The Calls
Friday Fiction
I was awake when the first call came.
But I’m wondering why I thought it was the ‘first’ one. At that moment, I had no idea there would be a second, no sense that there would be a sequence to tot up. Maybe I should start by saying ‘I was awake when the call came’.
Being awake is relevant too. I’m not often up at 01:37 these days. There were times, of course, when I was but not any more. The chances of being up and about, awake, and willing to pick up the telephone had longer odds than the donkey that sneaked past my sure thing in the final furlong of today’s last race. It was the kind of gamble in a two-horse race that gets a man putting it all on the line; previous winnings, next week’s groceries, even his damn shirt. Anyway, that’s a whole other story.
Where was I?
Yeah, I was awake when the call came through, just not ‘awake’ in the full sense of the word. First up, I was several tumblers into a bottle of Jim Beam I’d been saving for a celebration. But when celebrations are thin on the ground you tend to go hard on consolation. My head was swimming, and there was an acid taste as if those winning post nightmares were repeating on me.
Let’s say I was awake, in a general fashion, but only just.
Maybe because no one ever rang to check up on me, my ‘yeah’ was what you’d call disinterested. Not surprised, not curious, just … not bothered. If I’d been asleep asleep, I’d have ignored it, even if the call had stirred me for a few minutes. Just let it ring out and get straight back to the dreams or nightmares, all the same to me.
So, there it was, my ‘yeah’ and the silence that followed.
Silence? Come on. You’ve called in the middle of the damn night, at least say something.
You can feel pretty stupid saying ‘hello’ to a silent phone line, like one of those haunted house movies where a dumb ass chooses to explore in the dark, on their own, in a cabin they just stumbled on when their car broke down. That sort of ‘hello’. To no one in particular. But someone was there, for sure. You can tell. That’s what makes it a silence, you see. Them not saying anything. That’s the silent treatment. Otherwise the phone wouldn’t have rung in the first place. They were there, making the call, but saying nothing. That kind of silence.
But then I’m the dumb ass who stayed on the line, head lolling back on the leather armchair she’d told me to ‘take or I’ll burn it, maybe with you in it, loser’. There’s not much in the apartment. That armchair and a damn phone that was currently held in place by a floppy head and the stupefying influence of Jim Beam.
In the end, I guess, I should have been satisfied with silence. But I didn’t know then what I know now. In the depths of that silence, all I wanted was to know who was calling, what the hell they wanted. I knew nothing. No idea it was the ‘first’ call. I sure as heck didn’t know that silence would be exactly what I’d crave by the end. Or, better still, no more calls.
Back then, I tried again. ‘Hello’, or ‘hey’, I don’t exactly remember. You never get it straight in your head when you don’t know you’ll need to remember, when someone might ask what made you suspicious in the first place. You don’t think of that stuff when it is just you and Jim Beam listening to the silence of a conversation that hasn’t got going yet.
It took two goes to heave my ass out the cushioned depths of the unloved armchair and a minute or so to stumble into the kitchen. I was going to just hang up. But by the time I’d untangled the cord from around my weathered cowboy boots and staggered the length of the apartment, the voice had started up.
When is a whisper a hiss? Is it intention on the part of the speaker, or realisation for the listener? Is a whisper always gentle? Is a hiss always malevolent? A whisper makes you listen hard. But you never know until you hear the voice that it’ll be a whisper so you need to listen hard anyway or miss what they have to say. Maybe she knew that. Maybe she knew that I’d strain to catch anything more than a single word - why - poured poisonously into my consciousness.
Why?
Why what?
I remember stopping short, phone receiver pressed tight to my good ear, brain grinding into gear as I tried to join sound and comprehension into a coherent whole. I’m saying that now, but back then …? I remember the ‘why’ and the way it sounded like a razor-edged accusation cutting into the untroubled conscience of life before the calls.
One word hissed into an unsuspecting ear, a new shade of reality. Then a click. The dial tone sounded a lot like the buzz of adrenaline, a simmering vibration of uncertainty. What more can I tell you, that was the first call, and I didn’t even know right then that it was the first of anything. It was just a call, though I’m telling you now it sure as hell was the call, the one that started it.
By the time you’ve slept a fair way into the next morning, memories start to get fuzzy. Maybe half a bottle of Jim Beam killed off the chunk of brain cells where that episode was meant to be recorded. Clog it up with three greasy eggs, stodgy grits and a tower of crisped-up porker, wash it down with a bucket of stale coffee in a diner that promises more than it delivers and you’re on the road to today’s stuff taking over from last night’s. I put it down as a wrong number, I guess.
Days go by. A week. Nothing special, just getting used to having a place for myself. There’s a neighbourhood cat that’s taken to looking cute on the ledge outside the kitchen window, the one that leads to the fire escape. It purrs, I give in to its cuteness, kind of the way I used to be with girls. But this tramp is the only one purring at me these days. I must be giving off a vibe. Who needs the hassle anyway?
The week drifts on, shifts at the warehouse, get-togethers with Mr Beam. His pal Jack stopped by on his way from Tennessee to the Land of the Rising Sun. No one notices if one or two bottles go missing from a consignment and there have to be some perks when all they pay is minimum.
After work on Friday, I stop by Mahoney’s to grab a bite and a couple of beers, maybe just to lessen my time alone in the cheap apartment. I’m just leaving when my ex’s annoying friend gets in my face. “Hey, loser, where’s Angel? I ain’t seen her for weeks now, not since she threw you out, you bum.”
Jesus, I never liked this bitch. Maybe her old man liked Clapton. Like, how else do you wind up being called Layla. Layla by name, Lay LA by nature. The slutty sort who leads your girlfriend astray, the kind of confidante who backs up tales of girly ‘sleepovers’ to obscure the truth about what saucer of milk my feral ex was lapping at.
“Whatever, Lay_laaa, how would I know?” I always said her name like that to bug her. I tried to leave, muttering that my friend Jack was in town. But she stood there, brazen, tits fighting to escape, skirt inviting all and sundry to lip-read her intentions. “Where is she, man,” she whined, forever nasal from a broken nose earned on - or should I say off - the bucking bronco in Billy Bob’s. I had no time for this shit cos it was reminding me of her. I’m out the door while she’s wailing about ‘hitting her head’ or some such. Hell, I hardly touched her.
Friday again. Me and Jack Daniel’s just hanging out. I’m wired but the whiskey is helping to dull some edges. I put WMGK-FM on and Clapton throws in some irony. Yeah, right, it is hardly ‘Wonderful Tonight’. Just ask Layla.
It might smell of stale tobacco and whiskey stains but this armchair sure is comfortable. She thought she was winning twice over when she threw out both the chair and me. Turns out she was the loser. It might stink but the armchair hugs this guy better than her bony body ever did.
I’m dozing, dreaming. Plenty of bodies, none of them bony, none of them wrapped around the sort of fellas my ex and Layla hooked up with when I was pulling extra shifts at the warehouse. Good dreams leveraging the sort of confidence Jim and Jack give you. Sometimes you still have it when you wake up, you know, the courage to do things you never thought you would. ‘Sometimes’ is all it takes.
01:37, the blinking of the dots perfectly matching the ring of the phone.
Damn.
Now I knew the call last week was the first, because this, sure as hell, was the second, the follow up. You just know some things. Like when your ex starts cheating on you, or it’s time to put a stop to something. You just know. And I had to make this stop so I picked up and offered the same old lame ‘hello’. More like a nervous question than a statement. No surprises when there was nothing, just the sort of silence she used to greet me with when I asked where she’d been, why she was wearing Layla’s shirt, and where was the checking account money? Yeah, that sort of silence. Nada. Zilch. So I grabbed the tumbler with three day old stains on the rim, topped it up, and waited.
Why?
Boring, I knew she was going to say that. That’s the thing with second helpings, you know what you’re gonna get. The taste is the same and most times you end up with too much. Two portions of the same question and I’ve had enough. It’s the same with excuses. Hear it once and it sounds good. Next time round, it tastes bland, samey.
But I’ve got to tell you, same time, same taste, every damn week, call after call and nothing more than ‘why’. It can get to a man. And Layla going on and on at me every time she saw me, like she knew something. Needling, peck-peck-pecking, just like she used to.
Maybe Layla’s not as smart as she thinks she is. You don’t have to look too deep on one of those fancy phones to see what calls a girl might have made in the middle of the night. Thought she could hustle me. Well, no-one gets one over on me, not Layla … not her. They both got what was coming to them.
“Keep talking, buddy, keep talking”.
Behind the one-way glass, the veteran detective shook his head while the man talked his way into a chair a lot less comfortable than the one they’d found him asleep in. He’d only resisted when they’d tried to prise his bloodstained fingers from the neck of an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Well that turned down a dark alley that I hadn't noticed!
Barrie that ending!! I truly wasn't expecting it... what great writing, you had me from the very first paragraph, building characters and tension very convincingly. Bravo!