Chapter 8:
I wake up in the dark.
The room's blue-gray. The lamp's off. The hallway light's still on, spilling through the open door and across the floor in a long yellow rectangle.
And the doorway's empty.
I sit up.
My heart's slamming. It takes me a second to remember where I am. The bar. The stairs. The small room with the dresser and the green toothbrush.
Then my feet touch the floor and the bandages remind me, and it all comes back.
The doorway's still empty.
I get up.
My feet hurt when I stand on them — a good hurt, the wrapped kind — and I go to the door and look down the hall.
Nobody.
The floor's got two dents in the rug where his boots were. That's all.
I go down the stairs.
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The bar's dark.
Not empty. Dark. One lamp on behind the counter with a green glass shade
