The Answer

He had strangled Lisa many times in his dreams. But always, as she died, the phone rang. Did he dare to pick it up and answer the call?...
The room was dark. It was always dark, so dark he couldn't see the bed, the soft wide bed with the plum satin headpiece that was studded with cushioned buttons, and the triangle of chiffon that was draped elegantly from the ceiling. The Venetian blinds were shut tight, so that not even the blackness of the black summer's night could be seen.
John Reeve couldn't see the bed, and he also couldn't see his tall self in the modern half-moon mirror of his wife's dressing table across from him. Most of all he couldn't see her—Lisa, his wife.
But he could hear and smell. He could hear Lisa breathing softly. He could scent her intoxicating perfume which clung to the hot windless air of the room. Then there was the uneven pounding of his own heart—that told him he was here, here in his wife's apartment.
It was so late. It was that dark hour when the planets themselves sleep, couched against their black bed of space. It was that dark hour when illusion takes hold and reality wavers in the balance.
Standing there, John Reeve forgot. He forgot—everything. Who he was, where he had come from, what he was doing here in Lisa's uptown apartment. He didn't belong here. Lisa didn't belong to him any more. It was over. She belonged to—
Why? Why had she left him?
He couldn't remember. He tried, but he couldn't remember. He couldn't even remember how he got in here. Had he stolen a key? Bribed the red-head at the desk downstairs?
He couldn't even remember two minutes ago.
He stood there in the hot windless dark, listening to Lisa's soft breathing, listening to the uneven rhythm of his heart. He sucked in the heady perfume that he had reason to remember so well. He did remember that . He saw rows of little bottles, lavender bottles, oddly shaped bottles. Anniversaries. Birthdays. No special days. What was it called? Tigress? Musetta? Jealousy? Maybe. Maybe that was it. He couldn't remember concreteness, only things you feel more than you think about.