Lola studied him once more and saw he was in no condition to give sensible answers. She gestured disgustedly and turned her back to him.
Suddenly she snapped her fingers. Then her head turned from side to side as she made a hasty examination of the room.
“Sure enough,” she said. “His clothes ain’t here.”
She started to take deep breaths. Lola was about to lose her temper on a grand scale.
Despite his drunkenness, he managed to say, “No use getting sore about it. After all, it’s a helluva hot night. Maybe he went out for a bottle of beer. To cool himself off.”
“I’ll cool him off,” Lola said. “I’ll break his goddamn neck, that’s what I’ll do.”
She started to move around the room, searching for a suitable weapon. Kerrigan winced as he saw her lifting a thick glass ash tray, hefting it in her hand to test the weight of it. Apparently it wasn’t heavy enough. She slammed it to the floor, then darted to the open closet and reached in and pulled out a long-handled scrubbing brush. The business end of the brush was an inch of bristles and a two-inch thickness of wood.
Lola had a firm grip on the handle of the brush. She held it with both hands, aiming it at empty air and taking a few practice swipes. Then, wanting a better target, she looked around for something solid. Kerrigan heard footsteps in the hall and he thought, It’s gonna be crowded in here.
The door opened and Tom walked in. An instant later there was a loud whacking noise and Tom yelled, “Ouch!” Then there was more whacking, more yelling, and considerable activity. Tom was trying to run in several directions at once. He collided with Kerrigan, bounced away, staggered sideways, and received a wallop from Lola that spun him around like a punching bag. He tried to crawl under the bed, but there wasn’t enough space between the springs and the floor. He was much too bulky to squeeze through. The flat side of the brush landed on him and in a frenzied effort to get away from the blows he gave a mighty heave with his shoulders, so that the bed was raised on two legs. He heaved again and the bed fell over on its side. Lola kept swinging the brush and Tom was asking her to wait just a minute so they could talk it over. Lola’s reply was another whack. The sound resembled a pistol shot. Tom looked at Kerrigan and shouted, “For God’s sake, make her stop.”
Kerrigan shrugged, as though to say there was no way to stop Lola once she got started. He grinned stupidly, drunkenly, and then he started toward the door. But again it was several doors, and it seemed as if the ceiling were coming down. He couldn’t stay on his legs. The floor came up and he was flat on his face. The dazed grin remained on his lips as he heard the continued uproar. Somehow the noise of the violence was softened in his whisky-drenched brain. It was strangely soothing, almost like a lullaby. For a hazy instant he tried to understand it. But the feeling was so pleasant, so comforting, it told him to fall asleep, just fall asleep. And as the blackness enveloped him, he sensed there was nothing strange about it, after all. It was merely the sound of the house where he lived. It was as though he’d been away and he’d come back, and it was nice to be home again.