Where I'm Calling From

looked at the card. I held it up to the light. I turned it over, but the other side was blank. So what? I said.
    Mrs Slater’s card was pulled at random out of a basket of cards. Hundreds of cards just like this little card. She has won a free vacuuming and carpet shampoo. Mrs Slater is a winner. No strings. I am here even to do your mattress, Mr…. You’ll be surprised to see what can collect in a mattress over the months, over the years. Every day, every night of our lives, we’re leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that’s where! Pillows, too. It’s all the same.
    He had been removing lengths of the shiny pipe and joining the parts together. Now he inserted the fitted pipes into the hose. He was on his knees, grunting. He attached some sort of scoop to the hose and lifted out the blue thing with wheels.
    He let me examine the filter he intended to use.
    Do you have a car? he asked.
    No car, I said. I don’t have a car. If I had a car I would drive you someplace.
    Too bad, he said. This little vacuum comes equipped with a sixty-foot extension cord. If you had a car, you could wheel this little vacuum right up to your car door and vacuum the plush carpeting and the luxurious reclining seats as well. You would be surprised how much of us gets lost, how much of us gathers, in those fine seats over the years.
    Mr. Bell, I said, I think you better pack up your things and go. I say this without any malice whatsoever.
    But he was looking around the room for a plug-in. He found one at the end of the sofa. The machine rattled as if there were a marble inside, anyway something loose inside, then settled to a hum.
    Rilke lived in one castle after another, all of his adult life. Benefactors, he said loudly over the hum of the vacuum. He seldom rode in motorcars; he preferred trains. Then look at Voltaire at Cirey with Madame Chatelet. His death mask. Such serenity. He raised his right hand as if I were about to disagree.
    No, no, it isn’t right, is it? Don’t say it. But who knows? With that he turned and began to pull the vacuum into the other room.
    There was a bed, a window. The covers were heaped on the floor. One pillow, one sheet over the mattress. He slipped the case from the pillow and then quickly stripped the sheet from the mattress. He stared at the mattress and gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. I went to the kitchen and got the chair. I sat down in the doorway and watched. First he tested the suction by putting the scoop against the palm of his hand. He bent and turned a dial on the vacuum. You have to turn it up full strength for a job like this one, he said. He checked the suction again, then extended the hose to the head of the bed and began to move the scoop down the mattress. The scoop tugged at the mattress. The vacuum whirred louder. He made three passes over the mattress, then switched off the machine. He pressed a lever and the lid popped open. He took out the filter. This filter is just for demonstration purposes. In normal use, all of this, this material, would go into your bag, here, he said. He pinched some of the dusty stuff between his fingers. There must have been a cup of it.
    He had this look to his face.
    It’s not my mattress, I said. I leaned forward in the chair and tried to show an interest.
    Now the pillow, he said. He put the used filter on the sill and looked out the window for a minute. He turned. I want you to hold onto this end of the pillow, he said.
    I got up and took hold of two corners of the pillow. I felt I was holding something by the ears.
    Like this? I said.
    He nodded. He went into the other room and came back with another filter.
    How much do those things cost? I said.
    Next to nothing, he said. They’re only made out of paper and a little bit of plastic. Couldn’t cost much.
    He kicked on the vacuum and I held tight as the scoop sank into the pillow and moved down its length-once, twice, three times. He switched off the vacuum, removed the filter, and held it up without a word.
    He put it on the sill beside the other filter. Then he opened the closet door. He looked inside, but there was only a box of Mouse-Be-Gone.
    I heard steps on the porch, the mail slot opened and clinked shut. We looked at each other.
    He pulled on the vacuum and I followed him into the other room. We looked at the letter lying face down on the