JAMES HOGGARD
225
was no vertigo this time to distract me from it. So, being a
reasonable man, I kept sleeping.
Then the phone rang. Rang again perhaps.
I woke up.
I imagined my wife's toenail had become a pulpit, a power–
ful idol. I didn't know any more if I were still hearing the phone
ring or only remembering hearing it ring.
I didn't know what to think. I wasn't sure what I felt.
The ringing synchronized with my pulse. The two were
indistinguishable but at least I knew they were mine. Mine! Both
of them. Mine. Phone. Blood. Held in communion and trust(?)
with Marshelaine. Phone and blood, ringing and pumping. I
was dizzy again.
You-whoever hears me-would've been too, because I had
just discovered that I had been shot. There was a hole, strangely
clean in the moonwash through the room, a hole where my left
nipple had been. Perhaps, now that I think about it, it was my
nipple, shadowed. But there was no pain. And the phone had
stopped ringing. In memory, however, I heard the shot.
It
was a
cough more than a report. Continuing to hear again and again
the loud cough, I knew that the gun was no modern weapon but
a blunderbuss whose ball and wad had plundered my chest.
Footsteps were coming down the hall. Marshelaine's foot–
steps. I knew they were hers even though she was trying to trick
me, trying to walk like a cripple. She was cackling too. The
cackle was living outside her throat, somewhere between her and
me.
Brazenly she snorted, "Something wrong?" My wound
instantly healed. I wilted, flutters down my chest, up my neck,
the disappearance of groin. Her toenail scratched my knees. I
wondered where she really was.
My husband 's a lunatic. None of this happened. That's why
I'm going to
Then I heard the toilet flush and saw Marshelaine coming
back to bed. There was a toothbrush in her hair. She was coming
