CHAPTER 24
Hopping down my well of sleep came frog-faced doctors holding scalpel blades. Hot on their trail were gargoyle-faced liches in unhemmed robes, and behind them roared a phalanx of honking blue Volvos. The Volvos crashed against the well walls; the liches and frogs in robes scampered down toward me to escape the wailing horns. I had the frantic thought: Have I disinfected those walls yet?
Br-r-ring! Br-r-ring! went the Volvo horns.
Br-r-ring!
The phone.
I sat up. My right toe was throbbing. What Laura would have said: Call a toe truck.
The clock read ten-twenty. I’d gotten home at two-thirty, I remembered, after finally driving an exhausted Trixie home. Except for this ringing, my house was quiet—a sure sign that everyone had decided to let me sleep after my wee-hour janitor
