Where I'm Calling From

you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass.”
    Vassals,” Terri said.
    “What?” Mel said.
    “Vassals,” Terri said. “They were called vassals, not vessels.”
    “Vassals, vessels,” Mel said, “what the fuck’s the difference? You knew what I meant anyway. All right,” Mel said. “So I’m not educated. I learned my stuff. I’m a heart surgeon, sure, but I’m just a mechanic. I go in and I fuck around and I fix things. Shit,” Mel said.
    “Modesty doesn’t become you,” Terri said.
    “He’s just a humble sawbones,” I said. “But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They’d even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere that they’d fall off their horses and not be able to get up because they were too tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes.”
    “That’s terrible,” Mel said. “That’s a terrible thing, Nicky. I guess they’d just lay there and wait until somebody came along and made a shish kebab out of them.”
    “Some other vessel,” Terri said.
    “That’s right,” Mel said. “Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.”
    “Same things we fight over these days,” Terri said.
    Laura said, “Nothing’s changed.”
    The color was still high in Laura’s cheeks. Her eyes were bright. She brought her glass to her lips.
    Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label closely as if studying a long row of numbers. Then he slowly put the bottle down on the table and slowly reached for the tonic water.
    What about the old couple?” Laura said. “You didn’t finish that story you started.”
    Laura was having a hard time lighting her cigarette. Her matches kept going out.
    The sunshine inside the room was different now, changing, getting thinner. But the leaves outside the window were still shimmering, and I stared at the pattern they made on the panes and on the Formica counter. They weren’t the same patterns, of course.
    “What about the old couple?” I said.
    “Older but wiser,” Terri said.
    Mel stared at her.
    Terri said, “Go on with your story, hon. I was only kidding. Then what happened?”
    “Terri, sometimes,” Mel said.
    “Please, Mel,” Terri said. “Don’t always be so serious, sweetie. Can’t you take a joke?”
    “Where’s the joke?” Mel said.
    He held his glass and gazed steadily at his wife.
    “What happened?” Laura said.
    Mel fastened his eyes on Laura. He said, “Laura, if I didn’t have Terri and if I didn’t love her so much, and if Nick wasn’t my best friend, I’d fall in love with you. I’d carry you off, honey,” he said.
    “Tell your story,” Terri said. “Then we’ll go to that new place, okay?”
    “Okay,” Mel said. “Where was I?” he said. He stared at the table and then he began again.
    “I dropped in to see each of them every day, sometimes twice a day if I was up doing other calls anyway. Casts and bandages, head to foot, the both of them. You know, you’ve seen it in the movies.
    That’s just the way they looked, just like in the movies. Little eye-holes and nose-holes and mouth-holes.
    And she had to have her legs slung up on top of it. Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed.
    Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn’t everything. I’d get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he’d say no, it wasn’t the accident exactly but it was because he couldn’t see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I’m telling you, the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.”
    Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say.
    “I mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn’t look at the fucking woman.”
    We all looked at Mel.
    “Do you see what I’m saying?” he said.
    Maybe we were a little drunk by then. I know it was hard keeping things in focus. The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. Yet nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the overhead light.
    “Listen,” Mel said. “Let’s finish this fucking gin. There’s