison.”
Dandridge’s usual poison was sour mash whiskey. The barman poured a generous double into a tumbler and stood, bottle in hand, while Dandridge knocked the drink back in a single swallow. “First of the day,” he announced, “and God willing it won’t be the last.”
Both the Lord and the barman were willing. This time Eddie added ice and a splash of soda. Dandridge accepted the drink, took a small sip of it, nodded his approval, and turned to regard the only other man present at the bar, a smaller, less obtrusive man who regarded Dandridge in turn.
“Afternoon,” Dandridge said.
“Good afternoon,” said the other man. He was smoking a filtered cigarette and drinking a vodka martini. He looked Dandridge over thoroughly, from the rugged face weathered by sun and wind down over the heavy red and black checked jacket and wool pants to the knee-high leather boots. “If I were to guess,” the man said, “I’d say you’ve been out hunting.”
Dandridge smiled. “Well, you’d be right,” he said. “In a manner of speaking.”
“ ‘In a manner of speaking,’ ” the smaller man echoed. “I like the phrase. I’d guess further that you had a good day.”