by Barry Rachin
Thursday night at three a.m. the phone rang, bludgeoning Ruth from a sound sleep. “Hi, it’s me. I’m in a bind.”
“A bind,” Ruth repeated absently. In the background she could hear a typewriter clacking away. An Officer O’Rourke was being paged over a staticky intercom. “What do you want, Melba?”
There was another nasally request for Officer O’Rourke to report to the squad room. “Some goddamn money would be nice!”
Ruth lowered the receiver into her lap. The profanity and screaming that ensued was barely audible with the receiver nestled firmly into the folds of her cotton pajamas. On the bed next to her, Fred was snoring soundly; he never heard the phone. Through the open doorway twenty feet away, Ruth watched Clyde resting under the covers. Arms splayed back over his head, the child slept slack-jawed, lips slightly parted. “Opportunistically,” Ruth murmured into the darkness as she eased the receiver quietly back on the phone and lay back down to sleep.