33
“Oh, by the way, there was a telephone call for you. From Bill Toy. Day before yesterday.”
Marty looked up at Pearl from his plate of steak, and pulled a face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked contrite.
“It was the day I lost my wick with those damn people. I left a message for you-”
“I didn’t get it.”
“-on the pad beside the telephone.”
It was still there: “Call Toy,” and a number. He dialed, and waited a full minute before the phone was picked up at the other end. It wasn’t Toy. The woman who repeated the number had a soft, lost voice, slurred as if by too much drink.
“Can I speak to William Toy, please?” he asked.
“He’s gone,” the woman replied.
“Oh. I see.”
“He won’t be coming back. Not ever.”
The quality of the voice was eerie. “Who is this?” it asked of him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marty replied. His instinct rebelled against giving his name.
“Who is this?” she asked again.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
“Who is this?”
He put the receiver down on the slushing insistence at the other end. Only when he had did he realize that his shirt was clinging to a cold sweat that had suddenly sprung from his chest and spine.
In the love nest in Pimlico, Yvonne asked the vacated line “Who is this?” for half an hour or more before letting the telephone drop. Then she went to sit down. The couch was damp: large, sticky stains were spreading on it from the place where she always sat. She assumed it was something to do with her, but she couldn’t work out how or why. Nor could she explain the flies that congregated all over her, in her hair, in her clothes, whining away.
“Who is this?” she asked again. The question remained perfectly pertinent, though she was no longer speaking to the stranger on the phone. The rotting skin of her hands, the blood she left in the tub after bathing, the horrid look the mirror gave her-all inspired the same hypnotic inquiry: “Who is this?”
“Who is this? Who is this? Who is this?”