A Noise Downstairs

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Driving along the Post Road late that early October night, Paul Davis was pretty sure the car driving erratically in front of him belonged to his colleague Kenneth Hoffman. The ancient, dark blue Volvo station wagon was a fixture around West Haven College, a cliché on wheels of what a stereotypical professor drove.

It was just after eleven, and Paul wondered whether Kenneth — always Kenneth, never Ken — knew his left taillight was cracked, white light bleeding through the red plastic lens. Hadn’t he mentioned something the other day, about someone backing into him in the faculty parking lot and not leaving a note under the windshield wiper?

A busted taillight was the kind of thing that undoubtedly would annoy Kenneth. The car’s lack of back-end symmetry, the automotive equivalent of an unbalanced equation, would definitely irk Kenneth, a math and physics professor.

The way the Volvo was straying toward the center line, then jerking suddenly back into its own lane, worried Paul that something might be wrong with Kenneth. Was he nodding off at the wheel, then waking up to find himself headed for the opposite shoulder? Was he coming home from someplace where he’d had too much to drink?

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