Where I'm Calling From

thinking about Amanda. Things are so bad just now I even find myself thinking about my first wife, Molly. I loved Molly, I thought, more than my own life.
    I keep picturing Amanda in her pink nightgown, the one I like on her so much, along with her pink slippers. And I feel certain she’s in the big leather chair right now, under the brass reading lamp. She’s smoking cigarettes, one after the other. There are two ashtrays close at hand, and they’re both full. To the left of her chair, next to the lamp, there’s an end table stacked with magazines—the usual magazines that nice people read. We’re nice people, all of us, to a point. Right this minute, Amanda is, I imagine, paging through a magazine, stopping every so often to look at an illustration or a cartoon.
    Two days ago, in the afternoon, Amanda said to me, “I can’t read books any more. Who has the time?” It was the day after Oliver had left, and we were in this little cafe in the industrial part of the city. “Who can concentrate anymore?” she said, stirring her coffee. “Who reads? Do you read?” (I shook my head.)
    “Somebody must read, I guess. You see all these books around in store windows, and there are those clubs. Somebody’s reading,” she said. “Who? I don’t know anybody who reads.”
    That’s what she said, apropos of nothing—that is, we weren’t talking about books, we were talking about our lives. Books had nothing to do with it.
    “What did Oliver say when you told him?”
    Then it struck me that what we were saying—the tense, watchful expressions we wore—belonged to the people on afternoon TV programs that I’d never done more than switch on and then off.
    Amanda looked down and shook her head, as if she couldn’t bear to remember.
    “You didn’t admit who it was you were involved with, did you?”
    She shook her head again.
    “You’re sure of that?” I waited until she looked up from her coffee. “I didn’t mention any names, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Did he say where he was going, or how long he’d be away?” I said, wishing I didn’t have to hear myself. This was my neighbor I was talking about. Oliver Porter. A man I’d helped drive out of his home.
    “He didn’t say where. A hotel. He said I should make my arrangements and be gone—be gone, he said. It was like biblical the way he said it—out of his house, out of his life, in a week’s time. I guess he’s coming back then. So we have to decide something real important, real soon, honey. You and I have to make up our minds pretty damn quick.”
    It was her turn to look at me now, and I know she was looking for a sign of life-long commitment. “A week,” I said. I looked at my coffee, which had gotten cold. A lot had happened in a little while, and we were trying to take it in. I don’t know what long-term things, if any, we’d thought about those months as we moved from flirtation to love, and then afternoon assignations. In any case, we were in a serious fix now. Very serious. We’d never expected—not in a hundred years—to be hiding out in a cafe, in the middle of the afternoon, trying to decide matters like this.
    I raised my eyes, and Amanda began stirring her coffee. She kept stirring it. I touched her hand, and the spoon dropped out of her fingers. She picked it up and began stirring again. We could have been anybody drinking coffee at a table under fluorescent lights in a run-down cafe. Anybody, just about. I took Amanda’s hand and held it, and it seemed to make a difference.
    Vicky’s still sleeping on her side when I go downstairs. I plan to heat some milk and drink that. I used to drink whiskey when I couldn’t sleep, but I gave it up. Now it’s strictly hot milk. In the whiskey days I’d wake up with this tremendous thirst in the middle of the night. But, back then, I was always looking ahead: I kept a bottle of water in the fridge, for instance. I’d be dehydrated, sweating from head to toe when I woke, but I’d wander out to the kitchen and could count on finding that bottle of cold water in the fridge. I’d drink it, all of it, down the hatch, an entire quart of water. Once in a while I’d use a glass, but not often. Suddenly I’d be drunk all over again and weaving around the kitchen. I can’t begin to account for it—sober one minute, drunk the next.
    The drinking was part of my destiny—according to Molly, anyway. She put a lot of stock in destiny.
    I feel wild from lack of sleep. I’d give