In fact it was nation-wide directory assistance. City and state please?
Calling information for his number wasn’t identical with calling him of course. Maybe she wouldn’t call him. There was that option, purely hers.
Still it seemed urgent to her—she could not have said why—to have his telephone number written hastily in ballpoint on a notepad on the bedside table of this hotel at the edge of the desert two thousand two hundred thirty-seven miles and three hours distant from him. Whether she made use of this number or not. It’s in my power. My choice.
At the other end of the line a (female) recorded voice in a neutral tone neither warmly engaging nor coolly disapproving provided her with a number which was presumably his number—how quickly it was summoned, before she’d been fully prepared—and this number when punched into the phone receiver with the brash optimism of a child playing at a game warned to be slightly dangerous, maybe more than just slightly forbidden and for this reason irresistible triggered a brief spat of ringing presumably two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles away and a click! and a (male) recorded voice This is the L___ residence. No one can come to the phone at the present time so please leave a detailed message and you will be called back—which confused her—stymied her—for her lover lived alone—didn’t he?—or had someone else lived with him until recently, and he hadn’t gotten around to changing the recording?—the voice wasn’t precisely her lover’s voice but resembled it to a degree to lure her into leaving a message even as a part of her mind remained skeptical This can’t be him, such formality isn’t like him. Yet once embarked upon the brief message she could not break it off—feeling like a fool—so stupid!—embarrassing!—leaving a message in a breathy faltering voice like air leaking from a balloon.
She thought Enough! He will never know.
In fact it was a relief to think—to assume—that whoever received the message would simply erase it, as a wrong number. For surely—she was certain—that formal oldish voice hadn’t been her lover’s voice. Whatever voice was her lover’s voice—she could not recall, just now—in any case her lover would never hear the message she’d left exposing herself so unambiguously—now she was thinking with a thrill of euphoria why call him at all? Where was the need to call him? Where was the need to attach herself to him?—she was more than two thousand miles away, the man could not touch her and render her weak, unnerved, frantic with sexual desire nor could she have touched this man had she wanted to touch him. His body that seemed to her of the weight and density of clayey earth, smelling of damp, of leaves, of the sweetest sort of rot, the taste of her own body in his mouth and his mouth in hers as they lay together like swimmers who have drowned together clutching each other thrown at last upon a desolate littered shore, and high overhead the figures of long-winged shrieking birds . . . What need had she of him! She disliked him. She hated him. He had hurt her, her body was bruised. He’d laughed hurting her. She had scoured his shoulders and back with scratches, he’d laughed seeing blood on the sheets. She hated him, such intimacy. It was an insult to her, such intimacy. All that—the life of feeling—she would have liked to squeeze from her veins drop by drop.
It was so: her soul was of no more substance than the shadows of long-winged birds—a western species of hawk? gull?—eagle?—across the drawn blind of her hotel room window. With a cruel smile she thought I will never call him. Never speak with him again.
In this way she would end it between them, this morning. This was within her power.
As in the east he was three hours into the morning and for her it wasn’t yet dawn.
There was such pleasure in heedlessness, as in cruelty! Eagerly she opened the blind. Pushed aside the drapes that were made of a heavy synthetic fabric. It was exhilarating to her to see that the sun was only just rising at the mountainous horizon. That in every direction she could see beyond the sprawl of the city there was an open lunar landscape, unnameable. She thought He has no idea where I am, he will never know.
As he would never know how she’d been awake much of the night as she’d been awake much of the two previous nights. How she resented him, that she’d been awake on his account. Despite the air-conditioning she’d sweated through her nightclothes and the nape of her neck was damp and sticky and the places he’d touched her were bruised and sore and her mouth still swollen and the fleshy lips between her legs swollen and singular and perverse with their own little heartbeat. He will never know. No more!
Yet—so strangely!—even as she was thinking she would not call him, she would tear into shreds the slip of paper with his number on it, that she wouldn’t be tempted to call him at a later time, she’d lifted the receiver of the bedside phone and got an outside line and another time consulted directory assistance and another time a (female) recorded voice came on and this time she made a point of providing both her lover’s name and the name of the street on which he lived in that city two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles away and three hours into the future so that there could be no chance of a second mistake—previously she’d given just her lover’s name—and now she was provided with a number that seemed familiar to her—at least, the first three digits seemed familiar—and this number she called without giving herself time to think No! no why are you doing this, you should not risk it and after several rings a man answered at the other end of the line amid a crackling of static and the man’s voice which she could not hear clearly sounded abrupt, unfriendly as if the ringing telephone had interrupted him at a time inconvenient to him and she was saying in an unexpectedly anxious voice Matt? It’s me—it’s—her voice breaking as she uttered her name, what pathos in so uttering her own name, her name uttered as a kind of plea, a kind of begging even as the man at the other end of the line said impatiently What? Who? Can’t hear you for the line continued to bristle with static like jeering laughter as she repeated her name, how plaintive and piteous her voice for she could not grasp the situation—was this man her lover? Had she caught her lover in a mood unlike any she’d ever known in him?—for in truth she barely knew him, their intimacy had been preceded by the briefest of acquaintances—or had he sensed her ambivalence about calling him, at last on the morning of the third day of her absence, and was now taking revenge as rudely he said You’ve got the wrong number, sorry and hung up.
She was barefoot, shivering. In sweaty nightclothes and the most secret parts of her body throbbing with hurt, with insult and mute outrage she found herself standing at the hotel window. With the most frantic bare hands you could not pry open such windows nor could you smash them for they were double- or triple-plated, unsmashable. Ma’am you can’t die, so easily. Throw yourself from a window?—no.
She saw that it was 6:20 A.M. in Nevada—so early. In the east it was 9:20 A.M. and a reasonable time to have called him, she’d thought. Except he’d discovered something about her, in her absence. He’d discovered the elemental fact that he could live without her as she’d discovered that she could live without him. He was older than she by a number of years, he was more experienced and wiser and why then should he need her? With his mouth he’d made love to her in a way that had unnerved and frightened her with its blunt intimacy and now he was repelled by that intimacy and by her and wanted nothing more to do with her You’ve got the wrong number, sorry in a voice thick with disgust leaving her sickened, staggering. How swift and how deadly God’s grace came as a spike in the heart. Telling herself with a measure of calmness This is my punishment. I knew better, I had been warned. Yet like one stepping forward to the gallows, to allow the noose to be lowered over her head, perversely she saw herself take up the phone receiver again, there she was calling the number again, and after a half-ring the impatient man answered again as if knowing it must be her whom he despised and quickly in a pleading voice she said Matt this is Kathryn! Don’t you know me—Kathryn? and the reply was annoyed, grudging Look miss I’m not the man you want. I’m not “Matt.” My last name is L___ but I’m not “Matt.” I do
n’t know who the hell you want but I’m not him—OK?
The line went dead. The unknown L___ had vanished from her life as if he had never been.
This was a relief! Should have been a relief. But she was shaken, uncertain. Swaying on her feet as if she’d been struck on the head with a mallet—in such circumstances, the elemental fact is that one is still alive, still standing.
I will end this folly now. I can do this.
She seemed to be staring out a window—where?—a tall wide plate-glass window she knew to be sealed, for her own protection: many and varied were the suicides of this famed city in the desert-basin but plunging from a high-rise window was no longer an option. The sun was now a fierce red-neon bulb beyond the mountains that were serrated like knife-blades and flat-seeming like cardboard cutouts and the city that had been glamorous and glittering by night was now flat, dull, and indistinct with the haze of air pollution, its mysteries exposed like cracks and stains in soiled wallpaper. She thought I have been warned. God has given me a second chance, to spare myself.
She had not believed in God in a lifetime. Nor in any minimal secular god. She was contemptuous of such beliefs, but also envious. With no one to forbid suicide, you were more or less on your own.
Her room was on the twelfth floor in a hotel of approximately twenty floors. Not one of the newer hotels, nor one of the older glamorous hotels, rising totem-like amid the sprawl of the city—a safe neutral place she’d believed it, sufficiently distant from her point of origin and from her lover whose face she’d begun to forget. His voice, she had forgotten: confused with the voices of strangers.
She’d decided not to call him, she’d been granted a second chance to spare herself, to avoid humiliation, and yet—with the blank open eyes of a sleepwalker she observed herself in the reflecting glass returning again to the phone—taking up again the lightweight plastic receiver with the heedlessness of one who, having been snake-bit, stung with venom, takes up again the glittery slumberous length of snake, coolly dry to the touch, both terrible and splendid, with a crazy smile. Why not? Toss the dice. Again she dialed 411. Again the appeal to directory assistance. But this time she requested operator. And with care she spoke to the operator—a woman with a just discernible southern accent. Kathryn spelled out her lover’s name—so far as she knew it—and she spelled out the name of the suburban-rural road on which he lived; she explained to the operator that she’d been given two wrong numbers in the past ten minutes and this was a crucial matter, an emergency nearly, she could not afford to dial a wrong number again . . . In all this she remain polite, poised. You would not have guessed how close she was to screaming, cursing. Her reward was a third number both like and unlike its predecessor.
Must have dialed this number for suddenly—so very suddenly!—the phone was ringing—two thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles to the east—ringing and ringing and abruptly then the line went dead.
What was this!—her lover’s phone line had gone dead. Utter deadness, blankness she was listening to, out of the lightweight plastic mechanism. With a sob she broke the connection.
In a bureau mirror was a woman’s face flushed and smudged as if partially erased. Her mouth resembled a pike’s mouth, thin-lipped, frozen into a grimace, hideous. Madness pinged in the woman’s blood like tiny carbonated bubbles. She thought I am shorn of all pride. I am desperate, broken. I am an addict. I can stop this. Yet she continued: she did not stop: her icy fingers punched out the very number the operator had given her another time, and another time the phone rang, and rang. She saw her lover staring at the phone as it rang—his face came to her now, his eyes narrowed and turned from her—but he had no intention of answering the phone, he had no intention of speaking to her. He wanted nothing further to do with her. But this time the ringing ended with a click! and a recorded voice came on—This is Matt. Sorry I can’t come to the phone please leave a message thanks—and at once she recognized his voice, of course this was her lover’s voice, how could she have mistaken another’s voice for his! She was physically weak now, exhausted. She felt the impulse to quickly hang up the phone, that the man’s feeling for her would be untested. She foresaw never calling him again. Now that she had done it, and now she’d heard his voice and knew him, and felt a jolt of recognition deep in her body, that she knew him, and wanted him, and knew the bond between them, that distance could not dissolve, she had the power to end it, that nothing further would be risked between them. Her pride would remain intact, in time she would forget him . . . Yet she left a message for him, in a voice not so faltering as previously; as if leaving a message for her lover was the most natural thing in the world; in a rush of feeling she said she missed him, she was sorry to have left so quickly without saying good-bye, she gave him the hotel number—If you want to call. She added I love you. Quickly then she hung up the phone.
She laughed wildly, both hands over her mouth. Like a child who has muttered an obscenity that can’t be called back.
Only just 6:43 A.M. and she was spent, exhausted. It was something of a shock—a mild shock—seeing how quickly the sun had risen now, above the mountains. For once sunrise began, it could not be slowed, or impeded. Of course the sun was not “rising”—the earth was “turning on its axis” toward the sun—Kathryn knew this, for what it was worth to know such things; in her brain was an arsenal of such knowledge, loosely attached to facts, her education which had not come to her inexpensively mostly a snarl like yarn or shoelaces in a duffel bag. In any case, this “sunrise” was a spectacular sight. She was a reluctant pilgrim, she was one who saw. How the sky in the east was brilliant blinding flame-red riddled with clouds vaporous and fleeting as thoughts—how the sky was crisscrossed with mysterious funnel-like bands of cloud that widened and thinned in the wake of what might have been fighter-planes though the planes weren’t visible from where Kathryn stood.
Love you! I never said that.
Smiling to think that he might believe her. The thin-lipped pike’s mouth in a cruel smile. Let him believe what he wants!
With clumsy fingers she was fumbling to remove the sweaty nightgown, that fell in a puddle at her feet. She kicked it free of her ankles, repelled. It was disgusting to her, to smell so frankly of her body—a rank animal smell—a sexual smell—she must scrub herself clean. For the wages of sin is death. Everlasting death is the wages of sin she wished to believe, she might clutch at such a belief as one clutches at a wall, for support as the floor tilts, shifts, collapses. Wages of sin, I am in love with sin. My body sick with sin. She would step into the shower and turn the water on hot, hot as she could bear it, scalding-hot to cleanse herself, better yet in a scalding-steaming tub she might scald the interior of her body, up inside her belly where the man had been. Shut the bathroom door and the shower-stall door and the sound of the shower would be deafening, she would hear no phone ringing, she would not be tempted to answer any phone. No more! I am finished. Yet—so strangely—as if to spite her the phone on the bedside table began to ring. She had not heard this phone ring before—a high-pitched bat’s-cry ring that seemed to her utterly astonishing—unanticipated. Yet calmly and matter-of-factly as if nothing was wrong—of course, what could be wrong?—it was only a ringing phone—a ringing phone in her hotel room on the twelfth floor of the high-rise hotel surrounded by desert—she went to answer the phone seeing her hand above the receiver trembling in anticipation. How ridiculous she was, to be so frightened! So in dread of what was to come calmly thinking I don’t want this. I don’t need this. Her numbed fingers lifted the receiver as a sleepwalker might have done, heedless, yet attentive; her voice that was faintly quavering yet at a distance of so many miles might have sounded warm, assured murmured Hello! and there came at once a man’s answering voice, close in her ear in the sudden catastrophic collapse of all distance as if he were in this very room with her saying Kathryn? For Christ’s sake is that you? and simply she said Yes. It is.
A BOOK OF MARTYRS
YES. I WANT
THIS.
He asked if she was sure. She said again Yes.
The vow was unspoken between them: once started on their drive into a more northerly part of the state, once embarked upon this journey, they could not turn back.
It was a drive of approximately three and a half hours on the interstate highway if there were no delays: road construction, accidents, state police checkpoints.
In fact there was a police checkpoint just outside Madison. Triple rows of cars moved slowly, reluctantly like ice congealing, to form a single lane. Her heart beat hard in dread. They will turn us back. They know.
Stiffly-politely the Wisconsin state police officers asked the driver of the vehicle to show them his license and the vehicle registration. In the passenger’s seat she sat very still. She expected the police officers to ask for her ID but they did not.
She dared to ask who they were looking for? She did not fail to call them officers.
Not able to bring herself to say with schoolgirl propriety Whom are you looking for?
That is—For whom are you looking?
It is protocol, police officers don’t answer such questions from civilians. Police officers are the ones to ask questions. She felt a crude blush rise into her face, she’d made a fool of herself.
She was behaving as guilty people do. With a hope of disarming authority, a wish to appear innocent.
In any case she was of marginal interest to the police officers: Caucasian female, hair dark blond, early twenties, weight approximately 110. So they would size her up, impersonally.
Maybe eyeing her for possible drug use?—deciding no.
That she was attractive, very likely a college student, or a graduate student—this was of no interest to them for clearly they were looking for someone else.
And the man beside her, at the wheel of the car: at first glance maybe her father, second glance maybe her husband. Yet, the driver and his passenger didn’t seem married. They wouldn’t have seemed, to practiced police-officer scrutiny, to belong in any discernible way together.
Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories Page 5