For the record, no need to apologize to me, the sounds you hear were recorded by the narrator who read with a glass in hand as the character in the story was doing. As it happens, when I listened, it conjured the image for me perfectly, so I opted to keep it as it was. I wish I could think of a movie to compare it to. There's a vision in my mind of a hero sneaking into the house of the antagonist with murder on his mind, only to discover the antagonist is waiting for him, drink in hand. Confession follows, then murder, or not. It's so vivid in my mind I feel like I should be able to name the movie but I can't. Best I can do is this

or this

and neither really fits. Regardless, point is it set the scene for me.
Also, the unfortunate truth of audio is that is sounds so radically different depending on the player/speaker/location/listener combination that it's not even vaguely possible to control for all factors. I've had people on the forum complain that the underlying white noise made a track unlistenable, when, if I isolate that track, I can only even hear it at all on my studio headphones with the volume halfway up. So, I take all such criticisms with at least that much salt.
But I do listen to your thoughts and I do take them into account even if I can't always adjust for them. And in this case, I got the same feedback from Norm, so you can be sure I'm taking this seriously.
All that said, please feel free to hit me directly with any more thoughts. We shouldn't hijack this thread for meta talk anymore. Back to the story...
