17...

Frank hung up the phone quickly and with an unmistakable sense of relief. His hand hung limply over the dead contraption for a moment before going to his forehead. He stood quietly for a minute or two with his eyes closed, slowly rubbing his forehead.
“What the fuck?”
He looked up at the bedroom door as if he expected someone to enter; someone with an answer for him. He imagined some sort of falling apart clown with clumped and cracking make up, fourth hand clothes barely holding together and a comically high voice warbling, ‘wrong number, that’s all’.
“Seriously dude, what the fuck?”
Frank sat back on his bed with a hard luck thump. His heart was beating way too fast for him to go back to sleep right now. A deep and rattling cough struck him and shook him. He half-stood, leaning over to grab the smokes out of his desk drawer and light one. He let out another cough; short, sharp and dry.
Brushing ash off of his thigh, Frank gave a perfunctory exam of his naked body. Not bad, he thought, I could do with some exercise. His unit looked a little ridiculous, as it always did, just sitting there. And, as if his mouth ran via a different brain:
“Seriously! Are you going to do anything about that phone call?”
He looked at the door once again. Did he really want to deal with this? Where did he even start?
“Why is this my fucking issue?”
He stood with a rapid fury and stamped out the cigarette on the empty coke can on the way to the telephone. He yanked up the receiver and began to automatically dial. As if performing a comic routine only he could see, his left hand reached over and pushed the right one down, receiver and all.
“If I call Mary, I’ll never get back to bed.”
He once again picked up the telephone and began dialing. There were a series of hollow clicks that seemed to get a little further away with each...
“City and state?” A horrendously, nasal voice bleated.
“Davis, California.” Frank could hear is voice as if it were coming from somewhere else.
“Listing?”
“Lou Deeds,” he said with a certain finality.
“Here’s that number.”
Frank wrote the number down and hung up the phone. He was about to dial when he heard the front door to the apartment open. He suddenly felt sure that he wanted Bryan’s take on this action.
“Hey Bry?” Frank was asking as he charged out of the bedroom, but his voice suddenly all but dried up.
The shambles of a man standing at the front door of the apartment was certainly not Bryan