The Gentleman Caller

David had just woken from a series of confused but not unpleasant dreams when his phone rang. It lay on the bedside table and the wan luminescence of its screen stirred up all the nearby shadows as it came to life. The ringtoned strains of Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum featuring additional syncopated percussion from the vibration against the table soon followed. He grabbed at the phone and muted it against his chest as Lucy rolled over beside him. She muttered something about cats in the attic then sighed and slipped back into sleeping breaths. David lifted the phone a little to check the caller ID and saw it was a private number then glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to five. He swore under his breath then slid out from under the covers and sat naked on the edge of the bed to answer the call.

Hello? he whispered.

There was a rustling sound at the other end of the line then silence.

Hello? he tried again a little louder.

Still there was no reply and his whole upper body sank a little. He went to hang up but then paused. After a moment’s reflection he stood up and opened the door as quietly as he could. A thin shaft of light came in and fell across Lucy lying coiled in her dark hair with a single strand strung across her mouth. He went out into the living room and closed the door gently behind him.

This is getting beyond a joke, he said to the silent caller.

It was dark outside and the only light came from a table lamp that had been carelessly left on. He watched his naked reflection in the sliding glass door that lead onto the balcony as he stooped to grab his cigarettes from the coffee table then sat down on the couch with a deep sigh.

Do you really have nothing better to do at five o’clock in the morning? he asked.

There was no reply and he put the phone down on the coffee table while he lit a cigarette. He blew the smoke towards the ceiling then turned the TV on and hit the mute button. He flicked through the channels til he found the twenty-four hour news then picked up the phone again.

I mean I have to head to work in a couple of hours so I don’t really give a shit. You nearly woke my girlfriend up though so I guess I have to make some sort of a stand. Not that I think it’ll do any good. I know a lost cause when I see one. Or get a series of inappropriate phone calls from one.

He took the phone away from his ear to check if the call was still active. It was.

You know this is just costing you money mate. Isn’t there something else you’d rather be spending it on? If you’d just saved up instead of calling me every other night I reckon you could’ve bought yourself an hour with an only slightly overweight call girl by now. It’s a much more effective way of relieving feelings of desperate inadequacy and crushing loneliness than breathing down a phone line I’m sure. But then again maybe not. I guess you’re the expert on such things. At this point I’m not even that pissed off any more. I’m genuinely curious about what sort of pathetic existence a person would have to be leading to resort to this sort of shit for their entertainment or whatever it is this does for you. You can think you’re getting to me if you want but you’re not. I was awake when you called. Believe me or don’t, I really don’t care.

David paused to stub out his cigarette and light another one. The television was showing images of a conflict somewhere in the Middle East. Black-veiled women wailed on their knees amidst indecipherable piles of rubble and moustached men gesticulated furiously at the carnage and at then the camera and then at the carnage once more. David kept his eyes on the newsreel at the bottom of the screen as the overnight sports results began to roll past.

There is one question that’s been plaguing me, he said after a while. You see, something tells me that you don’t currently have a job that requires you to be up and about at such an ungodly hour. It’s just a hunch so tell me if I’m wrong.

He waited for a moment then went on.

I’ll go ahead and take your silence to mean I’m right. So the question that’s bothering me is whether you planned ahead and set your alarm just so you could wake up and call me when you figured it would be most inconvenient or whether you’ve been up all night drinking cheap vodka and picking your nose and whacking off to granny porn and the bright idea of giving me a call just swam up into your head. It’s a split decision for me and either way when I try to form some sort of a picture of you in my mind as you are right now I see a toad-like creature sitting in the dark surrounded by biscuit crumbs and boxes of old magazines and balled up tissues with one hand down the front of your stained tracksuit pants. It’s not a pretty sight. Now I don’t reckon you’re going to tell me which it is and I don’t reckon I’d believe you even if you did so I’m in a real pickle here. It’s driving me nuts.

He lay back and put his feet up on the coffee table. A few of the larger toes were bearing dirt under the nails and he frowned and searched around for the nail clippers until he found them on the floor under a pair of Lucy’s jeans. As he pruned he ruminated further.

I bet you haven’t had a girl in a good year or two or maybe more. I’m sure there are plenty of factors at work there but they can smell desperation you know. Apparently it has an odour a bit like rotting meat, sweet to the point of sickness and we’ve all evolved to associate it with death. Showering every now and then does help though I’m told, so maybe give that a crack. I would suggest trying to preserve a certain level of self-respect but all evidence points to that ship having sailed and sunk off the coast of somewhere or other with the captain drunk at the wheel so that’s about as much advice as I can give I’m afraid. I do hope you appreciate it though. I don’t just hand out pearls of wisdom to any old prank caller.

He stopped talking for a moment and listened to the breath without voice at the other end of the line. He was waiting for some reaction but the breathing didn’t even change pace.

I’m gonna tell you a story, he said eventually. A mate of mine once told me about an old boyfriend of his sister’s. She dated him for a few months and my mate said he seemed like a pretty decent guy on the few occasions he met him. A bit quiet maybe but alright to have a beer with and whatnot. He was an Irish bloke I think he said. Anyway, my mate’s sister seemed to like him well enough and everything was going ok but after like three months she’d still never been to his place. He was flatting with a couple of people in an apartment in the city but every time she suggested they go there he made some excuse like the floors were getting redone or they were having the place fumigated or something like that and so they just ended up going back to hers. Still, she thought nothing of it. She was a sweet girl. I met her a few times. She grew up way out in the country and was one of those what you see is what you get kind of people. Not in a tomboy sort of way but she just didn’t have a suspicious bone in her body. So they were getting pretty close and he introduced her to his three flatmates and she became friends with them. One in particular was a girl around her age and they started hanging out quite a bit, just the two of them. They were out drinking together one night when the boyfriend, and I can’t remember his name for the life of me, was away with work. They got pretty drunk and the flatmate suggested my mate’s sister come back and crash at theirs for the night so they made their way back to the apartment some time in the early hours. At this point the flatmate mentioned that the boyfriend was pretty private and never usually let anybody else into his room. My mate’s sister was pretty drunk and just wanted to sleep and she figured that since they’d been dating for a while now he wouldn’t mind if she just crashed in there for the night. So the two of them went into his room and turned on the light. Now I only heard this through my mate but he swears that every detail is exactly as his sister told him and she was never one to lie. What they saw when they turned on the light was a room stacked full on every surface and every which way with hundreds and hundreds of glass jars. Jam jars and peanut butter jars and coffee jars and all sorts. Each jar was carefully labelled with a date and a location and as they moved into the room a little further they saw that each one held a single turd. I shit you not. This bloke had his own personal turd museum in his bedroom. Fuck knows how long he’d been collecting them. I assume they were all his but you never know. The girls didn’t stay long enough to do a thorough examination. One look and they both ran screaming out of the apartment and I can’t say I blame them. So that was that basically. My mate’s sister never spoke to the guy again. She just avoided all his calls. A week or so later the flatmate who had been there that night moved out to come and live with her and apparently told the bloke what had happened as she was leaving. He stopped calling after that. Last I heard the bloke got done for something or other on the Gold Coast. That’s a true story. Every word. I don’t quite know why it popped into my head just now but it did and I felt an urge to share it with you. Hope you enjoyed it. Maybe there’s something—

David stopped talking as the bedroom door clicked open. He looked up and saw Lucy standing all bleary eyed and mussy haired in the doorway in just her black tank top and panties.

Who you talking to babe? she murmured.

David put the phone on speaker and set it on the coffee table. The caller’s rhythmic breaths were just audible through the static.

Same old, same old, he said. I hope so anyway. I couldn’t cope if there was another one. Sorry if I woke you up. Anything you want to say? I’ve been trying to get him to speak but I can’t get a word. You just might though I reckon.

Lucy sniffed and rubbed her eyes.

Just hang up and come back to bed, she said.

No, I’m up now. I won’t get back to sleep before I have to leave anyway.

Lucy looked at him from under sleep-lidded eyes for a long moment. David shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and glanced towards the glass doors that led onto the balcony. Dawn was still a fair way off but the light outside was growing greyer. Eucalyptus canopies were visible now as silhouettes against the paling sky and they appeared as dark clouds that shook but wouldn’t shift with the wind. He eventually met Lucy’s eyes again and saw that her look was full of confusion and disappointment.

The moment was broken by a baby’s cry. The sound struck Lucy out of her slumber and her whole body tensed as though charged with a sudden surge of current but then just as quickly she sagged against the doorframe and implored him with weary eyes. David glanced at the phone still counting up the chargeable minutes then gestured helplessly at his nakedness. Lucy sighed and eased herself up onto heavy feet and began to make her way towards the child’s bedroom. Out of the corner of his eye David watched her half-clad body closely as it passed. She disappeared down the hall and a moment later he could hear her murmuring words of comfort and humming a tune he recognised from his own childhood but couldn’t name. He frowned and studied the carpet. After a while the sounds of mother and child grew softer as Lucy’s soothing tones took effect. It was then that David realised the phone was still on speaker and the breathing at the other end of the line had all but stopped. He glanced over his shoulder then picked up the phone and held it close to his lips.

You know, he whispered. Once or twice in the middle of the night I’ve actually wished she really wasn’t mine. I guess me telling you this is pretty fucking sick when I think about it but I can’t help it. The feelings only last a second but afterwards when I remember having had those thoughts the memories come back so laden with guilt that I can barely breathe. And I can’t tell Luce. She wouldn’t understand. I don’t expect you to either but at least I don’t have to look you in the eye.

Lucy’s footsteps started back down the hall and David cleared his throat then went on more loudly.

So there were these two daddy long legs in our bathroom, he said.

Lucy came past him and took his cigarettes from the coffee table. She lit one and went to stand by the window.

They lived in opposite corners up by the ceiling, David continued. One night I came in and one had wandered over to his neighbour’s web and the two of them were locked together in an embrace. I was a little drunk so it took me a while to actually work out that there were two spiders together there and not just one. I blew at them a few times so they’d scuttle about and after like ten minutes or so I could say with absolute certainty that there were more than eight legs operating. You know how those things have such tiny bodies. They were all curled into one another as well so it could have just been the one. But no, there were plenty more than eight legs operating there. I watched them for quite a while trying to work out what they were doing. I figured they must be either fucking or fighting or some combination of the two. You know how when some spiders mate the female eats the male straight after? Black widows I think they’re called but I didn’t know if maybe daddy long legs did the same thing because sometimes their webs have corpses of other daddy long legs in them. Anyway, I eventually got bored and went to bed with them still in their strange embrace but over the next few weeks I kept an eye on those two. And you know what happened? Nothing. Neither of them became a windblown husk hanging sadly in the web and no clutch of eggs or babies appeared. They just went on sharing a web. Is that not bizarre? Because from what I’ve read spiders don’t like to live in close proximity to one another, especially when there’s a lack of food. And our bathroom is hardly crawling with bugs. We keep it pretty clean. So how do you explain that? What the fuck were they up to?

As David had started getting into the swing of his little story Lucy had turned slowly from the window to watch him with mounting bewilderment. Towards the end her eyes began to narrow slightly. When he was finished with his tale David threw her a broad wink and after a brief internal struggle she failed to suppress the grin that fought to break free across her face. Their eyes met and David grinned back. He held her gaze for a long while until a slight flush crept up her neck and she looked down at the carpet as though the pale stain by her foot was suddenly very interesting. A small smile was still playing about her lips.

Mysteries abound, David said into the phone. But what’s life without a little mystery?

Lucy shivered slightly and came over to deposit the remains of her cigarette in an empty beer bottle from the night before that was sitting on the coffee table.

Don’t get yourself too worked up, she said softly. I’m going back to bed.

She turned and walked away but at the door she glanced back over her shoulder.

And would you put some fucking pants on? she said. It’ll be light soon and we don’t have curtains, remember? You’ll give Mrs. Harrison a heart attack if she looks out her kitchen window first thing in the morning and gets an eyeful of your tackle.

It’d probably make her month, David chuckled. I don’t reckon the poor thing’s seen one in years.

And imagine her disappointment when she finally gets the chance for a perv and all she finds is that sad little thing, Lucy said without missing a beat.

David’s mouth goldfished as he fumbled briefly for a reply and in that moment of hesitation Lucy blew him a kiss and disappeared back into the bedroom. The door closed with a soft click and David was left staring at the space where she’d been.

God I love that girl, he said. Despite what I said before I would have raised the kid no matter what the test said if she wanted me to. I don’t expect you to understand that.

He sighed and collapsed back onto the couch. The leather was cold and clung a little to his neck and shoulders. He chewed his bottom lip and gazed vaguely at the television. They were showing a press conference with some politician he didn’t recognise and for almost a minute he lost himself in the series of measured gestures and ambiguous facial expressions that gave no hint as to whether the silently moving mouth might be outlining the new budget or confronting questions on a sex scandal. Eventually he began to speak again and though the phone was some distance away on the coffee table he didn’t bother shift from his supine position.

Here’s something I haven’t told you, he said. This is going back a fair way now. I would have been about fourteen or fifteen I reckon. It must have been during the mid-year school holidays. It was definitely winter and it was during that cold snap because we weren’t anywhere near the mountains and yet that week was the first time I ever saw snow. We’d driven out into the country to visit our cousins on Mum’s side. They had a farm outside some town out west. It was a fair way south as well I think. What was it called again? The name’s on the tip of my tongue. I think it maybe started with an ‘M’. Fuck it. Anyway, it was on the way back that we ran into snow. We all flipped out when we saw it but that strange thing is that more than anything else I remember the smell. Well before we caught sight of it we were at a truck stop getting petrol and I’d stepped out of the car to stretch my legs and the air was somehow different. It was heavy but not like the smell of rain. It was less sweet and more like all the life had been sucked out of it. Like this was the smell of air itself and nothing else. I remember thinking that at the time anyway. We got back in the car and five minutes down the road the clouds grew darker and then all of a sudden there were these thick flakes drifting down all around us. Where it hit the road it melted and the bitumen became deep black but the fields on either side were soon dusted white with the stuff as far as you could see. It was surreal. The images are a little hazy now but to this day when I catch a whiff of that scent on the air I know it’s snowing somewhere maybe miles away upwind. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. While we were at the farm I overheard Mum and Auntie Cat talking in the kitchen. They didn’t know I was there. All the rest of the young people were out messing around with the pet goat if I remember right and I’d come inside to use the toilet. I don’t know why I hung around to listen but I did. For a while they were just chatting about this and that and gossiping a bit I suppose as sisters will but then Auntie Cat mentioned something about one of her kids getting into some trouble at school. I can’t remember which one it was. Actually, yes I can. It was Gavin. Christ, he really was a bit of a shit. He would have been two years younger? That sounds about right. I don’t remember him ever causing any trouble normally. He was actually quiet to the point of being seriously awkward. I used to feel sorry for him in some ways but then he’d do or say something that just made you want to punch those bug-eye glasses right off his face. He had such a thin little beak of a nose that he was constantly sliding them back up into place with his middle finger right before launching into an explanation of how what you’d just said wasn’t technically correct. I remember he used to throw tantrums and cry a lot when things didn’t go his way as well. None of us really liked him. Anyway, Auntie Cat was saying that he’d been caught trying to set an older kid’s car on fire with matches and a pair of boxer shorts soaked in lighter fluid. The other kid had been giving him a hard time or something. So Auntie Cat was telling Mum this story and saying she was really worried because with his dad being dead she was struggling to give that guidance about how to act as a man. Mum was saying all the right things about this just being a phase and he’ll grow out of it and she’s a wonderful mother and all that bullshit but then she paused. Even though I was out in the hall I could feel the silence weighing down the room. When she spoke again her voice was softer and I can remember what she said word for word. I really can sympathise though, she said. Even with his father overseas all the time I know I never really have to worry about David. He’s been in one or two fights at school but each time he’s been honest with me about what happened and he had his reasons. It’s Archie that I worry about. He rarely gets into trouble but I get a feeling of this terrible hidden fear in him that I don’t understand and it frightens me.

They kept talking but I left after that. I didn’t think too much of it at the time and it wasn’t til much later that I really understood what she meant but her words have come back to me a lot since then. The first time was probably that night you got really drunk at Huxley’s party and threw a brick through his kitchen window after Roach made some stupid joke about your haircut. I’d never seen anything like that before and when I went over it in my head the next morning I suddenly recalled that conversation as clear as if I’d just heard it. In all the years between it had never crossed my mind. From then on I never really felt like I understood you. It didn’t frighten me like it did Mum though. In the end I guess maybe it should have. Maybe I would’ve tried harder to understand and maybe all this shit wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. Not that I blame myself. I still blame you. I don’t reckon you’ll ever understand what damage you could have done and almost did. I don’t reckon you have the ingredients for that sort of pain.

He fell silent and shifted his attention to the television once more. The sports report had started but he’d already seen all the headlines scroll past and after a moment’s reflection he struggled into a sitting position and picked up the phone. The call had been active for an hour and thirty-seven minutes. He stood up with a slight groan and raised his arms into a long luxuriant stretch. The glass doors onto the balcony faced north and so the sun still wasn’t visible but the light outside suggested it was now sitting just above the horizon. He cracked his back one way and then the other and then made his way towards the kitchen still holding the phone. He opened the fridge and reached for a carton of eggs but as his eyes went past a little plastic bottle half-full of milk he checked himself. He grabbed the bottle and set it on the counter then added a spoonful of formula and some water and put it in the microwave on medium-high for a minute and fifteen seconds. He watched as the bottle rotated slowly to reveal a cartoon scene of two puppies of some indeterminate breed blissfully chasing one another’s tails.

I have to head to work pretty soon now, he said. So speak now or forever hold your peace.

He waited in silence for a response until the light inside the microwave went out and it issued three slow beeps and then he retrieved the bottle and dribbled a couple of drops on his wrist. He nodded to himself and set the bottle down on top of the microwave.

I’m going to hold you to that, he said as he went back to the fridge.

Because you’ve had your chance to say if you think you’ve been wronged. To demand apologies. Or offer them and I’m open to that by the way. Whether or not what you say happened actually happened it didn’t matter in the end because I had to stop hating you so I could trust her. And it wasn’t even a matter of believing her or believing you. While ever I kept hating you I couldn’t let myself believe her just in case and a part of me hated her too for letting you do that to me. But one day I woke up and realised just what she might have been going through if she had been telling the truth and I felt like such a cunt. Because she was still here. She’d chosen me regardless. I had to let it go.

He set the bacon and the eggs on the counter and moved over to the stove.

So you see you can’t hurt us anymore. No matter where you’re trying to go with this shit, it won’t get you anywhere. I know there will always be the possibility that you were telling the truth the whole time and only wanted your sins to be acknowledged but you can forget about that now. I’ve forgiven you. It doesn’t matter what for.

The kitchen began to fill with the hissing and spitting of breakfast cooking and David left the phone where it was on top of the microwave to fuss over the stove and the toaster and the kettle. He could hear Lucy beginning to stir in the bedroom. She would be another half hour or so in emerging as she mused over her hair and assembled the day’s outfit, which would inevitably articulate her mood better than she ever could with words. When his breakfast was ready on the plate David took up the bottle of milk and went to feed the child. He returned several minutes later with the empty bottle and put it back in the fridge. He took his breakfast and his tea into the living room and set them on the coffee table then went back to the kitchen to get the phone. It was still sitting on top of the microwave but when he reached it he saw that the call had been terminated. He stared at it for a long while and almost reached to pick it up but then he shook his head and left it where it was.