“I heard the front door slam and heard someone start to come up the stairs. You could tell he was drunk. He was talking to himself and he lurched rapidly up the first three steps and then fell with a thud onto the landing. He was talking all the time, cursing Mrs. Moreno, cursing the walls and the stairs, cursing the bartender in the last place he had been in, cursing the foreman on the last job he had held. Carefully and deliberately, with long pauses between each step, he finished the rest of the flight. Then he started across the hallway. His footsteps fell irregularly; first one and then several. He started up the steep, third flight that winds its way tortuously to the head of the house. He made two or three of the steps quickly, and then there was a crash and a loud, bitter howl of pain. After this everything was quiet. You could hear people closing their doors and picking up their newspapers again.”
