Velocity

undesirable. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but now he wanted a beer and a shot.
    The stars looked hard. They were bright, too, in the cloudless sky, but the feeling he got from them was hardness.
    Neither the back steps nor the floorboards of the porch creaked. He had plenty of time to keep the place in good, tight condition.
    After gutting the kitchen, he himself had built the cabinets. They were cherry wood with a dark stain.
    He had laid the tile floor: black-granite squares. The granite countertops matched the floor.
    Clean and simple. He had intended to do the whole house in that style, but then he had lost his way.
    He poured a cold bottle of Guinness stout into a mug, spiked it with bourbon. When he did drink, he wanted punch in both the texture and the taste.
    He was making a pastrami sandwich when the phone rang. “Hello?”
    The caller did not respond even when Billy said hello again.
    Ordinarily, he would have thought the line was dead. Not this evening.
    Listening, he fished the typewritten message from his pocket. He unfolded it and smoothed it flat on the black-granite counter.
    Hollow as a bell, but a bell without a clapper, the open line carried no fizz of static. Billy couldn’t hear the caller inhale or exhale, as if the guy were dead, and done with breathing.
    Whether prankster or killer, the man’s purpose was to taunt, intimidate. Billy didn’t give him the satisfaction of a third hello.
    They listened to each other’s silence, as if something could be learned from nothing.
    After perhaps a minute, Billy began to wonder if he might be imagining a presence on the far end of the line.
    If he was in fact ear-to-ear with the author of the note, hanging up first would be a mistake. His disconnection would be taken as a sign of fear or at least of weakness.
    Life had taught him patience. Besides, his self-image included the possibility that he could be fatuous, so he didn’t worry about looking foolish. He waited.
    When the caller hung up, the distinct sound of the disconnect proved that he had been there, and then the dial tone.
    Before continuing to make his sandwich, Billy walked the four rooms and bath. He lowered the pleated shades over all the windows.
    At the dinette table in the kitchen, he ate the sandwich and two dill pickles. He drank a second stout, this time without the added bourbon.
    He had no TV. The entertainment shows bored him, and he didn’t need the news.
    His thoughts were his only company at dinner. He did not linger over the pastrami sandwich.
    Books lined one wall of the living room from floor to ceiling. For most of his life, Billy had been a voracious reader.
    He had lost interest in reading three years, ten months, and four days previously. A mutual love of books, of fiction in all genres, had brought him and Barbara together.
    On one shelf stood a set of Dickens in matched bindings, which Barbara had given him for Christmas. She’d had a passion for Dickens.
    These days, he needed to keep busy. Just sitting in a chair with a book made him restless. He felt vulnerable somehow.
    Besides, some books contained disturbing ideas. They started you thinking about things you wanted to forget, and though your thoughts became intolerable, you could not put them to rest.
    The coffered ceiling of the living room was a consequence of his need to remain busy. Every coffer was trimmed with dentil molding. The center of each featured a cluster of acanthus leaves hand-carved from white oak, stained to match the surrounding mahogany.
    The style of this ceiling suited neither a cabin nor a bungalow. He didn’t care. The project had kept him occupied for months.
    In his study, the coffered ceiling was even more ornate than the ceiling in the living room.
    He did not go to the desk, where the unused computer mocked him. Instead, he sat at a worktable arrayed with his carving tools.
    Here also were stacks of white-oak blocks. They had a sweet wood smell. The blocks were raw material for the ornamentation’s that would decorate the bedroom ceiling, which was currently bare plaster.
    On the table stood a CD player and two small speakers. The disc deck was loaded with zydeco music. He switched it on.
    He carved until his hands ached and his vision blurred. Then he turned off the music and went to bed.
    Lying on his back in the dark, staring at a ceiling that he could not see, he waited for his eyes to fall shut. He waited. He heard something on the roof. Something scratching at the