Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

  The Off-Broadway is where I took Donna on our date. It was the one date we ever had.

  I’d walked out of the hospital just after midnight. It’d cleared up and stars were out. I still had this buzz on from the Scotch I’d had with Patti. But I was thinking to hit Birney’s for a quick one on the way home. Donna’s car was parked in the space next to my car, and Donna was inside the car. I remembered that hug we’d had in the kitchen. “Not now,” she’d said.

  She rolled the window down and knocked ashes from her cigarette.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I have some things on my mind, and I couldn’t sleep.”

  I said, “Donna. Hey, I’m glad to see you, Donna.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.

  “You want to go someplace for a drink?” I said.

  “Patti’s my friend,” she said.

  “She’s my friend, too,” I said. Then I said, “Let’s go.”

  “Just so you know,” she said.

  “There’s this place. It’s a spade place,” I said. “They have music. We can get a drink, listen to some music.”

  “You want to drive me?” Donna said.

  I said, “Scoot over.”

  She started right in about vitamins. Vitamins were on the skids,

  vitamins had taken a nose dive. The bottom had fallen out of the vitamin market.

  Donna said, “I hate to do this to Patti. She’s my best friend, and she’s trying to build things up for us. But I may have to quit. This is between us. Swear it! But I have to eat. I have to pay rent. I need new shoes and a new coat. Vitamins can’t cut it,” Donna said. “I don’t think vitamins is where it’s at anymore. I haven’t said anything to Patti. Like I said, I’m still just thinking about it.”

  Donna laid her hand next to my leg. I reached down and squeezed her fingers. She squeezed back. Then she took her hand away and pushed in the lighter. After she had her cigarette going, she put the hand back. “Worse than anything, I hate to let Patti down. You know what I’m saying? We were a team.” She reached me her cigarette. “I know it’s a different brand,” she said, “but try it, go ahead.”

  I pulled into the lot for the Off-Broadway. Three spades were up against an old Chrysler that had a cracked windshield. They were just lounging, passing a bottle in a sack. They looked us over. I got out and went around to open up for Donna. I checked the doors, took her arm, and we headed for the street.

  The spades just watched us.

  I said, “You’re not thinking about moving to Portland, are you?”

  We were on the sidewalk. I put my arm around her waist.

  “I don’t know anything about Portland. Portland hasn’t crossed my mind once.”

  The front half of the Off-Broadway was like a regular cafe and bar. A few spades sat at the counter and a few more worked over plates of food at tables with red oilcloth. We went through the cafe and into the big room in back. There was a long counter with booths against the wall and farther back a platform where musicians could set up. In front of the platform was what passed for a dance floor. The bars and nightclubs were still serving, so people hadn’t turned up in any real numbers yet. I helped Donna take off her coat. We picked a booth and put our cigarettes on the table. The spade waitress named Hannah came over. Hannah and me nodded. She looked at Donna. I ordered us two RC specials and decided to feel good about things.

  After the drinks came and I’d paid and we’d each had a sip, we started hugging. We carried on like this for a while, squeezing and patting, kissing each other’s face. Every so often Donna would stop and draw back, push me away a little, then hold me by the wrists. She’d gaze into my eyes. Then her lids would close slowly and we’d fall to kissing again. Pretty soon the place began to fill up. We stopped kissing. But I kept my arm around her. She put her fingers on my leg. A couple of spade hornplayers and a white drummer began fooling around with something. I figured Donna and me would have another drink and listen to the set. Then we’d leave and go to her place to finish things.

  I’d just ordered two more from Hannah when this spade named Benny came over with this other spade-this big, dressed-up spade. This big spade had little red eyes and was wearing a three-piece pinstripe. He had on a rose-colored shirt, a tie, a topcoat, a fedora—all of it.

  “How’s my man?” said Benny.

  Benny stuck out his hand for a brother handshake. Benny and I had talked. He knew I liked the music, and he used to come over to talk whenever we were both in the place. He liked to talk about Johnny Hodges, how he’d played sax backup for Johnny. He’d say things like, “When Johnny and me had this gig in Mason City.”

  “Hi, Benny,” I said.

  “I want you to meet Nelson,” Benny said. “He just back from Nam today. This morning. He here to listen to some of these good sounds. He got on his dancing shoes in case.” Benny looked at Nelson and nodded. “This here is Nelson.”

  I was looking at Nelson’s shiny shoes, and then I looked at Nelson. He seemed to want to place me from somewhere. He studied me. Then he let loose a rolling grin that showed his teeth.

  “This is Donna,” I said. “Donna, this is Benny, and this is Nelson. Nelson, this is Donna.”

  “Hello, girl,” Nelson said, and Donna said right back, “Hello there, Nelson. Hello, Benny.”

  “Maybe we’ll just slide in and join you folks?” Benny said. “Okay?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  But I was sorry they hadn’t found someplace else.

  “We’re not going to be here long,” I said. “Just long enough to finish this drink, is all.”

  “I know, man, I know,” Benny said. He sat across from me after Nelson had let himself down into the booth. “Things to do, places to go. Yes sir, Benny knows,” Benny said, and winked.

  Nelson looked across the booth to Donna. Then he took off the hat. He seemed to be looking for something on the brim as he turned the hat around in his big hands. He made room for the hat on the table. He looked up at Donna. He grinned and squared his shoulders. He had to square his shoulders every few minutes. It was like he was very tired of carrying them around.

  “You real good friends with him, I bet,” Nelson said to Donna. “We’re good friends,” Donna said.

  Hannah came over. Benny asked for RCs. Hannah went away, and Nelson worked a pint of whiskey from his topcoat.

  “Good friends,” Nelson said. “Real good friends.” He unscrewed the cap on his whiskey.

  “Watch it, Nelson,” Benny said. “Keep that out of sight. Nelson just got off the plane from Nam,” Benny said.

  Nelson raised the bottle and drank some of his whiskey. He screwed the cap back on, laid the bottle on the table, and put his hat down on top of it. “Real good friends,” he said.

  Benny looked at me and rolled his eyes. But he was drunk, too. “I got to get into shape,” he said to me.

  He drank RC from both of their glasses and then held the glasses under the table and poured whiskey.

  He put the bottle in his coat pocket. “Man, I ain’t put my lips to a reed for a month now. I got to get with it.”

  We were bunched in the booth, glasses in front of us, Nelson’s hat on the table. “You,” Nelson said to me. “You with somebody else, ain’t you? This beautiful woman, she ain’t your wife. I know that. But you real good friends with this woman. Ain’t I right?”

  I had some of my drink. I couldn’t taste the whiskey. I couldn’t taste anything. I said, “Is all that shit about Vietnam true we see on the TV?”

  Nelson had his red eyes fixed on me. He said, “What I want to say is, do you know where your wife is? I bet she out with some dude and she be seizing his nipples for him and pulling his pud for him while you setting here big as life with your good friend. I bet she have herself a good friend, too.” “Nelson,” Benny said.

  “Nelson nothing,” Nelson said.

  Benny said, “Nelson, let’s leave these people be. There’s somebody in that other booth. Some
body I told you about. Nelson just this morning got off a plane,” Benny said.

  “I bet I know what you thinking,” Nelson said. “I bet you thinking, ‘Now here a big drunk nigger and what am I going to do with him? Maybe I have to whip his ass for him!’ That what you thinking?” I looked around the room. I saw Khaki standing near the platform, the musicians working away behind him. Some dancers were on the floor. I thought Khaki looked right at me—but if he did, he looked away again.

  “Ain’t it your turn to talk?” Nelson said. “I just teasing you. I ain’t done any teasing since I left Nam. I teased the gooks some.” He grinned again, his big lips rolling back. Then he stopped grinning and just stared.

  “Show them that ear,” Benny said. He put his glass on the table. “Nelson got himself an ear off one of them little dudes,” Benny said. “He carry it with him. Show them, Nelson.”

  Nelson sat there. Then he started feeling the pockets of his topcoat. He took things out of one pocket. He took out some keys and a box of cough drops.

  Donna said, “I don’t want to see an ear. Ugh. Double ugh. Jesus.” She looked at me.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  Nelson was still feeling in his pockets. He took a wallet from a pocket inside the suit coat and put it on the table. He patted the wallet. “Five big ones there. Listen here,” he said to Donna. “I going to give you two bills. You with me? I give you two big ones, and then you French me. Just like his woman doing some other big fellow. You hear? You know she got her mouth on somebody’s hammer right this minute while he here with his hand up your skirt. Fair’s fair. Here.” He pulled the corners of the bills from his wallet. “Hell, here another hundred for your good friend, so he won’t feel left out. He don’t have to do nothing. You don’t have to do nothing,” Nelson said to me. “You just sit there and drink your drink and listen to the music. Good music. Me and this woman walk out together like good friends. And she walk back in by herself. Won’t be long, she be back.”

  “Nelson,” Benny said, “this is no way to talk, Nelson.”

  Nelson grinned. “I finished talking,” he said.

  He found what he’d been feeling for. It was a silver cigarette case. He opened it up. I looked at the ear inside. It sat on a bed of cotton. It looked like a dried mushroom. But it was a real ear, and it was hooked up to a key chain.

  “Jesus,” said Donna. “Yuck.”

  “Ain’t that something?” Nelson said. He was watching Donna.

  “No way. Fuck off,” Donna said.

  “Girl,” Nelson said.

  “Nelson,” I said. And then Nelson fixed his red eyes on me. He pushed the hat and wallet and cigarette case out of his way.

  “What do you want?” Nelson said. “I give you what you want.”

  Khaki had a hand on my shoulder and the other one on Benny’s shoulder. He leaned over the table, his head shining under the lights. “How you folks? You all having fun?”

  “Everything all right, Khaki,” Benny said. “Everything A-okay. These people here was just fixing to leave. Me and Nelson going to sit and listen to the music.”

  “That’s good,” Khaki said. “Folks be happy is my motto.”

  He looked around the booth. He looked at Nelson’s wallet on the table and at the open cigarette case next to the wallet. He saw the ear.

  “That a real ear?” Khaki said.

  Benny said, “It is. Show him that ear, Nelson. Nelson just stepped off the plane from Nam with this ear.

  This ear has traveled halfway around the world to be on this table tonight. Nelson, show him,” Benny said.

  Nelson picked up the case and handed it to Khaki.

  Khaki examined the ear. He took up the chain and dangled the ear in front of his face. He looked at it.

  He let it swing back and forth on the chain. “I heard about these dried-up ears and dicks and such.”

  “I took it off one of them gooks,” Nelson said. “He couldn’t hear nothing with it no more. I wanted me a keepsake.”

  Khaki turned the ear on its chain.

  Donna and I began getting out of the booth.

  “Girl, don’t go,” Nelson said.

  “Nelson,” Benny said.

  Khaki was watching Nelson now. I stood beside the booth with Donna’s coat. My legs were crazy.

  Nelson raised his voice. He said, “You go with this mother here, you let him put his face in your sweets, you both going to have to deal with me.”

  We started to move away from the booth. People were looking.

  “Nelson just got off the plane from Nam this morning,” I heard Benny say. “We been drinking all day.

  This been the longest day on record. But me and him, we going to be fine, Khaki.”

  Nelson yelled something over the music. He yelled, “It ain’t going to do no good! Whatever you do, it ain’t going to help none!” I heard him say that, and then I couldn’t hear anymore. The music stopped, and then it started again. We didn’t look back. We kept going. We got out to the sidewalk.

  I opened the door for her. I started us back to the hospital. Donna stayed over on her side. She’d used the lighter on a cigarette, but she wouldn’t talk.

  I tried to say something. I said, “Look, Donna, don’t get on a downer because of this. I’m sorry it happened,” I said.

  “I could of used the money,” Donna said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  I kept driving and didn’t look at her.

  “It’s true,” she said. “I could of used the money.” She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She put her chin down and cried.

  “Don’t cry,” I said.

  “I’m not going in to work tomorrow, today, whenever it is the alarm goes off,” she said. “I’m not going in. I’m leaving town. I take what happened back there as a sign.” She pushed in the lighter and waited for it to pop out.

  I pulled in beside my car and killed the engine. I looked in the rearview, half thinking I’d see that old Chrysler drive into the lot behind me with Nelson in the seat. I kept my hands on the wheel for a minute, and then dropped them to my lap. I didn’t want to touch Donna. The hug we’d given each other in my kitchen that night, the kissing we’d done at the Off-Broadway, that was all over.

  I said, “What are you going to do?” But I didn’t care. Right then she could have died of a heart attack and it wouldn’t have meant anything.

  “Maybe I could go up to Portland,” she said. “There must be something in Portland. Portland’s on everybody’s mind these days. Portland’s a drawing card. Portland this, Portland that. Portland’s as good a place as any. It’s all the same.”

  “Donna,” I said, “I’d better go.”

  I started to let myself out. I cracked the door, and the overhead light came on.

  “For Christ’s sake, turn off that light!” I got out in a hurry.” ‘Night, Donna,” I said. I left her staring at the dashboard. I started up my car and turned on the lights. I slipped it in gear and fed it the gas.

  I poured Scotch, drank some of it, and took the glass into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth. Then I pulled open a drawer. Patti yelled something from the bedroom. She opened the bathroom door. She was still dressed. She’d been sleeping with her clothes on, I guess.

  “What time is it?” she screamed. “I’ve overslept! Jesus, oh my God! You’ve let me oversleep, goddamn you!”

  She was wild. She stood in the doorway with her clothes on. She could have been fixing to go to work.

  But there was no sample case, no vitamins. She was having a bad dream, is all. She began shaking her head from side to side.

  I couldn’t take any more tonight. “Go back to sleep, honey. I’m looking for something,” I said. I knocked some stuff out of the medicine chest. Things rolled into the sink. “Where’s the aspirin?” I said. I knocked down some more things. I didn’t care. Things kept falling.

  Careful

  After a lot of talking—what his wife, Inez, called assessment—Lloyd moved out
of the house and into his own place. He had two rooms and a bath on the top floor of a three-story house. Inside the rooms, the roof slanted down sharply. If he walked around, he had to duck his head. He had to stoop to look from his windows and be careful getting in and out of bed. There were two keys. One key let him into the house itself. Then he climbed some stairs that passed through the house to a landing. He went up another flight of stairs to the door of his room and used the other key on that lock.

  Once, when he was coming back to his place in the afternoon, carrying a sack with three bottles of Andre champagne and some lunch meat, he stopped on the landing and looked into his landlady’s living room. He saw the old woman lying on her back on the carpet. She seemed to be asleep. Then it occurred to him she might be dead. But the TV was going, so he chose to think she was asleep. He didn’t know what to make of it. He moved the sack from one arm to the other. It was then that the woman gave a little cough, brought her hand to her side, and went back to being quiet and still again. Lloyd continued on up the stairs and unlocked his door. Later that day, toward evening, as he looked from his kitchen window, he saw the old woman down in the yard, wearing a straw hat and holding her hand against her side. She was using a little watering can on some pansies.

  In his kitchen, he had a combination refrigerator and stove. The refrigerator and stove was a tiny affair wedged into a space between the sink and the wall. He had to bend over, almost get down on his knees, to get anything out of the refrigerator. But it was all right because he didn’t keep much in there, anyway—except fruit juice, lunch meat, and champagne. The stove had two burners. Now and then he heated water in a saucepan and made instant coffee. But some days he didn’t drink any coffee. He forgot, or else he just didn’t feel like coffee. One morning he woke up and promptly fell to eating crumb doughnuts and drinking champagne. There’d been a time, some years back, when he would have laughed at having a breakfast like this. Now, there didn’t seem to be anything very unusual about it. In fact, he hadn’t thought anything about it until he was in bed and trying to recall the things he’d done that day, starting with when he’d gotten up that morning. At first, he couldn’t remember anything noteworthy. Then he remembered eating those doughnuts and drinking champagne. Time was when he would have considered this a mildly crazy thing to do, something to tell friends about. Then, the more he thought about it, the more he could see it didn’t matter much one way or the other. He’d had doughnuts and champagne for breakfast. So what?