Where I'm Calling From

her after my wife asked me to leave. I felt sorry for her. The reason I felt sorry for her was that on the day before Christmas her Pap smear came back, and the news was not cheery. She’d have to go back to the doctor, and real soon. That kind of news was reason enough for both of us to start drinking. So what we did was get ourselves good and drunk. And on Christmas Day we were still drunk. We had to go out to a restaurant to eat, because she didn’t feel like cooking. The two of us and her mouthy teenaged son opened some presents, and then we went to this steakhouse near her apartment. I wasn’t hungry. I had some soup and a hot roll. I drank a bottle of wine with the soup. She drank some wine, too. Then we started in on Bloody Marys. For the next couple of days, I didn’t eat anything except salted nuts. But I drank a lot of bourbon. Then I said to her, “Sugar, I think I’d better pack up. I better go back to Frank Martin’s.”
    She tried to explain to her son that she was going to be gone for a while and he’d have to get his own food. But right as we were going out the door, this mouthy kid screamed at us. He screamed, “The hell with you! I hope you never come back. I hope you kill yourselves!” Imagine this kid!
    Before we left town, I had her stop at the package store, where I bought us the champagne. We stopped someplace else for plastic glasses. Then we picked up a bucket of fried chicken. We set out for Frank Martin’s in this rainstorm, drinking and listening to music. She drove. I looked after the radio and poured. We tried to make a little party of it. But we were sad, too. There was that fried chicken, but we didn’t eat any.
    I guess she got home okay. I think I would have heard something if she didn’t. But she hasn’t called me, and I haven’t called her. Maybe she’s had some news about herself by now. Then again, maybe she hasn’t heard anything. Maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe it was somebody else’s smear. But she has my car, and I have things at her house. I know we’ll be seeing each other again.
    They clang an old farm bell here to call you for mealtime. J.P. and I get out of our chairs and we go inside. It’s starting to get too cold on the porch, anyway. We can see our breath drifting out from us as we talk.
    New Year’s Eve morning I try to call my wife. There’s no answer. It’s okay. But even if it wasn’t okay, what am I supposed to do? The last time we talked on the phone, a couple of weeks ago, we screamed at each other. I hung a few names on her. “Wet brain!” she said, and put the phone back where it belonged.
    But I wanted to talk to her now. Something had to be done about my stuff. I still had things at her house, too.
    One of the guys here is a guy who travels. He goes to Europe and places. That’s what he says, anyway.
    Business, he says. He also says he has his drinking under control and he doesn’t have any idea why he’s here at Frank Martin’s. But he doesn’t remember getting here. He laughs about it, about his not remembering. “Anyone can have a blackout,” he says. “That doesn’t prove a thing.” He’s not a drunk—he tells us this and we listen. “That’s a serious charge to make,” he says. “That kind of talk can ruin a good man’s prospects.” He says that if he’d only stick to whiskey and water, no ice, he’d never have these blackouts. It’s the ice they put into your drink that does it. “Who do you know in Egypt?” he asks me. “I can use a few names over there.”
    For New Year’s Eve dinner Frank Martin serves steak and baked potato. My appetite’s coming back. I clean up everything on my plate and I could eat more. I look over at Tiny’s plate. Hell, he’s hardly touched a thing. His steak is just sitting there. Tiny is not the same old Tiny. The poor bastard had planned to be at home tonight. He’d planned to be in his robe and slippers in front of the TV, holding hands with his wife. Now he’s afraid to leave. I can understand. One seizure means you’re ready for another. Tiny hasn’t told any more nutty stories on himself since it happened. He’s stayed quiet and kept to himself. I ask him if I can have his steak, and he pushes his plate over to me.
    Some of us are still up, sitting around the TV, watching Times Square, when Frank Martin comes in to show us his cake. He brings it around and shows it to each of us. I know he didn’t make it. It’s just a bakery cake. But it’s still a