eyes surfaced: that it was most likely a false memory.
The thing is, old buddy, you wanted Litchfield to look uneasy, but even more than that, you wanted him to look guilty.
Quite possibly true, quite possibly Carl Litchfield was a peach of a guy and a helluva doctor, but Ralph still found himself calling Litchfield's office again half an hour later. He told the receptionist with the sexy voice that he'd just rechecked his calendar and discovered next Tuesday at ten wasn't so fine after all. He'd made an appointment with the podiatrist for that day and forgotten all about it.
"My memory's not what it used to be," Ralph told her.
The receptionist suggested next Thursday at two.
Ralph countered by promising to call back.
Liar, liar, pants on fire, he thought as he hung up the phone, walked slowly back to the wing-chair, and lowered himself into it.
You're done with him, aren't you?
He supposed he was. Not that Dr. Litchfield was apt to lose any sleep over it; if he thought about Ralph at all, it would be as one less old geezer to fart in his face during the prostate exam.
All right, so what are you going to do about the insomnia, Ralph; "Sit quiet for half an hour before bedtime and listen to classical music," he said out loud. "Buy some Depends for those troublesome calls of nature."
He startled himself by laughing at the image. The laughter had a hysterical edge he didn't much care for-it was damned creepy, as a matter of fact-but it was still a little while before he could make himself stop.
Yet he supposed he would try Hamilton Davenport's suggestion (although he would skip the diapers, thank You), as he had tried most of the folk remedies well-meaning people had passed on to him. This made him think of his first bona ride folk remedy, and that raised another grin.
It had been McGovern's idea. He had been sitting on the porch one evening when Ralph came back from the Red Apple with some noodles and spaghetti sauce, had taken one look at his upstairs neighbor and made a tsk-tsk sound, shaking his head dolefully.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ralph asked, taking the seat next to him. A little farther down the street, a little girl in jeans and an oversized white tee-shirt had been skipping rope and chanting in the growing gloom.
"It means you're looking folded, spindled, and mutilated," McGovern said. He used one thumb to tilt the Panama back on his head and looked more closely at Ralph. "Still not sleeping?"
"Still not sleeping," Ralph agreed.
McGovern was quiet for a few seconds. When he spoke again, he did so in a tone of absolute-almost apocalyptic, in fact-finality.
"Whiskey is the answer," he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"To your insomnia, Ralph. I don't mean you should take a bath in it-there's no need of that. Just mix a tablespoon of honey with half a shot of whiskey and hook it down fifteen or twenty minutes before you hit the hay."
"You think?" Ralph had asked hopefully.
"All I can say is it worked for me, and I had some real problems sleeping around the time I turned forty. Looking back on it, I guess that was my midlife crisis-six months of insomnia and a year-long depression over my bald spot."
Although the books he'd been consulting all said that booze was a vastly overrated cure for sleeplessness-that it often made the problem worse instead of better, in fact-Ralph had tried it just the same. He had never been much of a drinker, so he began by adjusting McGovern's recommended half-shot dosage down to a quarter of a shot, but after a week of no relief he had upped the ante to a full shot... then to two.
He woke up one morning at four-twenty-two with a nasty little headache to accompany the dull brown taste of Early Times on the roof of his mouth, and realized he was suffering his first hangover in fifteen years.
"Life's too short for this shit," he had announced to his empty apartment, and that had been the end of the great whiskey experiment.
Okay, Ralph thought now as he watched the desultory mid-morning flow Of customers in and out of the Red Apple across the street.
Here's the situation McGovern says you look like shit, you almost fainted at Lois Chasse's feet this moring, and you just called and canceled the appointment you made with Ye Olde Family Physician. So what next?