Hotline to Murder

part-time job. Can you take a look at it for me?”
    “Do you really need a resume to work at McDonald’s?” Tony asked. “Or do you aspire to something grander?”
    “I’m not really qualified for anything grander yet. I figured a resume would give me an advantage over the competition.”
    Tony was impressed, not only by the resume, but by Shahla’s thinking. With a shock, it occurred to him that perhaps she was qualified to do more than work at McDonald’s. She had done two things when she met him that would do credit to a top salesperson. She had complimented him and asked for his advice, which had immediately endeared her to him. This was no airheaded teenager.
    The telephone rang. Shahla said, “Okay, you’re on the air.”
    Tony’s nervousness returned. He took a breath to calm himself and picked up the phone. “Central Hotline. This is Tony.”
    There was an audible click at the other end of the line and then silence.
    Shahla, who had pushed the speaker button, smiled. “You’ve just had your first hang up.” She walked over to a sheet of paper pinned to one of the bulletin boards and put a mark beside August 16.
    “Do you think it was one of the obscene callers?”
    Shahla shrugged. “Who knows? We all get hang ups.”
    For some reason Tony felt marginally better about taking the calls. There were some people who didn’t want to talk to him even more than he didn’t want to talk to them.
    Five minutes later the phone rang again. He answered it with slightly more confidence.
    “Tony?” a female voice said in response to his greeting. “Have I talked to you before?”
    “I don’t know,” Tony said. “Who’s this?”
    “This is Julie.”
    “Hi, Julie.”
    Shahla placed the call on the speaker. There was no echo so callers didn’t know they were on a speaker. She reached for the Green Book and riffled through its pages. She set the book in front of Tony so he could read about Julie. Meanwhile, Julie, who had apparently figured out that Tony didn’t know her story, had taken off like a windup toy, talking about her ex-husband who had run away with his secretary, and a number of other men with whom she had apparently had affairs, but who had screwed her in one way or another. This wasn’t just a bad joke; she was crying on the line.
    Tony barely had an opportunity to get in an occasional verbal nod, consisting of “Uh huh,” and no opportunity to practice other skills he had learned in the class. He belatedly wrote the time down on a call-report form and scanned the written information about Julie. She had been calling for several years. She complained about men and almost everything else, and her nickname was Motormouth. About all the listener could do was to give an occasional verbal nod and hang on for fifteen minutes.
    After a while, Tony realized that some of the incidents Julie was talking about had happened years earlier. He felt like telling her to get over it and get a life. Perhaps it was a good thing he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
    At the end of fifteen minutes, Shahla swept her hand across her throat in the classic “cut” gesture. However, that was easier said than done. Tony tried to interrupt Julie several times; she talked right over him. Finally, she stopped for a moment to take a breath, the first time Tony remembered her doing so, and he told her he had to answer other calls.
    “Oh,” Julie said, and then, “If you hang up just like that, I’ll be depressed for the rest of the day. Can I just tell you one more thing?”
    “Okay,” Tony said, feeling helpless. He avoided Shahla’s eyes.
    She told him about a time a man had sent her flowers.
    “That must have made you feel special,” Tony said, congratulating himself on introducing feelings into the conversation.
    “Very special. But what I wanted to say was I got some of that same feeling just now because you listened to me, and you didn’t judge me.”
    When he was at last able to end the call, he figured he had been on the line for twenty minutes. “Can you get fired for giving a repeat caller more than fifteen minutes?” he asked.
    Shahla smiled and said, “Julie is one of the hardest ones to get rid of. Don’t feel bad. I have trouble with her too. And you ended the call on an upbeat note, which is a miracle for her.”
    The phone rang again. Tony, who was still thinking about the previous call, tried to mentally brace himself. He answered the phone. Nobody spoke, but he was quite sure