Sleep Disorder

by Jack Ketchum

  This dreaming business, though. From age thirty on, everybody complained about Bill's talking in his sleep. Laura had even bought earplugs. Which he thought was pretty damn rude. But at least the bitch never really complained much after that, except occasionally about the earplugs bothering her. "Go sleep on the couch if you don't like the damn things," he'd suggested once but she never did. Laura was insecure and Bill was—well, proverbially tall, dark, and handsome. He loved to think about other women when he was putting the blocks to her, pretty fair lay though she had been.

  But as for the talking, Bill supposedly spoke in a clear, conversational voice and everything he said evidently made perfect sense—or would have, if you could find a context for it.

  But you couldn't. At least he couldn't. Because the context was the dreams.

  And he never remembered his dreams.

  The talking was a minor annoyance as far as he was concerned. It didn't disturb his sleep. Annie even seemed to find it funny at first.

  "Who's Millie?" he remembered her asking one morning. There was a scratch on one of his knuckles, a little dried blood there, and he was looking at that trying to figure out how it had gotten there while he slept.

  "What?"

  "Who's Millie? You talked in your sleep last night." She laughed. “'Millie, Millie, Millie,' you said. Your lover on the side, huh?" Then she laughed again. She trusted him.

  He didn't know why she should.

  He laughed too, almost too quickly. "Millie, that's what we call Reginald Milton, one of my best clients. He hands me half a million a year to let him in on all the hot IPO's. Thank god for guys like Millie."

  Decades of practiced lying had given Bill a knack for credible comebacks in a pinch. There was no Reginald Milton, no "Millie." Millie was a cute but abundantly flawed fifty-dollar trick he picked up once in a while when Annie was away on business.

  And it occurred to him then that this talking shit could possibly get him into trouble. There was a whole lot of stuff Bill didn't want to be yammering about in his sleep. Or anywhere for that matter.

  He'd put together a little over two million in untraceable cash from various grossly illegal tactics and it was all carefully secreted in the living room wall behind the couch. He'd jigged one section of the panel with a magnet, so it was removable. You just had to know exactly where the section was.

  Also stashed behind the wall was the highly valuable coin collection Annie had inherited from an uncle. Back before she'd moved in with him the collection had been stolen from her apartment in a regrettable burglary while she was out of town. And what a coincidence! Laura had a couple hundred grand in bearer bonds which had also been stolen from her apartment in a regrettable burglary back before they'd married. The bonds were there, behind the wall.

  Bill didn't need to be talking about such things, ever—much less in his sleep with Annie lying right beside him.

  It pissed him off. He wasn't supposed to be talking in his goddamn sleep.

  It was a little worrisome.

  Some nights it was funny what he'd say and some nights—when Annie needed her sleep and he'd wake her shouting "Mail it!"—it could get annoying. But nothing more than that.

  What was really annoying was the snoring.

  The first time she elbowed him in bed he was mortified.

  "You were snoring," she said.

  "I was not."

  He glanced at himself in the mirror. His eyes looked puffy, saggy. Usually he got up feeling pretty good.

  "I was not."

  He couldn't believe it—wouldn't believe it. Snoring was something old people did. He was forty. His father had snored and you could hear it through every room in the house. There was nothing at all funny about that. It was repulsive. It was so...out of control.

  If there was one thing Bill Dumont couldn't stand it was lack of control. That was exactly why he'd left Laura—and his son Philip too. Without looking back, without a twinge of guilt.

  They hadn't the foggiest notion of control.

  Laura chronically late, forgetting appointments, forgetting to put gas in the car after it got below half a tank for godsakes, scattered.

  Philip constantly losing things at school—his lunchbox, his gloves, his new down jacket. So what if he was only five years old? That's what Laura kept telling him—Bill, he's only five! So what? Did that mean you automatically had to yell for a glass of milk every time the Jets were on the goddamn five-yard line?

  Everybody had excuses. Laura's mother had cancer. It was on her mind. Of course it was. He knew that. And Philip, according to his counselors at school, had a mild learning disability which he would eventually learn to cope with nicely.

  Eventually.

  In Bill's book none of that mattered. You either had control of things—of yourself—or you didn't.

  He'd stood it for five years. Then he dumped them. Three months later he found Annie sitting on a barstool at the Allstate. You could do that if you were in control. Make your life over on a dime.

  He was living proof.

  That was two months ago now and he'd managed to talk Annie into moving in with him and everything was fine.

  But now this...

  ...indignity.

  Snoring.

  He tried everything. Special pillows from The Sharper Image. Sleeping on his back. On his left side, on his right, on his belly. Finally Annie bought earplugs too.

  And mornings he'd wake up angry. Because he knew what he'd done the night before. There were nights lately he even woke himself up. It was that loud.

  Snoring. Like an old man. He was starting to look lousy in the morning. Like an old sick man who was failing, losing control. Tired. Slack. There was too much hair coming out in his comb.

  Next I'll be wetting the bed, he thought.

  He went to work with a tic in his upper lip that just wouldn't quit. His eyes red-rimmed and swollen.

  "Bill? You okay?" asked his partner, R.J., another less-than-reputable broker.

  "Uh, why do you ask?"

  "You look like shit."

  All right. That about said it all. R.J. was a forthright man. They were very forthright with one another about which clients they were going to sink in favor of their own till and which they'd swim along with. So in spite of the blow to his vanity he wasn't put off by the observation.

  "You're not back into the coke again, are you?"

  "No I am not back into the coke again. I haven't been sleeping right. Wake up feeling rotten. Annie says I snore so loud sometimes the windows rattle."

  "You got to get yourself squared away, man. We gotta be on the mark. How can we beat the SEC if you're all wrung out and strung out?" As if that weren't clear enough he made it clearer. "Your work's been slipping, Bill, you're fucking up. Unfuck yourself."

  Bill got the message. He could guess the reason for all this. Job stress, pure and simple. Bill was not only proverbially tall, dark, and handsome—he was also the proverbial workaholic. It was starting to wear him out. To be on the mark for his job he needed to be rested, but the snoring and sleep talking were taking their toll on his rest. They, in turn, were caused by the stress. The snake was eating its goddamn tail here. He needed some leisure, needed to blow off some steam, so he figured he'd do just that.

  Annie never got home from her job until seven, so by five Bill was blowing off some serious steam—if seminal fluid could be referred to as steam. He had Millie bent over the kitchen sink, her dollar-store skirt pushed up to her bra, his Armani slacks pooled at his ankles. Millie was short, so Bill was lifting her up by the hips, banging away. At one point, as the crisis neared, it might have looked like he was trying to stuff her down the drain—an appropriate symbol, since that's where her life had gone years ago. When he was done he nearly collapsed.

  "Wow," Millie said through a mouthful of chipped teeth. There was also a sharkfin nose. He wasn't that discriminating—at fifty bucks a pop the price was right. She seemed winded.

  "You've never give
n it to me like that. Bad day at work or something?"

  Bill was offended. How dare this bitch make some personal judgment about him? She was a whore, period. Not some buddy of his. He pulled up his pants, frowning.

  "And if you don't mind my saying so," she went on, "you look like..."

  "I look like what?"

  She pulled her skirt back down, sheepish now.

  "You were going to say I look like shit, weren't you?"

  "No," she said. "But I mean... I mean, look at yourself. Your face is all red, you've got veins sticking out. Are you okay?"

  Annie had a little mirror encircled by sea shells hanging above the stove. Bill about wailed when he looked into it.

  She's right, and so's R.J. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. Veins pulsed fat as earthworms at his forehead. I do look like shit...

  What the hell was happening? In the course of a week or so, all this had come down on him. All of a sudden, Bill Dumont was tall, dark, and not terribly handsome anymore.

  He supposed he appreciated Millie's honesty, at least to some extent. "Here," he handed her some money. "Get out."

  "Are you mad at me?"

  "No, I'm tickled fucking pink."

  "I'm just concerned for your health! You don't look good. You look sick!"

  I look like shit. "Get out." He spun her around, shoved her toward the door.

  "Hey, this is only thirty dollars!"

  "I'm a little short today. With that nose on you, you're lucky to get ten."

  "I got a kid!"

  "Your trick-baby's not my problem. Use rubbers. Get out. And let the door hit you in the ass on the way."

  He could hear her blubbering in the hallway. Whores shouldn't be allowed to have kids anyway. She's probably on welfare, sapping honest taxpayers like me. The state should make 'em all get abortions.

  "Bill," Annie said when she got home, "you look like shit."

  Bill's shoulders slumped as he sat on the couch with his beer. If one more person tells me that, I'm gonna go on a killing spree. Starting with her.

  "And I've been thinking about that," she continued. She walked to the couch with a white paper bag in her hand and pulled out a box.

  "I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. The snoring, the tossing and turning at night, the narcolalia..."

  "The what!"

  "The talking in your sleep, Bill. These are all signs of a progressive sleep disorder. And sleep disorders can lead to serious health problems. Like hypertension."

  She ought to know. Annie was an LPN for a hypertension clinic.

  "Dr. Seymour let me bring this home." She was unwinding a long black rubber tube from a plastic box with a little LCD screen on it. It was a blood pressure monitor.

  "I don't have high blood pressure," he said.

  "Well, let's see. They call it 'The Silent Killer,' Bill. You can have it for years and not know it. And sleep disorders, especially those with snoring as a symptom, can drastically raise your blood pressure. When you snore, you're not getting enough oxygen, see, so your vascular system constricts, to speed blood flow."

  She wrapped the cuff around his arm. "Don't move." Then she began pumping a rubber squeeze ball. The machine started beeping.

  He hadn't had his blood pressure taken in years. Why the hell should he? Only old people got high blood pressure.

  "Look, Annie, I don't have high blood pressure."

  The beeping stopped. "Bill, you do have high blood pressure. It's 180/110. That's way too high."

  "It could kill you, for godsakes. You could have a CVA."

  "What's that? Like an SUV?"

  "Cerebral vascular accident—a stroke, Bill. It could cause an MI, too.”

  “What's that? Military intelligence?"

  "Myocardial infarction. A heart attack."

  Fuck this shit, he thought. She was spooking him.

  But why would she exaggerate?

  "I care about you, Bill," she said. She bent over to meet his eyes and he could read the concern on her face. "I love you."

  Jesus. He hated the L Word.

  "I want you to go see the doctor," she said.

  He was looking down at her impressive cleavage and it occurred to him that if he really did croak from high blood pressure he'd never have his hands on those beauties again. Some other guy would.

  "I'll see the doctor."

  Which he did, in spite of his reluctance.

  Dr. Seymour was Annie's boss. The guy looked hungover but Bill didn't care. Annie trusted him. The doctor wrote him two scripts.

  "One's a diuretic, a water pill. It reduces total blood volume, very reliable for hypertension. But for off-the-roof blood pressure like yours, you need something else too."

  Off-the-roof. That's just fucking great. He did something rare for him. He kept his mouth shut and listened.

  "The second pill is called Clonifil," Seymour said. "Take it when you get up and just before bed. It's a calcium-channel blocker."

  So much for keeping his mouth shut. "I don't care if it's a blocker for the New York Jets so long as it makes my pressure go down."

  "Oh, it will." Did Seymour cut a small grin? "It'll make some other things go down too. But let's work on one thing at a time. Your health is the priority."

  Bill slumped. He didn't like that line about things going down. "Can't you get me some of that..."

  "The Big Blue? Oh, sure. But not for six months. Your metabolism's got to have time to acclimate to the calcium-channel blocker. Like I said. One thing at a time."

  Wonderful. My dick is dead for six months. Shit. It wasn't right. "Is it really that bad?"

  "Clinically, you have Stage Four Malignant Hypertension, Bill. There is no Stage Five. Zero over zero is what your blood pressure will be if you don't take these pills."

  Bill took the pills. Annie wasn't all that great in the sack anyway and Millie was just a hosebag who didn't always smell good. He could live without it for six months. But there was no way he was going to let R.J. take all those clients he'd spent years setting up.

  No way in hell.

  ~ * ~

  Bill liked order in his life so he bought himself a little plastic pill box to put his next day's meds in. There were three slots inside, one marked MORNING, one NOON, and one NIGHT. He barely had to pay for the meds because they were included in his healthcare package at work. Two bucks per script. He didn't like the idea of having to pop pills—but if his life depended on it? No big deal. The pills would save his life, Dr. Seymour said. And most of the side effects he barely noticed. Save one.

  The diuretic made him piss like a racehorse.

  Five times a night he was getting up. Annie muttered once in her half-sleep, "At least when you get up to use the bathroom, you don't snore."

  Calm down, calm down, keep your cool, he thought, bladder throbbing fit to burst. Stay in control. It would be nice to strangle her sometimes but that was just a fantasy.

  Hell, she was an excellent cook.

  And the medications worked. His blood pressure dropped into the normal zone, which thrilled him. What didn't thrill him was that he continued to snore and talk in his sleep. And he still looked like a truck had run over him every morning when he woke up.

  Acclimate, acclimate, he kept repeating. It would all take time. Just like Dr. Seymour said. At least things were getting better, weren't they?

  One night he woke on the street in front of his apartment in pyjamas (???alternate spelling?) and a raincoat, and he was kicking some old man's poodle and the poodle was trying to bite him through the pyjama bottoms and doing a pretty good job nipping at him and the old man was shouting.

  And the morning after that he woke up with his hands around Annie's throat.

  Squeezing.

  It was a bright sunny morning, breeze wafting through his twentythird-floor window, everything perfectly normal except he was on top of her, choking her, so far into it she was already way beyond screaming. His eyes flashed open and he felt her fingernails claw h
is cheek, looked down into a face already turning blue and her tongue like brown meat, protruding like a fat wriggling slug and heard himself bellowing, roaring, glanced up into the dresser mirror from their bed and saw a face that was not any face he knew, crimson-eyed, gloating over her, gloating over his kill-to-be.

  The phone rang.

  He let go.

  And for a moment just stared down at her shocked disbelieving eyes while she tried to fill her lungs again, her right hand fluttering to the deep red imprints on her neck.

  He rolled off and answered the phone.

  His voice sounded thick, strange, bubbling up through a film of mucus.

  "Hello?"

  "It's final," said Laura, icy calm on the other end. "As of Friday. They'll be serving you the papers. You're a free man. I just wanted you to know."

  "How much?"

  "What?"

  "What's it costing me?"

  She sighed. "You really are slime, you know that? Are you at all aware that you missed Philip's birthday three days ago?"

  "How much?"

  Click.

  Not even a how you doing? he thought. Well, he wasn't doing too well anyway. But then neither was Laura.

  She didn't know it yet but he'd taken out a $500,000 loan six months ago, a second mortgage on the house, neatly forging her name. Now that the divorce was final the house was hers. And according to New York State law so was half the debt. Collection was going to break her and the kid pretty much completely. Surprise, surprise. He'd pay back his half anytime he felt like it after the finalization. After all, he had plenty of money behind the living room wall and more coming in all the time.

  Annie was in the bathroom. He could hear water running. He could hear her coughing. Deep. Lung-coughing.

  He looked at himself in the mirror again. Same old face, all right—but there was something gone soft about it somehow, a slight almost imperceptible jowling effect at the edges of the chin, a puffiness to the cheeks. If he hadn't shaved that face every day for twenty-five years he probably wouldn't have noticed. But he did.

  He didn't like it.

  It scared him.

  It had happened overnight.