THE PHONE CALL

The man listened both impatiently and with intent. He listened, but there was no answer. He lay quietly, and dialed her other number. This was now the third call he had placed within the last minute. Usually, the man tried to avoid the telephone; there was something about it that seemed impersonal to him.
“Hello?” He heard the familiar voice of his wife of 22 years. This year would have been 26 years, but something had gone wrong. They still kept in touch and still actually loved each other. They just could not live together under any agreeable circumstances. The man thought about the first call he had made, and how much more difficult it had been than this one.
“Working late again?” said the man.
“Oh! Honey! What are you doing calling at this hour? You know there is no possible way I could know where your keys are.”
“Very funny. When are you taking your comedy routine on the road?”
“Stop it. You know I was only kidding.”
“How have you been?”
“Pretty good, but pretty busy, what with Sheila graduating and this big contract due next week. What about yourself?”
“Oh, I’ve been keeping busy, too. I finally finished that play last week, and I’ve been working on repainting our, I mean,.. the house. How is Sheila, anyway?”
“She’s doing fairly well for a girl of her-- Oh, damn. My boss just walked in; I’ve got to go.”
“Okay. I’ll still see you guys at Easter, right?”
“No. We're going to spend it with our other family. Of course you will see us at Easter, silly.”
“I love you.”
“Talk to you later.”
The woman had heard what the man had said, and could tell that for some reason he had meant it more than usual. Hell, she of all people should know, after not hearing it even once for nine years. For some reason, this frightened her. She didn’t have time to think about it; not now, anyway. The man knew all of this, and it made him sad. He tried to think about how long it would take a vehicle to get from St. Ann's all the way over to his office on West Broad. About eleven minutes, he’d figured. Too bad he had moved offices last month. Back then he could have walked there in four. He thought about the pain in his left arm, and the unusual shortness of breath he was feeling. He sang "Rocky Top" to keep from passing out. Around the time the folks on top of old Rocky Top got their corn from a jar, the man faded out of consciousness.
He started having a dream that he had first had some ten years ago. He was in a neighborhood diner talking to the waitress, when out of nowhere he said that next week he was going to move to a farm in upstate New York to write his book. The first time he had that dream, he took it as an omen to stop fiddling around with short stories and poetry; to stop fiddling around with life. He couldn’t afford to make the move, and his wife was just finally getting somewhere with her career. They were at what was to be their first of many an amicable standstill. Amicable, that is, until they became unbearable.
Determined, the man started writing his book from his office in their half of the small duplex just south of downtown. He continued to work days, and at night, while the man wrote, the couple grew further and further apart. They both continued to grow; but whereas the woman grew as a strong career-oriented woman and mother, the man grew as a writer. Day after day, in an effort to propel his prose, the man became more empathetic to his surroundings and daily encounters.
For instance, the man who used to ask him every day for 50 cents to buy some gasoline to get to work, soon became Gus, the man who returned from Vietnam to discover that he couldn’t find his wife and son. Gus, the man who had loved his country and his wife and child more than the world, was now Gus, the man the world had spit on. The man soon started seeing people like Gus everywhere, and it tore at him from the inside out.
Oddly, his crusade to save and understand the world as a whole was, in fact, wrecking all that he had come to take for granted. Like most men, he could only bear so much, and he soon took to drinking as a way to calm his nerves, or stretch his sympathy. For a while, this helped him separate himself from his empathy, and live happily. Luckily, he was still able to look back upon his more sympathetic days and draw inspiration from them.
His drinking took him further from the immediate needs of his family. Two months later his father died, and this only made the man worse. He focused on the temperance of life and man’s abhorrent nature to rape its beauty through dishonesty and avarice. Ironically, as the man grew more despondent, he began to sell more and more of his stories. The outside world seemed to be encouraging, celebrating, and financially rewarding his confusion. He soon quit his job, and took to drinking full-time.
Then, one night at his local watering hole, he heard a beautiful ballad being played. It sounded like “Love for Sale”, but he had missed the first chorus, so he wasn’t yet sure. He thought about his father, and watched a beautiful woman across the room. Not in a manner which was indifferent to his wedding vows, but in the naive way one watches the sun set or the wind blow the grass in a meadow. Sometime during the second chorus, the woman struggled to stand up. He saw that she had no hands, and managed to maneuver her crutches with what seemed to be a foundling’s skill. The woman became an embodiment of both the devastating beauty and horror of the world.
The next day, hung over, tired, and utterly despondent, he committed himself to Harding Hospital, a modern day insane asylum. The world, his world, had become too much for him to bear. It tore at him both physically and mentally. Before signing the paperwork, he asked to make a phone call. The nurse laughed at him, unsure of his motives, thinking he would be gone the very next week as soon as he awoke to see what a fool he had made of himself. She handed him the receiver and asked the number. He gave the number of his wife’s office, and proceeded to say his goodbyes. The man needed to escape, and he did just that for 16 months before he decided it was time to face the world again.
During that time, his wife and daughter visited him weekly. Sometimes he chatted with them freely and lovingly. Other times, he stared off into space thinking of Simon down the hall.
Simon had contracted meningitis when he was only four years old. He survived, but had suffered permanent brain damage. Simon had been abandoned by his family, and had been living here for the last 54 years. He still had the look and energy of a youth. His speech was indecipherable, and it had been 14 years since he had a visitor. Simon loved two things: coffee and cartoons. One week, his kidneys had given up. Simon was given 36 hours to live. Miraculously, he survived. Somehow, at the last minute, his kidneys restarted themselves, as if to say, "I haven’t had enough of Popeye, crafts hour, or sweet, comforting Maxwell House." Simon had found reason to live where the man had found none. Surely, other residents had more fascinating or interesting stories to tell, but the man was perplexed about how 60 years of a man’s life could more than adequately be detailed in no more than ten minutes of simple dialogue. He feared condensing the length of his own time.
Soon, he longed for his old life. He withdrew his residency, and returned to his now empty home. During his time off the field, his agent had finally sold the man’s first book. The man now had approximately one year’s salary as a cushion. He could have easily packed up and moved out to some farm in the middle of nowhere. Lived quietly, simply. And with wonder he could have worked without the distractions of the city.
Instead, he decided to rent out a small office to which he would report daily, whether it was to write, think, or sometimes just doodle and read. He started writing plays, which he enjoyed, as he could more readily see other people’s reactions to his work. In fact, he was so enthusiastic, he often became too much for the director and cast of his productions to handle. They either cut rehearsals early or simply asked him to leave. Neither side took offense though; so neither side really suffered.
The man was content with his life. He saw his ex-wife and daughter almost weekly. He still worked passionately and felt rewarded for his labor. At 59, he counted his blessings as being slightly above average, which, to him, was a good thing.
The man woke back up and found he was unable to feel the left side of his body. He found it difficult to breathe as though a full-grown man was standing on his chest. He reached toward the telephone.
Across town, the woman, who had just gotten off the phone three minutes ago, was deeply engrossed in her work. She heard the phone ring, and was angry.
“Just because I am working late doesn’t mean I need to be available late as well. I’m trying to finish tweaking this client's advertising budget, and then I am going home to rest. Leave me alone, stop calling. I’ll be available bright and early at nine tomorrow, just like I am every day. It will just have to wait.”
She had no idea who was actually calling or the urgent nature of his call until a half-hour later, when she arrived at home and listened to the message on her answering machine. Once home, the woman froze. She was mortified and terrified. She hadn’t imagined anything like this happening for at least another ten years. She immediately picked up her phone and tried calling the man; first at his office and then at his home. In her frantic state she failed to realize the message was a half-hour old. Since that message had been recorded, 32 other people had died and 39 had been born.
The man was now only a memory; his corpse lay crumpled against the edge of what used to be his desk. The squad had since returned to the hospital, annoyed that someone would send them on a wild goose chase when they had real people to help. They blamed themselves; they should have known better. Who would have actually called the squad when they were right across the street from the hospital? Just drive right over; it would have saved about one minute of time, figuring the call to the dispatcher, and then dispatcher to the squad.