What’s in the Phone? : A Short Story

The first time I ever had any real life experience was when I first bumped into Montgomery Clift at a bar, down in Burbank. What the people said about his eyebrows was true, and I resisted the urge to laugh my ass off, until I could wet my pants. He was a slim fellow, smoked a lot during our half hour conversation, and seemed down in the doldrums, sulking like a miserable Hollywood snob, I’d say. The pair of us drank a couple of Manhattans, no rocks, and covered in three large red cherries, with the systems still attached like it was a chocolate sundae. He showed me this trick where we could tie a knot with the cherry stem in his mouth with his tongue; I was partially impressed and the rest, disgusted. In being perfectly candid, he was a fruity song, yet I was intrigued almost as much as when I played a chess game with Humphrey Bogart in the thirties—this was before he was the Humphrey Bogart of the silver screen, married to a woman twenty-five years younger than himself, and got away from a hysterically insane wife who did the beating of the family. After my conversation with Mr. Clift, I was left drunk, and blatantly pulled my pants down to piss on a fire hydrant just outside Paramount Pictures, and left my hat on top to claim the territory as rightfully mine alone. The hydrant never did what it was supposed to do, much less look good in color like any typical snobbish woman of the valley. I turned my head and saw Mr. Clift walked in the opposite direction of me, seemingly just starting his trek after a second of staring at me doing my dirty work; it was the last time I saw his face before he turned up dead a couple of months later, in the Times of the West coast. Poor sap, I thought.

Passing the corner of the city limits, I walked past a pay phone, hanging off of the wire, and I heard the faint dial tone; reluctantly, I picked up the receiver and hung it up, almost flinching to here the change drop down in the slot, but no change was there for my taking. After a few steps, the phone rang and broke a ring of silence due at any time—unfortunately for me, that time was in the broad darkness of California, where all there was was a selection of good clean turnpikes, and a couple of street lamps sprinkled in every ghost town. The ringing was like a throbbing heart, the way it filled my ears coherently. I heard myself move my feet, then reach for the phone; I hadn’t been in control of my body since I saw Clift’s cherry stem gimmick. It was all a revelation of a turning point—am I really capable of harnessing such a power as the control of my body? An operator greeted me with a rough how-do-you-do, and asked if I was accepting the call. I burped and said yes, feeling dizzy, and grabbing my temples as if ascertaining the dizziness with immense pressure can solve the problem of my irresponsibility to myself. The beginning of the phone call was a soft breath, eagerly wanting to say something, yet the voice was distant, immersed in a bleak facade of themselves. As if they were looking in a mirror for the first time, and hardly finding the words to describe the dangerousness they see—I was the first to respond to the breathing, feeling only obligated, and for it being tasteful. I said “hello?” about as clearly as the way I could see my feet in the darkness.

“I lost the baby, Pierce,” a woman said, dazed with spasmodic morose. I loved the sound of her voice when she was upset; it reminded me of a school teacher I once had—Oh! how I loved that school teacher like a girlfriend. And lo, the dense fog became an entity, shielding me from responding to the woman’s remark. I was in charge of answering for Pierce, whoever he was and wherever he may be. There was a little souvenir in my pocket from the hardware store just three blocks away: a pistol-shaped lighter capable of scaring some kids and lighting their smokes too. Fishing it out, I lit myself two: one for me and one for the woman, which I casually set lighted on top of the steel box the phone lived in. “Do you want a cigarette?” I kindly asked the woman over the phone. I was entirely aware of how loopy I sounded.

“The baby is gone, Pierce,” she cried, “floating with the Heavenly Father, if my prayers worked.”

I giggled manically, then coughed like a sick, wild animal thrashing around in a zoo cage, being mocked and given a casual middle finger—I would present them with a likewise altercation. That school teacher’s voice—and large bosom—filled my imagination with Independence Day fireworks, gleaming like the end of wartimes, sparkling like the top of a sugar-crusted creme brulee. Her patriotic lipstick was the color of freshly pricked blood from a rose’s thorn, dripping into her palm, and pooling. Her eyes were gumdrop-colored green, with a hint of fluorescent blue around the center of the irises, and she always wore a long sundress—even in the winter. I winked at her everyday when I left her class, constantly under the impression that her and I were unconsciously going steady. I found her crying once, with a Kleenex bunched up in her hand, and a smudge of lipstick where she wiped her nose. The last bell of the school day had rung, while I had left my textbook in her class, and I found her. She acknowledged me by name when I asked what was the matter. She embraced me like an equal, and I went home to write her a love poem, confessing my undying pledged fidelity to her, hath come the day we wed and create a family; I was widely delusional in the days before all things that are now considered serious. I switched ears for the receiver and wondered how melodramatic women could convince themselves of being—was it sane for them? Was I in the wrong for being the seemingly insensitive one?

“All right, doll, let’s take it slow,” I said, working up an edge, “what’s your name, and all that?”

“You know who I am,” she said, repulsed.

“I’m afraid you don’t strike me as distinctive,” I responded. “How do I know you, per say?”

“You’re the one who’s put me in this mess, you cowardly bastard,” she said, ominously calm—it was like chatting with a congregation of poets: all dull and understanding and having a putrid complexion.

“How’s that?”

“I blame your antics, you wet piece of slime-covered rubber, and that ain’t news to your sore ears, is it?”

“I think you better take it easy, doll,” I said, keeping a relaxed composure. “You’re slightly in over your head. Have you been drinking?”

I heard a wail of crying after going a few seconds without a response, clearly getting the idea that this woman was mentally insane. I lit her cigarette for her, yet she still wants to point fingers at the innocent one. It was all too unreal.

“You sound drunk yourself, Pierce.”

I froze, making a harsh realization… How did she know my name, and why did she speak it as if it were an inconvenient thread on her shirt? Was I really that loathsome to a woman? I hadn’t noticed her identifying by name until now.

“You left me this morning! And you didn’t even think about my well-being!”

“Paula?” I asked, repenting.

“Halle-fucking-luyah!” she cried.

“What’s going on, hon?”

She frantically started sobbing into the receiver, imploring me to come home and look at what I caused.

“Paula, you had better settle down…It’s not good for you to get hysterical this soon after.”

“How would you know?”

I didn’t respond, except for plucking the cigarette from the top of the box and having it for myself; it tasted like the people of the city: wet, malnourished, odorous, and sexy all balled and rolled up into one.

“Paula, what in God’s name is going on?”

She breathed unsteady, causing another loud feedback buzz from the receiver in my ear, to which I pulled away and looked at the dark outside surrounding me. I was alone.

“The baby, Pierce, he’s gone.”

“What does that mean? Gone where?”

I was unequivocally conscious of something being worse than how Paula was putting it on to be. Her voice was shrill, and harshly butchered by the connection of midnight. Blood pumped towards my brain like a railway station, fleeting in the glimpse of a second, making me light-headed with anxiety.

* * *

I had to hitch a ride from a speakeasy owner a quarter of a mile past the city limits; he was a poly-roly of sorts, yet drove like a racehorse. It was around one when I found the apartment in the glazed reflection of my thick intoxication—the key was indecisively not wanting to enter the keyhole, as if shaking its head no. After a few fumbled attempts, the apartment door swung open and I was greeted with an aroma of rusted pennies. There was a light on next to the kitchen, which was the bathroom’s. I threw down my coat and took a few large steps over to the light, cautiously avoiding the inside in case I didn't like what I saw. I cocked my head at an angle and slowly pushed my body in the light, and saw a puddle of water next to the pile of towels. I moved my eyes forward and saw Paula draped on the tub, feet on the ground and head in the water. Her back was bony, with her spinal buttons poking out of her nightie. A few steps closer, and there was the body of our baby floating, face down, in the water, bumping the side of the tub like a buoy. A half empty glass of some alcohol was sitting on top of the toilet’s water tank, with a pink toothpick umbrella balanced on its side.

“Get up, Paula!”

I screamed and aimed my pistol lighter at the back of her head.

“Get up!”

I reached for her back, and felt the coolness of her cold-blooded body—I glanced at the body of my baby again, wondering if the death was quick or slow.

“GET UP, YOU BITCH!”

Without thinking, I stopped shouting, put down the lighter, flicked the lightswitch off, and went into my bedroom—it was a time of procrastination of the highest variety. I started to jump on my bed like a child, screaming childish verses from nursery rhymes—I didn’t smile, but yelled to fill the uncomfortable silence. Yuck yuck yuckety yuck yuck—all my father claimed I did in a time of simplicity. I collapsed on the bed, and turned to lay on my fat stomach; I was dog-tired. The silence rang like an anxious doorbell, hanging out to dry, then never really letting out for a break until you’re comfortable.

As always, I wished my wife, Paula, and my baby goodnight, and went soundly to sleep like I was meant to do. Towards the third hour of the early morning, I heard a baby’s cry from down the hall—it was muffled and dry.