Where I'm Calling From

no more. I wanted me a keepsake.”
    Khaki turned the ear on its chain.
    Donna and I began getting out of the booth.
    “Girl, don’t go,” Nelson said.
    “Nelson,” Benny said.
    Khaki was watching Nelson now. I stood beside the booth with Donna’s coat. My legs were crazy.
    Nelson raised his voice. He said, “You go with this mother here, you let him put his face in your sweets, you both going to have to deal with me.”
    We started to move away from the booth. People were looking.
    “Nelson just got off the plane from Nam this morning,” I heard Benny say. “We been drinking all day.
    This been the longest day on record. But me and him, we going to be fine, Khaki.”
    Nelson yelled something over the music. He yelled, “It ain’t going to do no good! Whatever you do, it ain’t going to help none!” I heard him say that, and then I couldn’t hear anymore. The music stopped, and then it started again. We didn’t look back. We kept going. We got out to the sidewalk.
    I opened the door for her. I started us back to the hospital. Donna stayed over on her side. She’d used the lighter on a cigarette, but she wouldn’t talk.
    I tried to say something. I said, “Look, Donna, don’t get on a downer because of this. I’m sorry it happened,” I said.
    “I could of used the money,” Donna said. “That’s what I was thinking.”
    I kept driving and didn’t look at her.
    “It’s true,” she said. “I could of used the money.” She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She put her chin down and cried.
    “Don’t cry,” I said.
    “I’m not going in to work tomorrow, today, whenever it is the alarm goes off,” she said. “I’m not going in. I’m leaving town. I take what happened back there as a sign.” She pushed in the lighter and waited for it to pop out.
    I pulled in beside my car and killed the engine. I looked in the rearview, half thinking I’d see that old Chrysler drive into the lot behind me with Nelson in the seat. I kept my hands on the wheel for a minute, and then dropped them to my lap. I didn’t want to touch Donna. The hug we’d given each other in my kitchen that night, the kissing we’d done at the Off-Broadway, that was all over.
    I said, “What are you going to do?” But I didn’t care. Right then she could have died of a heart attack and it wouldn’t have meant anything.
    “Maybe I could go up to Portland,” she said. “There must be something in Portland. Portland’s on everybody’s mind these days. Portland’s a drawing card. Portland this, Portland that. Portland’s as good a place as any. It’s all the same.”
    “Donna,” I said, “I’d better go.”
    I started to let myself out. I cracked the door, and the overhead light came on.
    “For Christ’s sake, turn off that light!” I got out in a hurry.” ‘Night, Donna,” I said. I left her staring at the dashboard. I started up my car and turned on the lights. I slipped it in gear and fed it the gas.
    I poured Scotch, drank some of it, and took the glass into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth. Then I pulled open a drawer. Patti yelled something from the bedroom. She opened the bathroom door. She was still dressed. She’d been sleeping with her clothes on, I guess.
    “What time is it?” she screamed. “I’ve overslept! Jesus, oh my God! You’ve let me oversleep, goddamn you!”
    She was wild. She stood in the doorway with her clothes on. She could have been fixing to go to work.
    But there was no sample case, no vitamins. She was having a bad dream, is all. She began shaking her head from side to side.
    I couldn’t take any more tonight. “Go back to sleep, honey. I’m looking for something,” I said. I knocked some stuff out of the medicine chest. Things rolled into the sink. “Where’s the aspirin?” I said. I knocked down some more things. I didn’t care. Things kept falling.

Careful

    After a lot of talking—what his wife, Inez, called assessment—Lloyd moved out of the house and into his own place. He had two rooms and a bath on the top floor of a three-story house. Inside the rooms, the roof slanted down sharply. If he walked around, he had to duck his head. He had to stoop to look from his windows and be careful getting in and out of bed. There were two keys. One key let him into the house itself. Then he climbed some stairs that passed through the house to a landing. He went up another flight of stairs to the door of his room and used the other key on that