Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

  The boy came back with the watered whiskey. He cleared his throat and sat down at the kitchen table.

  He grinned. But he didn’t drink anything from his glass.

  The man gazed at the television. He finished his drink and started another. He reached to turn on the floor lamp. It was then that his cigarette dropped from his fingers and fell between the cushions.

  The girl got up to help him find it.

  “So what do you want?” the boy said to the girl.

  The boy took out the checkbook and held it to his lips as if thinking.

  “I want the desk,” the girl said. “How much money is the desk?”

  The man waved his hand at this preposterous question.

  “Name a figure,” he said.

  He looked at them as they sat at the table. In the lamplight, there was something about their faces. It was nice or it was nasty. There was no telling.

  “I ‘m going to turn off this TV and put on a record,” the man said. “This record-player is going, too. Cheap. Make me an offer.”

  He poured more whiskey and opened a beer.

  “Everything goes,” said the man.

  The girl held out her glass and the man poured.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very nice,” she said.

  “It goes to your head,” the boy said. “I’m getting it in the head.” He held up his glass and jiggled it.

  The man finished his drink and poured another, and then he found the box with the records.

  “Pick something,” the man said to the girl, and he held the records out to her.

  The boy was writing the check.

  “Here,” the girl said, picking something, picking anything, for she did not know the names on these labels. She got up from the table and sat down again. She did not want to sit still.

  “I’m making it out to cash,” the boy said.

  “Sure,” the man said.

  They drank. They listened to the record. And then the man put on another.

  Why don’t you kids dance? he decided to say, and then he said it. “Why don’t you dance?”

  “I don’t think so,” the boy said.

  “Go ahead,” the man said. “It’s my yard. You can dance if you want to.”

  Arms about each other, their bodies pressed together, the boy and the girl moved up and down the driveway. They were dancing. And when the record was over, they did it again, and when that one ended, the boy said, “I’m drunk.”

  The girl said, “You’re not drunk.”

  “Well, I’m drunk,” the boy said.

  The man turned the record over and the boy said, “I am.”

  “Dance with me,” the girl said to the boy and then to the man, and when the man stood up, she came to him with her arms wide open.

  Those people over there, they’re watching,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” the man said. “It’s my place,” he said.

  “Let them watch,” the girl said.

  “That’s right,” the man said. “They thought they’d seen everything over here. But they haven’t seen this, have they?” he said.

  He felt her breath on his neck.

  “I hope you like your bed,” he said.

  The girl closed and then opened her eyes. She pushed her face into the man’s shoulder. She pulled the man closer.

  “You must be desperate or something,” she said.

  Weeks later, she said: “The guy was about middle-aged. All his things right there in his yard. No lie. We got real pissed and danced. In the driveway. Oh, my God. Don’t laugh. He played us these records. Look at this record-player. The old guy gave it to us. And all these crappy records. Will you look at this shit?”

  She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.

  A Serious Talk

  Vera’s car was there, no others, and Burt gave thanks for that. He pulled into the drive and stopped beside the pie he’d dropped the night before. It was still there, the aluminum pan upside down, a halo of pumpkin filling on the pavement. It was the day after Christmas.

  He’d come on Christmas day to visit his wife and children. Vera had warned him beforehand. She’d told him the score. She’d said he had to be out by six o’clock because her friend and his children were coming for dinner.

  They had sat in the living room and solemnly opened the presents Burt had brought over. They had opened his packages while other packages wrapped in festive paper lay piled under the tree waiting for after six o’clock.

  He had watched the children open their gifts, waited while Vera undid the ribbon on hers. He saw her slip off the paper, lift the lid, take out the cashmere sweater.

  “It’s nice,” she said. “Thank you, Burt.”

  “Try it on,” his daughter said.

  “Put it on,” his son said.

  Burt looked at his son, grateful for his backing him up.

  She did try it on. Vera went into the bedroom and came out with it on.

  “It’s nice,” she said.

  “It’s nice on you,” Burt said, and felt a welling in his chest.

  He opened his gifts. From Vera, a gift certificate at Sondheim’s men’s store. From his daughter, a matching comb and brush. From his son, a ballpoint pen.

  Vera served sodas, and they did a little talking. But mostly they looked at the tree. Then his daughter got up and began setting the dining-room table, and his son went off to his room.

  But Burt liked it where he was. He liked it in front of the fireplace, a glass in his hand, his house, his home.

  Then Vera went into the kitchen.

  From time to time his daughter walked into the dining room with something for the table. Burt watched her. He watched her fold the linen napkins into the wine glasses. He watched her put a slender vase in the middle of the table. He watched her lower a flower into the vase, doing it ever so carefully.

  A small wax and sawdust log burned on the grate. A carton of five more sat ready on the hearth. He got up from the sofa and put them all in the fireplace. He watched until they flamed. Then he finished his soda and made for the patio door. On the way, he saw the pies lined up on the sideboard. He stacked them in his arms, all six, one for every ten times she had ever betrayed him.

  In the driveway in the dark, he’d let one fall as he fumbled with the door.

  The front door was permanently locked since the night his key had broken off inside it. He went around to the back. There was a wreath on the patio door. He rapped on the glass. Vera was in her bathrobe. She looked out at him and frowned.

  She opened the door a little.

  Burt said, “I want to apologize to you for last night. I want to apologize to the kids, too.”

  Vera said, “They’re not here.”

  She stood in the doorway and he stood on the patio next to the philodendron plant. He pulled at some lint on his sleeve.

  She said, “I can’t take any more. You tried to burn the house down.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did. Everybody here was a witness.”

  He said, “Can I come in and talk about it?”

  She drew the robe together at her throat and moved back inside.

  She said, “I have to go somewhere in an hour.”

  He looked around. The tree blinked on and off. There was a pile of colored tissue paper and shiny boxes at one end of the sofa. A turkey carcass sat on a platter in the center of the dining-room table, the leathery remains in a bed of parsley as if in a horrible nest. A cone of ash filled the fireplace. There were some empty Shasta cola cans in there too. A trail of smoke stains rose up to the bricks to the mantel, where the wood that stopped them was scorched black.

  He turned around and went back to the kitchen.

  He said, “What time did your friend leave last night?”

  She said, “If you’re going to start that, you can go right now.”

  He pulled a chair out and sat
down at the kitchen table in front of the big ashtray. He closed his eyes and opened them. He moved the curtain aside and looked out at the backyard. He saw a bicycle without a front wheel standing upside down. He saw weeds growing along the redwood fence.

  She ran water into a saucepan. “Do you remember Thanksgiving?” she said. “I said then that was the last holiday you were going to wreck for us. Eating bacon and eggs instead of turkey at ten o’clock at night.”

  “I know it,” he said. “I said I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough.”

  The pilot light was out again. She was at the stove trying to get the gas going under the pan of water.

  “Don’t burn yourself,” he said. “Don’t catch yourself on fire.”

  He considered her robe catching fire, him jumping up from the table, throwing her down onto the floor and rolling her over and over into the living room, where he would cover her with his body. Or should he run to the bedroom for a blanket?

  “Vera?”

  She looked at him.

  “Do you have anything to drink? I could use a drink this morning.”

  “There’s some vodka in the freezer.”

  “When did you start keeping vodka in the freezer?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I won’t ask.”

  He got out the vodka and poured some into a cup he found on the counter.

  She said, “Are you just going to drink it like that, out of a cup?” She said, “Jesus, Burt. What’d you want to talk about, anyway? I told you I have someplace to go. I have a flute lesson at one o’clock.”

  “Are you still taking flute?”

  “I just said so. What is it? Tell me what’s on your mind, and then I have to get ready.”

  “I wanted to say I was sorry.”

  She said, “You said that.”

  He said, “If you have any juice, I’ll mix it with this vodka.”

  She opened the refrigerator and moved things around.

  “There’s cranapple juice,” she said.

  “That’s fine,” he said.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said.

  He drank the cup of cranapple juice and vodka. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the big ashtray that always sat on the kitchen table. He studied the butts in it. Some of them were Vera’s brand, and some of them weren’t. Some even were lavender-colored. He got up and dumped it all under the sink.

  The ashtray was not really an ashtray. It was a big dish of stoneware they’d bought from a bearded potter on the mall in Santa Clara. He rinsed it out and dried it. He put it back on the table. And then he ground out his cigarette in it.

  The water on the stove began to bubble just as the phone began to ring.

  He heard her open the bathroom door and call to him through the living room. “Answer that! I’m about to get into the shower.”

  The kitchen phone was on the counter in a corner behind the roasting pan. He moved the roasting pan and picked up the receiver.

  “Is Charlie there?” the voice said.

  “No,” Burt said.

  “Okay,” the voice said.

  While he was seeing to the coffee, the phone rang again.

  “Charlie?”

  “Not here,” Burt said.

  This time he left the receiver off the hook.

  Vera came back into the kitchen wearing jeans and a sweater and brushing her hair.

  He spooned the instant into the cups of hot water and then spilled some vodka into his. He carried the cups over to the table.

  She picked up the receiver, listened. She said, “What’s this? Who was on the phone?”

  “Nobody,” he said. “Who smokes colored cigarettes?”

  “I do.”

  “I didn’t know you did that.”

  “Well, I do.”

  She sat across from him and drank her coffee. They smoked and used the ashtray.

  There were things he wanted to say, grieving things, consoling things, things like that.

  “I’m smoking three packs a day,” Vera said. “I mean, if you really want to know what goes on around here.”

  “God almighty,” Burt said.

  Vera nodded.

  “I didn’t come over here to hear that,” he said.

  “What did you come over here to hear, then? You want to hear the house burned down?”

  “Vera,” he said. “It’s Christmas. That’s why I came.”

  “It’s the day after Christmas,” she said. “Christmas has come and gone,” she said. “I don’t ever want to see another one.”

  “What about me?” he said. “You think I look forward to holidays?”

  The phone rang again. Burt picked it up.

  “It’s someone wanting Charlie,” he said. “What?”

  “Charlie,” Burt said.

  Vera took the phone. She kept her back to him as she talked. Then she turned to him and said, “I’ll take this call in the bedroom. So would you please hang up after I’ve picked it up in there? I can tell, so hang it up when I say.”

  He took the receiver. She left the kitchen. He held the receiver to his ear and listened. He heard nothing.

  Then he heard a man clear his throat. Then he heard Vera pick up the other phone. She shouted, “Okay, Burt! I have it now, Burt!”

  He put down the receiver and stood looking at it. He opened the silverware drawer and pushed things around inside. He opened another drawer. He looked in the sink. He went into the dining room and got the carving knife. He held it under hot water until the grease broke and ran off. He wiped the blade on his sleeve. He moved to the phone, doubled the cord, and sawed through without any trouble at all. He examined the ends of the cord. Then he shoved the phone back into its corner behind the roasting pan.

  She came in. She said, “The phone went dead. Did you do anything to the telephone?” She looked at the phone and then picked it up from the counter.

  “Son of a bitch!” she screamed. She screamed, “Out, out, where you belong!” She was shaking the phone at him. “That’s it! I’m going to get a restraining order, that’s what I’m going to get!”

  The phone made a ding when she banged it down on the counter.

  “I’m going next door to call the police if you don’t get out of here now!”

  He picked up the ashtray. He held it by its edge. He posed with it like a man preparing to hurl the discus.

  “Please,” she said. “That’s our ashtray.”

  He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but he thought he had proved something. He hoped he had made something clear. The thing was, they had to have a serious talk soon. There were things that needed talking about, important things that had to be discussed. They’d talk again. Maybe after the holidays were over and things got back to normal. He’d tell her the goddamn ashtray was a goddamn dish, for example.

  He stepped around the pie in the driveway and got back into his car. He started the car and put it into reverse. It was hard managing until he put the ashtray down.

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

  My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.

  The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa—Terri, we called her—and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else.

  There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of love. Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He said he’d spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years in his life.

  Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terri said, “He beat me up one night. He
dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, you bitch.’ He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things.” Terri looked around the table. “What do you do with love like that?”

  She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.

  “My God, don’t be silly. That’s not love, and you know it,” Mel said. “I don’t know what you’d call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call it love.”

  “Say what you want to, but I know it was,” Terri said. “It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same. People are different, Mel. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me.

  There was love there, Mel. Don’t say there wasn’t.”

  Mel let out his breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura and me. “The man threatened to kill me,”

  Mel said. He finished his drink and reached for the gin bottle. “Terri’s a romantic. Terri’s of the kick-meso-I’ll-know-you-love-me school. Terri, hon, don’t look that way.” Mel reached across the table and touched Terri’s cheek with his fingers. He grinned at her.

  “Now he wants to make up,” Terri said.

  “Make up what?” Mel said. “What is there to make up? I know what I know. That’s all.”

  “How’d we get started on this subject, anyway?” Terri said. She raised her glass and drank from it. “Mel always has love on his mind,” she said. “Don’t you, honey?” She smiled, and I thought that was the last of it.

  “I just wouldn’t call Ed’s behavior love. That’s all I’m saying, honey,” Mel said. “What about you guys?”

  Mel said to Laura and me. “Does that sound like love to you?”

  “I’m the wrong person to ask,” I said. “I didn’t even know the man. I’ve only heard his name mentioned in passing. I wouldn’t know. You’d have to know the particulars. But I think what you’re saying is that love is an absolute.”

  Mel said, “The kind of love I’m talking about is. The kind of love I’m talking about, you don’t try to kill people.”