Where I'm Calling From

black shoes and socks. Of course, by now she’s taken her hat off.
    J.P. says it nearly drove him nuts to look at her. She does the work, she cleans the chimney, while J.P. and his friend play records and drink beer. But they watch her and they watch what she does. Now and then J.P. and his friend look at each other and grin, or else they wink. They raise their eyebrows when the upper half of the young woman disappears into the chimney. She was all-right-looking, too, J.P. said.
    When she’d finished her work, she rolled her things up in the blanket. From J.P.’s friend, she took a check that had been made out to her by his parents. And then she asks the friend if he wants to kiss her.
    “It’s supposed to bring good luck,” she says. That does it for J.P. The friend rolls his eyes. He clowns some more. Then, probably blushing, he kisses her on the cheek. At this minute, J.P. made his mind up about something. He put his beer down. He got up from the sofa. He went over to the young woman as she was starting to go out the door.
    “Me, too?” J.P. said to her.
    She swept her eyes over him. J.P. says he could feel his heart knocking. The young woman’s name, it turns out, was Roxy.
    “Sure,” Roxy says. “Why not? I’ve got some extra kisses.” And she kissed him a good one right on the lips and then turned to go.
    Like that, quick as a wink, J.P. followed her onto the porch. He held the porch screen door for her. He went down the steps with her and out to the drive, where she’d parked her panel truck. It was something that was out of his hands. Nothing else in the world counted for anything. He knew he’d met somebody who could set his legs atremble. He could feel her kiss still burning on his lips, etc. J.P. couldn’t begin to sort anything out. He was filled with sensations that were carrying him every which way.
    He opened the rear door of the panel truck for her. He helped her store her things inside. “Thanks,” she told him. Then he blurted it out— that he’d like to see her again. Would she go to a movie with him sometime? He’d realized, too, what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to do what she did. He wanted to be a chimney sweep. But he didn’t tell her that then.
    J.P. says she put her hands on her hips and looked him over. Then she found a business card in the front seat of her truck. She gave it to him. She said, “Call this number after ten tonight. We can talk. I have to go now.” She put the top hat on and then took it off. She looked at J.P. once more. She must have liked what she saw, because this time she grinned. He told her there was a smudge near her mouth. Then she got into her truck, tooted the horn, and drove away.
    “Then what?” I say. “Don’t stop now, J.P.”
    I was interested. But I would have listened if he’d been going on about how one day he’d decided to start pitching horseshoes.
    It rained last night. The clouds are banked up against the hills across the valley. J.P. clears his throat and looks at the hills and the clouds.
    He pulls his chin. Then he goes on with what he was saying.
    Roxy starts going out with him on dates. And little by little he talks her into letting him go along on jobs with her. But Roxy’s in business with her father and brother and they’ve got just the right amount of work. They don’t need anybody else. Besides, who was this guy J.P.? J.P. what? Watch out, they warned her.
    So she and J.P. saw some movies together. They went to a few dances. But mainly the courtship revolved around their cleaning chimneys together. Before you know it, J.P. says, they’re talking about tying the knot. And after a while they do it, they get married. J.P.’s new father-in-law takes him in as a full partner. In a year or so, Roxy has a kid. She’s quit being a chimney sweep. At any rate, she’s quit doing the work. Pretty soon she has another kid. J.P.’s in his mid-twenties by now. He’s buying a house.
    He says he was happy with his life. “I was happy with the way things were going,” he says. “I had everything I wanted. I had a wife and kids I loved, and I was doing what I wanted to do with my life.”
    But for some reason—who knows why we do what we do?— his drinking picks up. For a long time he drinks beer and beer only. Any kind of beer—it didn’t matter. He says he could drink beer twenty-four hours a day. He’d drink beer at night while he watched TV. Sure, once in a while he drank hard stuff.
    But that