“Go and see what’s up,” Sanja whined, butting me with her elbow. I opened my eyes. A glance at the clock: seven thirty in the morning. It was Milka, it couldn’t have been anyone else. “It’s nothing—it’ll stop,” I whispered. And sure enough, it rang and rang a bit more and then stopped. I sank back into sleep but the phone blared again. As chief of the family police, Milka obviously knew that you can soften up a prisoner with sleep deprivation. “Unplug it, please,” Sanja pleaded, a collateral victim. I had to get up to reach the phone and I was still smashed from the night before. I banged into the doorpost with a real kerthump and fell, knocking over the books and newspapers piled on the plastic box where I kept important documents. “Jeezus,” she said, getting out of bed and crouching down next to me. “Are you OK?” The phone and the whole world around me now rang even louder. Since Sanja had got up too and I was wussing out about Milka, I implored her, “Go and see who it is.”
