Answer it.
It was a prickling voice in his mind. No, it wasn't. It was a tiny ghost that had hidden in the curve of his ear and was whispering into his ear's cavern, then shouting merrily against the membrane of his eardrum:
Answer it!
It was Lisa. He recognized her voice.
He pulled up sharply, tossing a heavy breath across the bed.
Lisa, you fool! If I answer it, then they'll know I was here. They'll say I killed you and they'll strap me down in a chair and send ten-million volts of electricity through me and I'll be as dead as you are.
The voice changed now. It wheedled, it caressed, it coaxed him. It made a joke out of it. Then—
Please answer the telephone, darling. You know I can't stand to leave it ring like that. It's somehow—sacrilegious. Please, darling.
It was true. If Lisa were alive she wouldn't leave her telephone ringing like that, never. That was one thing Lisa was meticulous, even fetishistic, about. She might not be so meticulous about other things, such as husbands, but she invariably flew to the telephone when it rang. She used to lie on her silken bed and talk to it for hours, caressing it with her long red-tipped fingers. Lisa had loved the telephone. She had loved it above everything else. Maybe more than John. What do you mean, maybe? Of course she loved it more than she loved John!
He didn't move, so the ghost in his ear began to taunt him.