The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,209

this dandruffy grump who barely uttered hello. He’d clamp the phones to his head, listening to the signal when it came, pursing his lips and shaking his head, maybe say a thing or two about needing more sleep than he was getting. He could barely be bothered to power up the lights at Second Bell; Michael could have let enough gas build up to blast them all to the moon, and he had the feeling that Elton wouldn’t have said word one about it.

He could have used a bath too. Hell, they both could.

What was it? Theo’s death? Since the supply party’s return, an anxious hush had settled over the whole Colony. The thing with Zander made no sense to anyone. Stranding Caleb on the tower like that. Sanjay and the others had tried to keep it quiet, but gossip traveled quickly. People were saying they’d always known there was something a little off about that guy, that all those months down the mountain had done something to his brain. That he hadn’t been right since that thing with his wife and the baby who had died.

And then that peculiar business with Sanjay. Michael didn’t know what the hell to make of it. Two nights ago he had been sitting at the panel when suddenly the door had swung open and there was Sanjay, standing there with a round-eyed look on his face that seemed to say: Aha! That’s it, Michael had thought, the earphones still clamped to his head—his crime couldn’t have been more obvious—I’m dead meat now. Somehow Sanjay found out about the radio; I’m going to be put out for sure.

But then a funny thing happened. Sanjay didn’t say anything. He just stood in the doorway, looking at Michael, and as the silent seconds passed, Michael realized that the expression on the man’s face wasn’t quite what he’d thought at first glance: not the righteous indignation of crimes uncovered in the night but an almost animal dumbfoundedness, a blank amazement at nothing. Sanjay was wearing bedclothes; his feet were bare. Sanjay didn’t know where he was; Sanjay was sleepwalking. Lots of folks did it, there were times when it seemed half the Colony was up and cruising around. It had something to do with the lights, the way it was never quite dark enough to really settle in. Michael had taken a turn or two himself, once awakening to find himself in the kitchen, smearing his own face with honey from a jar. But Sanjay? Sanjay Patal, Head of the Household? He hardly seemed the type.

Michael’s mind was working fast. The trick would be to get Sanjay out of the Lighthouse without waking him up. Michael was concocting various strategies for this—he wished he had some honey to offer him—when Sanjay suddenly frowned sharply, cocked his head to the side as if processing some distant sound, and shuffled rigidly past him.

“Sanjay? What are you doing?”

The man had come to a halt before the breaker panel. His right hand, which hung loosely at his side, gave a little twitch.

“I don’t … know.”

“Isn’t there,” Michael ventured, “I don’t know, someplace else you have to be?”

Sanjay said nothing. He lifted his hand and held it before his face, turning it slowly back and forth as he gazed at it with the same mute puzzlement, as if he couldn’t quite decide whom it belonged to.

“Bab … cock?”

More footsteps outside; suddenly Gloria was in the room. She, too, was wearing her bedclothes. Her hair, which she tied up in the daytime, fell halfway down her back. She seemed a little out of breath, having evidently run from their house to follow him. She ignored Michael, who by now felt less alarmed than embarrassed, like an incidental witness to some private marital drama, and marched straight to her husband’s side, taking him firmly by the elbow.

“Sanjay, come to bed.”

“This is my hand, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replied impatiently, “it’s your hand.” Still holding her husband by the elbow, she glanced toward Michael and mouthed the word “sleepwalking.”

“It’s definitely, definitely mine.”

She heaved a sigh. “Sanjay, come on now. Enough of this.”

A flicker of awareness came into the man’s face. He turned to look about the room, his eyes alighting on Michael.

“Michael. Hello.”

The earphones were gone, hidden under the counter. “Hey, Sanjay.”

“It seems I have … taken a walk.”

Michael stifled a laugh; though what, he wondered, had Sanjay been doing at the breaker box?

“Gloria has been good enough to come after me to take me home.