“Ms. Winiker’s answering service? Or Mrs.? Miss?”
“Winiker will do. Any message?”
“She’s no doubt out. I don’t know why I invariably say that to answering services. Most likely my initial surprise, expecting the person I dialed to answer or some surrogate of hers I know, though she told me of you.”
“Who’s calling?”
“She’ll know what I mean by the following if she remembers who I am. Sure she will, if she contacts you in the next few days. Will she?”
“Up to her. Your message?”
“Tell her…That I wanted to reach her before the newspapers hit the stands?”
“That it?”
“No. Give me time to think.”
“Tell you what. Call back when you have it, but I’m very busy with other calls flashing and even one on hers.” Hangs up.
Who’d be calling her now? None of your bizwax and so forth. But obviously someone who didn’t know she was going to a wedding tonight, if she was telling me the truth. Was she? Hardly your affair, etcetera. Tend to your sodden pants, waterlogged socks and now soaked raincoat. Could I tell by her face though? Goddamn this man never gives up. Seemed truthful enough. Seemed more than that. Seemed truth-filled, overflowed, true-blue, tried and true, true to life and to type, whatever that means, trueborn and to form and the like, though do go on: straight-out, girl scout, foursquare and forthright forsooths ago and still going strong, and so did her voice, which was mellow, intelligible and calm, and her hair, which has nothing to do with truth but which I’d love to be able to portray in a poem to her she’d appreciatively receive in the mail and repeatedly read. Maybe she had a date or wanted to go to a movie alone or felt so disconcerted and repelled with my systematically surveying her and parts unknown that I sort of forced her to set off earlier than she’d planned to. That’s the case she could be home soon or home now but not answering the phone for fear I’ll phone or no fear but has someone home with her now and doesn’t want to answer the phone because she’s or they’re in the middle or start or end of something she or they don’t or he doesn’t want to interrupt. “True-tongued, homespun, abundantly gummed and lipped, not that I caught all of it,” Hasenai says with the aid of his transgressive-lator, “jest saying, past paying, moon’s out, so’s this lout, wood woofs, whelp in the wild and weep in a while, Jun (his first name), same as his son (I write only semidocumentary poems), go home!” Or a man phoning to get the message she left as to when she’ll be home and where’s her doorkey this time: left with the elevator man or taped to the side of her doorjamb or under her stairway handrail but surely not under the doormat. Or a friend or relative saying a good friend or relative’s very sick, so and so suddenly or after a long illness died, car-pool driver — if that’s how she gets to her school upstate and Monday’s one of her teaching days — saying he or she can’t make it and she’ll have to find another ride, or rider, if she’s the one who drives the car-pool car, saying he or she can’t make it, or friend, relative or mate of the rider or car-pool driver saying he or she’s sick, can’t make it or died. Or just a new or relatively new to recently old lover calling to say if she phones that he’s coming by tonight, which he can do because he has his own key and knows it’s all right. Or even Helene, phoning to see who might have called, learning that an anonymous indecisive man was just on the line.
I dial Information, hang up before I get it, wipe the rain and melted snow off the telephone stand shelf, set up my notebook and opened pen on it, dial Information and give the same information plus her street number and get her building and phone numbers and write them down, dial and the woman repeats the last four digits. “It’s the same man from before,” I say.
“What man from when before? So far tonight I’ve answered a couple of men’s voices for this number and one woman’s which might have been a man’s.”
“The nameless semistranger who couldn’t make up his mind five minutes ago.”
“You know, in every holiday season, which I think I can say we’re already in — someone’s blinking window wreath I can see from the slit they give us to see out of here — Well I don’t want to talk about tough nights, but if you’ve any plans to annoy me further and nothing else puts you off, I will.”
“I don’t plan it. But if you think you’ve had a tough night—”
“I don’t want to talk about it either, for that’s exactly what some of the tough calls were on. Depression, rejection, help me to reach him and what’d she say when you gave her my message or told him from me to take gas, and more of the same, no?”
“No, but okay. Just tell Winiker I called. Daniel K-r-i-n. From a pay station or phone booth or one-legged stand you can’t stand under even with one leg, and that I was an incredible fool Friday night, but outside of this call and the last one I made, won’t be anymore.”
“You’re asking me to write all that down?”
“You don’t have to include this booth or stand or anything about legs or even my previous call.”
“Think it wise saying any of it?”
“It’s not what you think. There’s this carefully plotted though harmless meaning behind it all. So no matter how surprised Winiker might be when you first give her the message, you’ll suddenly be surprised when she all of a sudden understands.”
“Fine. Krin. Bye.”
“Maybe you’re right. You are right. You still there?”
“Why?”
“Please erase all I said starting from the beginning of this call. Beginning before even then. Don’t even say I called this time or the last. Don’t even recall I called. Put my name and namelessness and existence out of your mind. I never called either time, okay? If you wrote the message or started to, tear it up. It was dumb of me — child’s play — my acting the way I did. I’ll probably see her later tonight anyway, so I’ll tell her myself, but don’t even tell her that. I mean phone her tonight, I probably will, or one day soon, though nothing of that’s to go past us too, not even an allusion to my musing about it. No, it’s hopeless. Got myself into a nice hole with this one. You’ll no doubt give her the message and my musings no matter what I say, since that’s your job. And maybe after a couple of years of your becoming overprotective and communicationally involved with your clients, you think she should know even more so that I called, whether you wrote it down yet or not.”
“Believe me, Danny, it’s easier for me to rip up a message than slot and give it, so that’s what I’ll do if you want.”
“I do.”
“Then done.” Hangs up. Now begin worrying about it. Not just what she’ll tell Helene, but why I said it. Why did I? Not just this call but the last. Not just all of what I said to the phone and before her to the loan woman but most of what I said and did tonight starting with the party or an hour into it and how with Helene I just about ruined it. Did I? Worry about it. Useless to, since what can I do about it now and so on? High, that’s why I acted the way I did I can say, first time in my life or in a year I got anywhere near to being so inebriated, which is a lie, but no reason I can’t use it to try to swing things around a little my way. “You see, Helene, for some reason — no, that’s not the truth. Yes it is, only I’m almost too ashamed at my behavior that night to recount and explain it, but I will because what more, since it’s also in my self-interest, can I tell you but the excuse, I mean the truth, which is the reason I called, or one of them. For you see, Helene, I didn’t think you left Diana’s for a wedding but because I’d chased you from it with my slobbering attention from afar and series of unsuccessful passes close up, which is the reason I thought you’d be home the first time I called. As for my second call, if your answering service told you of it, and if it didn’t then I don’t remember making any second call, I’ve no excuse except that I was still high and had begun to act like a fool and was also trying to undo the damage of my first call, if you were told of it, and if you weren’t then I only made one call — the second one — to leave an innocuous message that I’d called and would try to get back to you soon, but because of my highness I got carried away. Anyway, now I feel lousy about it and want to apologize for any discomfort I might have caused you by chasing you away from Diana’s if I did, and also through you to your answering service for my foolish and perhaps disturbing calls to it via your number, and also to you again for my having misrepresented myself to your answering service and possibly embarrassing you because of it by intimating I was your friend or knew you better than I did. No, that’s confusing and tumescent, just as that phrase was when I could have more accurately and less clumsily said ‘affected and bombastic,’ though I’m still being vocally showy, and even still with that last adverbial phrase, and even still by saying I know what form of speech it is, when I could have more briefly and plainspeakingly said ‘flip, windy, labored and imprecise,’ or to be even more plainspeaking, ‘not precise,’ but all of it said, including the last two revisions, in what I’ll truthfully say was a laughable and ludicrous endeavor to impress you, and for that, and also for that last flashy phrase, I humbly apologize. Not humbly. Nor so dumbly. No humility, stupidity, apologies, amphibologies, metatheses, paronomasias, lapsus linguae and anglicized or any foreign or lexiphanic or high-falutin words and phrases. Everything I’ve said to you so far has been out-and-out dishonesty if not downright lies, not that I can particularize that difference. I’m sorry. There it is. That’s all I had to say. Sorry for lots of things: my phone calls to your service, my antics and aggressiveness at the party while you were there and after you left, and most of all for what I said to you on the phone tonight, or today if it’s not tonight. Listen. Let me begin again if I can and may. May I? Because lean. Not too late? No reply? I should take that as an okay? Okay. I was quite simply — not ‘quite’ but just simply and maybe simperingly and simplemindedly — no, just simply. Plain and simply. I was simply high that night, though it actually does sound much better saying ‘quite simply high that night,’ for otherwise I do sound simpleminded, and that’s my excuse. Not simplemindedness but highness — now that’s the truth. Which is truly the truth but no real excuse because I have to be responsible for myself and my actions, sober or soused, unless I were a certified lush, which I’m most certainly not, so…no. Where was I? Got confused again in this endless excuse. You see, Helene…” Won’t work. Yes it could. What else I got? “Drunk, stupid, pretentious, insensitive, insouciant, translucent, unseemly, unsociable and other — ent’s and — ant’s and trans’- and in’s- and un’s- like — conscious and — questionably — conscionable, because first time anywhere near to being pickled in a year, so sorries all around: service, operator, you, Diana, guests I spoke to about you at the party, because really, all I usually like is a glass of white or two every night, and not a big glass but a regular red or white wineglass, three and a half ounces and not filled to spilling level at the top, so it must have been all that seemingly innocent enough social drinking and that hundred-proof Russian rotgut.” That’s what it’ll be. Knew I’d eventually find my excuse. “The ice-cold Russian vodka. Not because it was ice-cold, though that could have contributed to my cyclopean high, but because it was vodka and a hundred proof and also Russian and straight and I wasn’t used to that hooch any old way and surely not when they filled my double- or triple-shot glass or cup all the way up. I drank it like water but without water, ice, juice or even a peel. Then before I knew it I was rude to everyone in what was left of my sight and made my dumb phone calls the same night, even though that does show an underlying social problem and perhaps at first view an overriding congenital mental disease, but please don’t believe that or make more out of things than they already are. Maybe when someone’s only used to the softer spiritous stuff, a certain quantity of hard liquor, particularly when it’s distilled so differently and to this person is alien to his physical system in almost any amount or form, would do that to just about anyone including a European with a history of hard drinking or even a Russian who’s lived and drank most of his life in the same freezing regions where that liquor is made, not that I’m trying to exonerate myself for my actions and so forth. So you see, Helene, that’s my excuse. I’m sorry, apologize, you, Diana, answering service, party guests, phone calls, so forth, and hope you’ll forgive me, could kick myself for what I did, pray you don’t think that night or even this phone call is anything but faintly related to my normal behavior, and would like to try to make up for all I aberrantly did by inviting you for a drink somewhere, maybe that nice new, so it won’t be too inconvenient for you, wine bar I heard opened up last month on some second floor above a Lebanese deli around your way, though I’d understand if you refused. You won’t? You will? Meet me for just a brief drink and snack? And there is such a place? Armenian, not Lebanese? On the east side of Broadway between One-hundred-eleventh and — twelfth? See you there tonight at eight? Great. You remember what I look like? Forgivably stewed as I was or whatever the word or expression in Russian—‘Vodt a dumpkin!’—I remember you.”