Where I'm Calling From

around, I put my head on my desk and think I might catch a few minutes’ sleep. But when I close my eyes I find myself thinking about it again. In my mind I can see a hospital bed. That’s all—just a hospital bed. The bed’s in a room, I guess. Then I see an oxygen tent over the bed, and beside the bed some of those screens and some big monitors—the kind they have in movies. I open my eyes and sit up in my chair and light a cigarette. I drink some coffee while I smoke the cigarette. Then I look at the time and get back to work.
    At five o’clock, I’m so tired it’s all I can do to drive home. It’s raining, and I have to be careful driving.
    Very careful. There’s been an accident, too. Someone has rear-ended someone else at a traffic light, but I don’t think anyone has been hurt. The cars are still out in the road, and people are standing around in the rain, talking. Still, traffic moves slowly; the police have set out flares.
    When I see my wife, I say, “God, what a day. I’m whipped. How are you doing?” We kiss each other. I take off my coat and hang it up. I take the drink Iris gives me. Then, because it’s been on my mind, and because I want to clear the deck, so to speak, I say, “All right, if it’s what you want to hear, I’ll pull the plug for you. If that’s what you want me to do, I’ll do it. If it will make you happy, here and now, to hear me say so, I’ll say it. I’ll do it for you. I’ll pull the plug, or have it pulled, if I ever think it’s necessary. But what I said about my plug still stands. Now I don’t want to have to think about this stuff ever again. I don’t even want to have to talk about it again. I think we’ve said all there is to say on the subject. We’ve exhausted every angle. I’m exhausted.”
    Iris grins. “Okay,” she says. “At least I know now, anyway. I didn’t before. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel better somehow, if you want to know. I don’t want to think about it anymore, either. But I’m glad we talked it over. I’ll never bring it up again, either, and that’s a promise.”
    She takes my drink and puts it on the table, next to the phone. She puts her arms around me and holds me and lets her head rest on my shoulder. But here’s the thing. What I’ve just said to her, what I’ve been thinking about off and on all day, well, I feel as if I’ve crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I’ve come to a place I never thought I’d have to come to. And I don’t know how I got here. It’s a strange place. It’s a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.
    The phone rings. We let go of each other, and I reach to answer it. “Hello,” I say.
    “Hello, there,” the woman says back.
    It’s the same woman who called this morning, but she isn’t drunk now. At least, I don’t think she is; she doesn’t sound drunk. She is speaking quietly, reasonably, and she is asking me if I can put her in touch with Bud Roberts. She apologizes. She hates to trouble me, she says, but this is an urgent matter. She’s sorry for any trouble she might be giving.
    While she talks, I fumble with my cigarettes. I put one in my mouth and use the lighter. Then it’s my turn to talk. This is what I say to her: “Bud Roberts doesn’t live here. He is not at this number, and I don’t expect he ever will be. I will never, never lay eyes on this man you’re talking about. Please don’t ever call here again. Just don’t, okay? Do you hear me? If you’re not careful, I’ll wring your neck for you.”
    “The gall of that woman,” Iris says.
    My hands are shaking. I think my voice is doing things. But while I’m trying to tell all this to the woman, while I’m trying to make myself understood, my wife moves quickly and bends over, and that’s it. The line goes dead, and I can’t hear anything.

Intimacy

    I have some business out west anyway, so I stop off in this little town where my former wife lives. We haven’t seen each other in four years. But from time to time, when something of mine appeared, or was written about me in the magazines or papers—a profile or an interview—I sent her these things. I don’t know what I had in mind except I thought she might be interested. In any case, she never responded.
    It is nine in the morning, I haven’t called, and it’s true I don’t know what I am going to find.
    But she lets me in. She