Telephone

by Percival Everett

  Meg was not tying herself into her usual yoga poses, and I suppose I read this as a gesture.

  “The ophthalmologist is squeezing us in three weeks from tomorrow.”

  “That’s the soonest?”

  “Apparently.”

  Meg opened and closed her book.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You,” she said, as if she had been waiting for me to ask.

  “Me what?”

  “Flirting with Dr. Baby.”

  “What? What are you talking about? I said hardly anything in there.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you seventeen all of a sudden?”

  “Good night.” She turned off her bedside lamp.

  “No. What the hell? I think I would know if I was flirting.”

  “Because you’re so familiar with the behavior?” She said this more or less into her pillow.

  “Meg.”

  It was unlike Meg to worry over such things, and so I worried that I had actually been flirtatious. I searched my memory of the brief encounter for something I was missing. I couldn’t even remember Dr. Terence looking directly at me during the examination. I tried to be angry with Meg, but I couldn’t hold on to it.

  “If I was flirting, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize I was.”

  “Okay.”

  Her “okay” was so flat, so distant, so blaming, that it actually did make me angry, and so I said nothing else. Instead I fought the urge to say something mean under my breath, not that I could have come up with anything, and stared through the open window until I believed I was asleep.

  I walked Basil up into the hills. I wondered what made any given spot pee worthy. Why did he sniff and sniff at one spot and leave a couple of drops, leave nothing at the next, and then drench another? I asked Basil as much and he offered no answer, at least none I understood. I also recalled as I walked how much I had been softened by my daughter. Since her birth I was a much kinder person. Not that I was ever a mean man, but I was, before her, direct enough, blunt enough, and unfeelingly honest enough to come across as an asshole on more than a few occasions. It surprised me when Meg agreed to marry me but perhaps not as much as my asking her.

  On a clear day I would have had a view of downtown far off, but it was not a clear day. I scanned the ground for scat of any animal other than my dog. Occasionally a bear or lion would wander down into the neighborhoods below, hanging out in pools or on porches. It happened frequently enough that the television news caught some on video now and again, but I had never run into anything but coyotes. Coyotes were everywhere. They strolled through downtown Los Angeles at night. Evidence of them was everywhere. I had never even found sign of lions or bears. I was very fond of coyotes, but they weren’t lions, bears. I was not afraid of coyotes. There were rattlesnakes up there too, and I was plenty afraid of them, but I didn’t want to see one.

  “What did you say to Hilary?” Horace Golightly asked me. Horace hated both his first and last names and insisted on being called by his middle name, Igor.

  “What are you talking about, Igor?” I asked.

  We were sitting in the coffee shop behind the library on campus. We each had coffee, and I was pulling free crumbs from an overly dry muffin.

  “When I found her, she was in tears.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of days ago.”

  “I told her she’d screwed the pooch. Not in so many words. I didn’t mention a dog. Or screwing, for that matter.”

  Horace stared at me. “You do have a way with people.”

  “I told her that it would be in her best interest to start looking for jobs. She’s not going to get tenure.”

  Igor nodded agreement.

  “I wasn’t going to be one of those colleagues who gives false hope. She needs to be ready for reality. Not that I care all that much. She knew what she had to do, and she didn’t do it.”

  Igor laughed. “You sound like you sounded when we first met.”

  “Sorry. I’m a little cranky. Home stuff.”

  “How’s work?” he asked.

  “Coming along. My grad students are pretty good. The undergraduates are going to kill me.”

  “You got any hot ones?”

  “Come on. They all look like they’re thirteen.”

  “Except the ones that look nineteen.” He laughed at himself. “I’m a dirty old paleontologist.”

  “You’d run for the hills if one of them looked twice at you.”

  “No doubt. But you, you’re a young man.”

  “I should point out to you that forty-two is still twice their age.”

  “I hate math.”

  “Hey, I want you to look at something.” I took the slip of paper from my pocket. “I found this in my jacket.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” I handed it to him.

  “Help me,” he translated it. “What is this?”

  “I found it in my jacket pocket.”

  “So?”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Somebody’s fucking with you.”

  “New jacket. Well, used new. eBay.”

  “Help with what? Homework? The laundry?”

  “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

  “Weird is the new dean.”

  I pointed to my half-eaten muffin. “You want any of this?”

  He waved it off.

  “Do you think I should talk to Hilary again?” I asked.

  “No. What could you say?”

  “Thought you could help me out.”

  Igor finished his coffee and nodded toward a young woman walking past.

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t see her.”

  “You know you can count on me to come visit you on every third Sunday,” I said. “Now, I’m going to prepare for class.”

  “I know you. You’re going to take a nap in your office.”

  “As I said.”

  Fulica americana. Five individuals, represented by twelve bones, were located in pack rat middens. The requirements of this species are very like those of ducks discovered in the cave deposit.

  It seemed odd, but right, that Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles should be a cheery place. The lobby was lively and colorful. Bright colors, not pastels. A couple of clowns strolled through. Children laughed in the corners with their laughing parents. We checked in at the desk with a smiling young man who already knew our names and which doctor we were there to see. He instructed us to follow the light blue line to the east wing. On our way we passed a giant aquarium filled with angelfish and black ghosts; the angelfish actually had wings. This made me pause, and I stood there staring, a fish staring back at me.

  “What is it with doctors and fish?” Sarah asked.

  “Fish are supposed to be calming,” Meg said. “Fish calm everyone down. They use fish in prisons during riots.”

  That’s not true, I thought, but I said nothing. In what prison were they using fish and how?

  The outer waiting area of the ophthalmology department was done up in all red, various shades from pink to burgundy. Our wait for an examination room was, however, brief. The exam room was as one might expect. Posters of eyes and ears covered the walls. A square nurse came in with a clipboard, took Sarah’s blood pressure and temperature. She was talking the whole time, but I cannot remember what she said, if I even knew what she was saying. The nurse looked at the thermometer and nodded the nod of an expert at reading such things. “Let’s try the other arm,” she said about the blood pressure. “The other arm is not the same as that one.”

  Sarah didn’t respond but looked at me as if to ask, What the fuck? And though Sarah would never have said that, not in those words, she actually did. “What the fuck?” she said, ironically.

  “Sarah,” Meg said. I thought it was a reprimand at first. It wasn’t. “Sarah,” she said again.

  My daughter looked strangely into the air in fr
ont of her. Her head fell back ever so slightly.

  “Zach?” Meg’s voice shot through me.

  Sarah was not herself, was not right. I took her hand, felt the small bones under my thumb. I thought it was odd that I was taking time to appreciate her delicate construction. “Bug?”

  Sarah’s eyes fluttered and rolled back in her head. For some reason I looked up at a poster of the parts of the eye as if for an answer.

  The nurse was to the door quickly. “Dr. Peterson!” she called down the hall. “Emergency in three.” Then, “Calling Dr. Peterson, calling Dr. P., trouble in room three, Dr. P. I rhymed.”

  Dr. Peterson was an enormous man, near seven feet tall. He squeezed through the door and gently moved my wife and me out of the way. His giant head hovered over Sarah. “She’s seizing,” he said. So calmly he said it. But it wasn’t his daughter, was it?

  And then it was over. Sarah looked at me, disoriented for only a second. I asked her if she was all right. She asked me why I was asking, smiled.

  Dr. Peterson stood and bumped his large head on the ceiling. “Whew. An abscene seizure, not obscene, but abscene. But an obscene seizure is something to see, believe you me.”

  “You rhymed,” the square nurse said.

  “I believe I did,” the doctor said.

  I awoke, sweaty and confused. I looked at my watch. I would be only a couple of minutes late for class.

  2

  There was a bus that transported the gear, but most of the students chose to carpool out to Anza-Borrego, to the Yuha Desert at the south end of the park. It was a two-day field trip that I had made several times. I was in my aged Jeep with Hilary. She had apparently gotten over our last, awkward conversation, but still, there was not a lot of talking during the first part of the long ride. It was near one hundred degrees, and with the soft cover, there was, in fact, no air-conditioning, so we sweated and drank water.

  “Think we’ll see a lion?” I asked.

  “Have you ever seen one out here?”

  “A couple of times over the years,” I told her. “From a pretty good distance. I think I prefer it that way.”

  “Just how much chaperoning are we supposed to do?” she asked.

  “They’re college students. If they want to fuck, they fuck. Who can stop them? It’s all cool as long as we don’t fuck them. Perish the thought.”

  “I understand. Though it’s really not going to do much to make my job security any worse.”

  I ignored her comment. “We can’t let the underaged ones drink booze. That’s the only policing we’re required to perform. And all that means is that we don’t supply the booze. Might as well accept that they’re all going to drink and smoke pot.”

  “And fuck.”

  “And fuck.”

  After some more small talk, Hilary asked if I would write her a letter of recommendation for fellowships.

  Turns out I am not a nice man. “Hilary, what kind of letter do you think I can write for you?”

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “No, Hilary, I’m serious. I would like to help you, so tell me what I can write. Do you have anything I can read? Do you even have your raw data in any kind of shape for me to look at?”

  “Why are you such an asshole with me?”

  At this I smiled. “Good. I’ll write you a letter. A good letter.”

  She tossed me a confused glance.

  “If you can tell everybody else to fuck off the way you just told me and do your work, you’ll be all right. I’ll write you a letter.”

  “That’s all it took?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What kind of shape is the data in?” I asked, trying to make nice.

  “Not very good,” she admitted. “I’m really not cut out for this. I’m no scientist. My sister is a great scientist. I’m not.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You’re plenty smart, but as you can see, you don’t have to be smart to be successful.”

  She laughed. “What do you think I should do?”

  “I’m not one to offer advice. Mainly because I, unlike you, am not very smart. What do you want to do?”

  “Classical piano.”

  “I didn’t know you played.”

  “I don’t.”

  “A couple of lessons then.” I felt more comfortable with Hilary. She had turned some kind of corner, though I don’t know what that corner was. She seemed to accept her situation; still quite obviously she was full of fear, but with good nature. I wished I could help, but I knew I wouldn’t.

  Larus pipixcan. A partial ulna and the distal end of a humerus were recovered from the cave in pack rat middens and on rocks. Some other bones, yet to be identified because of the size of the fragments, were also discovered in similar nonstratigraphic contexts.

  I imagined my little Sarah at home. She had not complained about her vision for a few days, and we all seemed to relax a bit. Meg had even begun to talk again about finishing the volume of poems she had been working on for a while. I doubted she would complete the project. For years she had blamed motherhood and marriage for her lost momentum. It was probably true enough. Though I considered myself a present father and capable roommate, it was different for her, as it is different for mothers. As much as I did, she did more. But at least now she talked about the book the way she once did, and I read this as a good sign, tried to read it as good.

  Still, regarding Sarah, or just in general, I had a sense of something looming. I felt myself drifting, sinking, and I didn’t want my mood to affect my time with the students, so I started thinking about things like magma formation and subduction boundaries, alluvial fans and headward erosion, canyons and V-shaped valleys. But the V-shaped valley became a metaphor in my mind for the newly formed watershed that was my daughter’s vision. We wondered for months after her birth just what color her eyes would be, dark brown like mine or amber like my wife’s. They turned light brown but not amber, so they were her own, and that turned out to be an indication of her personality, always her own person. Perhaps all parents think as we thought about our child’s individual and singular attributes, but that made her development no less unique. I always wanted to see through her eyes, to see her world. I imagined, realized, that if I could think like her, have my mind open like hers, so much of the world would be that much more available, magical, mysterious to me. I would be a better scientist, a better person, a better father.

  We made a planned stop at a little convenience store in the middle of nowhere, just outside of a nothing called Ocotillo. The flat-roofed, one-story adobe was newly painted, but no amount of cosmetics could cover its age and wear. The sign was not newly painted but spelled out, peeling and weathered, Coyote Stop. We would buy sandwiches and drinks and connect before the last leg of the drive to the campsite. Many of the students had never camped before, so this isolated island of desert commerce served as a bit of a buffer between town and the true middle of nowhere. The ancient couple who owned and operated the gas station had seemed for years as old as the desert itself, and as tough and grizzled as anything that grew or lived in it, but still they carried on. They were both named Pat. Man Pat was a squat man with broad shoulders, clearly at one time quite muscular, and thick glasses. Woman Pat was built similarly, and though she walked with a severe limp, she somehow managed a kind of dancy grace.

  “Professor,” Woman Pat said as she stepped out into the dusty parking area. She gave me a hug.

  Man Pat came out onto the gravel yard.

  “Are you still alive?” I asked. “Why hasn’t someone buried you?”

  “Dying is too expensive.”

  “That’s what I hear.” I shook his hand, his grip surprising me, as always. I nodded toward Hilary. “Pats, this is Professor Gill.”

  “You’re too young to be a professor,” Woman Pat said. “We’re used to these old farts like Zach.”

  Man Pat shook Hilary’s hand in an exaggeratedly flirtatious way, stopping just short o
f giving her knuckles a kiss. “Professor Gill.”

  “Hilary, please.”

  “Did he make you ride in that microwave of his?” Woman Pat asked. “He’s not a nice man. Come in and let’s find you something cold to drink.”

  A couple of cars of students rolled in, and the quiet little store was quiet no more. Another car arrived. Rachel Charles got out of that one and waved to me. It made me feel awkward as none of the other students had greeted me at all. Hilary caught my reaction and laughed to tease me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. I followed her and the Pats into the store. We stood around at the counter and drank soda while the students stocked up on snacks, drinks. I looked at the array of fan belts that hung on the wall behind the register. They were all dusty, and I was fairly certain that most wouldn’t fit anything on the road now.

  “Excuse me. This is okay, right, prof?” a young man asked, showing me a six-pack of beer.

  “You realize that’s pretty shitty beer?”

  “Yeah, I know, but is it okay if I buy it?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two,” he said.

  “Then it’s okay. But please go easy, and don’t share it with the folks who aren’t legal, all right?”

  “You got it.” The lying bastard.

  “How long have you been out here?” Hilary asked the Pats.

  “Going on sixty years,” Woman Pat said.

  “You’ve been married for sixty years?”

  “Hell no,” the old woman said. “I’m not the marrying kind. This old fool asks me every year.”

  “But she always says no,” Man Pat said. “In fact, she says hell no, just like you just heard. She seems to enjoy saying no to me. I actually don’t really have any desire to get married myself, but I ask anyway to make her feel wanted. You can’t imagine what it’s like to grow so old and unattractive.”

  “He just talks like that to get me turned on,” Woman Pat said.

  Rachel Charles came to the counter to pay for a couple of yogurts and some apples and peaches. She looked at me and then at Hilary. To Hilary she said, “I don’t know how you can ride in that Jeep without air-conditioning.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Hilary said, then shook her head. “Actually, it’s hot as hell. It really is uncomfortable.”