Time Thieves

Annie Faydor's whispers like muzak for lonely people. It took him ten minutes to come to the decision he knew he had to make. He picked up the telephone on the desk, pulled out the 50-number personal directory in the base, and dialed the house next door.
        
        The phone rang eighteen times.
        
        Finally, she answered it. She was surly, for she evidently thought it was Henry. He let her say hello three times, until he was certain she was Annie and that she was home. Then he hung up. Until she had answered the phone, he could pretend that there were many explanations to the eerie, whispering voice. But once he knew she was home, and once he was able to compare her voice to the whisper that constantly accompanied him now, he could not excuse the phenomenon. He had been reading her mind.
        
        Annie Faydor's whining complaint against her perfidious husband and against the world in general was getting to be a distinct drag. He attempted to snuff the entire thing out of his mind and be done with it, but he could find no way to stop the input.
        
        Then there was a second voice, speaking to him in a whisper as the first had. It was vague and unimaginably distant, but it swelled in volume as the seconds passed. He forgot Annie and focused on this upstart.
        
        Though it grew as clear and as loud as the Faydor woman's whisper, it made no sense. It was a jumble of words and feelings, polysyllabic tonal chains that sometimes were recognizeable as English and sometimes were nothing more than murmurs, groans and sighs of happiness.
        
        It took him more than five minutes to identify the sleep-laden thoughts of his own wife. She wasn't dreaming, but she was thinking in a random, restful manner that indicated the human brain didn't relax completely, even when its body was slumbering soundly.
        
        He smiled at the rounded comfortableness of her thoughts and made to shut off their contact.
        
        He couldn't do it.
        
        The sweet, gentle tide of Della's memories undulated over him, through him, saturating him as they grew in volume and intensity. He was beginning to find the thought of sleep irresistible. His eyes fluttered, and he yawned and stretched.
        
        Then, as the whispers swayed and crashed together, he was fully awake, listening to Annie Faydor bitch about Henry-while Della's unconscious ramblings coursed as a backdrop to the carefully constructed catalogue of infidelity.
        
        And there were others.
        
        He opened his eyes.
        
        The den was deserted.
        
        He closed his eyes and listened and felt the others surging toward him. In minutes, they were on him, overwhelming him, pouring forth a mixture of bitterness and happiness, fear and trust, hatred and love. He recognized some of them as neighbors. Others were utter strangers to him, invading the sanctity of his mind.
        
        “Go away!” he heard himself croaking at the empty room.
        
        They remained, as he had known they would. They chattered and laughed, hissed and cried. Here, a mother agnonized over the pregnancy of an unwed daughter. Here, a businessman worked over his balance sheets. Here, a teenage boy popped two bennies and leaned back in his chair, waiting for the surge of excitement he knew would claim him. Here, bare legs tangled in love.
        
        He stood and pushed the swivel chair away from him. It fell over, backwards, but made little noise on the thick blue carpeting.
        
        More whispers arose in the distance and rushed towards him. He had opened up a floodgate of thought-projectionists, and the deluge was about to take him.
        
        Here, a man named Harry had drunk too much and was leaning into the bathroom sink, wondering if he should or could be sick. Here, a woman lay in a dark bedroom, alone, watching the patterns of automobile lights on her roughly plastered ceiling. Here a bitter argument over money. Here, a baby is crying in the night and a woman is padding along the corridor to its room, her slippers making soft animal sounds on the hardwood floor.
        
        He took three quick, wobbling steps away from the desk, into the center of the room. Each step became a challenge of heroic proportions. He now had to consciously will each set of muscles to do their part. By the time he was three steps from