26...

Bryan jumped at the sound of the shrilly ringing phone, but Frank reached over and answered as if he had expected it to happen all along.
“Hello?” Frank practically sang into the receiver. Something was charging him.
There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone, then the sound of quick, nearly panting breathing that stopped abruptly.
“Frank?”
The voice was papery, ringed with a spreading panic.
“Yes? Is this Lou?”
“Yeah man.”
Frank sat and let that uncomfortable silence unfold itself exponentially. He could hear Lou’s short and quick breathing and nothing but an ambient buzzing to tell anything about the caller’s surroundings.
“Are you okay Lou? You sound a little… Keyed up?”
A desperate, rattling laughter scratched the inside of Frank’s ear and he winced a little.
“You could say that, I’m keyed up all right. Look Frank, what did you call about?”
“I was actually calling about Alexis…”
A small but very audible moan came from Lou’s end of the world, it ended with something that sounded like ‘alone’.
“What was that Lou?”
“Are you alone?” he hissed.
Frank looked up at Bryan with a questioning face. Bryan saw this and leaned a bit closer towards Frank.
“My roommate Bryan’s here, but other than that I’m alone. What’s going on Lou?”
“No one is listening?”
“No…” Frank slowly shook his head.
Frank was imagining this robust and genial young man locked inside of a dark and dusty apartment. He sounded like a guy at the ass end of a speed bender. These thoughts bounced off too many sores in Frank’s memory and a wave of sadness threatened to pull him in to an undertow of despair. Hadn’t Mary said that she’d just seen him the other day? Why didn’t she mention any craziness, any druggy behavior? She wasn’t the most astute person at picking out subtle changes in people that weren’t her, but still.
“You’re calling about Alexis, right?”
“Actually yeah, I was.”
“Did she call you?”
“I’m not sure Lou. I think she might have. Is something going on man? You sound…” Frank was unsure how to put this delicately. “You sound off man.”
“Oh, bad news travels fast Frankie. Bad news travels fast.”
It could not be a coincidence that Lou just uttered a sentence that belonged in the mouth of another.
“Is something bad happening with Alexis, Lou? With you and Alexis?”
“I think she’s in a bad place man. And I think I’m probably in a bad place because of it.”
Frank could hear Lou’s breathing amping up in rpm’s again.
“Okay Lou, settle down. What’s going on man?”
“Has a guy visited you Frank?” Lou whispered in a way that made his voice feel like small, cold fingers that slowly raked across Frank’s scalp.
“What do you mean? What guy?”
“He told me things, Frank. He told me that she’d done a very bad thing.”