“All right, give me your number. Then tell me quickly this time how you hurt your head. A fight?”
“Stopping a robbery. And the number on the phone’s not clear. It’s — shit, who’d want to scratch out the number on a pay phone? Sorry, but it’s demented. Plug up the coin return with gum if you’re desperate to make some pocket money, because then at least the caller’s made his call, if he didn’t get a busy signal or Information. Though if he got Information and Information, after she gives him the number, sees his coin didn’t reach the coin tray, she can hook him into a live operator who can dial the number for him. But don’t, I’m saying, destroy the phone so it can’t be used for emergencies or scratch out the number so no one can call the caller back.”
“Are you telling me there’s no phone number there? Please, Mr. Krin.”
“It’s also my eyes, which is just part of the story, and Daniel or Dan. First my glasses got scratched. That was nobody’s fault but mine. But then, along with my head before and my wallet and keys going with my coat in addition to my valuable notebook, though only to me, is the only copy I own and perhaps in the whole country of one of the books of poems I’m to select from and translate to put into one big book of this particular poet’s selected collected — collected selected poems.”
“Who?”
“Jun Hasenai. Around my age. But you probably haven’t heard of him.”
“I suppose I should have, but I hate when people say that about writers I’ve mentioned and they haven’t heard of. I can’t read or hear about everyone.”
“No reason you should. He’s unknown here — few poems I’ve managed to place in little mags over the years — but pretty well known in several Eastern European countries. He’s major, style to get excited by, sensibility and themes to move and brood over and possibly transmogrify. I talk like a jacket blurb sometimes, but I really admire the guy’s work. I also like it that he’s lived fully but not maneuveringly and to keep his modest family life surviving he writes essays that are, well, eloquent and inciting and I eventually want to translate too, and translates Spanish and Portuguese novels and poetry and teaches Western literature in a high school for the physically handicapped and deformed. He’s a mensch and can be translated — he doesn’t only come across in Japanese. I just hope when I call him for another copy of the book, if one isn’t in a library I don’t know about here, he doesn’t think I’m a terrific bungler and assign his work to someone else.”
“I’m sure he won’t — not after the work you’ve no doubt put in and the feeling you have for it. But why not call his publisher for a copy rather than him?”
“Of course — thanks — I just hope it doesn’t get back to him.”
“Then have someone else call and give his or her address. But you shouldn’t be so worried. You have a book contract for it?”
“No, they all want to see the whole work first, intro also.”
“I’ll still look for your book when it comes out.”
“His book, but I shouldn’t minimize my own part that much. Sounds fake and is, since it’s not what I feel at all. But the glasses — what’s that?”
“Sammy my cat. Just jumped into my lap. He likes to speak on the phone.”
“Sounds like a baby crying. Siamese?”
“Yes. I’ll get him away. No, say something else, Sammy — show him you’re no kid; he’s twelve.” Sammy says nothing. “Never talks when I ask him to. Gurgles, sometimes moans or hums. Okay, Sammy,” and I put him on the bed, where he rolls over on his back, stretches, wants to be petted. “What about the glasses?” rubbing Sammy’s stomach.
“My eyeglasses. Got scratched, so I couldn’t use them anymore along with everything else going — wallet, keys, etcetera. Good thing I wasn’t also schlepping my one and only typewriter tonight or—”
“If they got your keys and wallet—”
“Only one man did and he wasn’t connected to the two who clubbed me, or receivered me, since that’s what it should be called. While one man held my arms back the other hit me with a receiver that had been cut from a pay phone. But the man who stole my coat with most of those things in it was just standing there — I thought another innocent observer who was going to watch me get receivered to death — after I’d stepped in to help this newsguy in his stand who was being roughed up and robbed.”
“Still, aren’t you afraid he’s not right this moment unlocking your door? He has your address and keys.”
“That’s what I told the policemen. They said to get a locksmith, but the phone numbers of all-night locksmiths they gave me and some others in the phonebook either didn’t answer or were answering machines or the two who did answer said they’d only open my door if I paid them cash on the line.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told the second one you had no cash till he opened it.”
“He might’ve got mad. You can’t get away with something like that in this city at one or two in the morning, and you ever see the tools locksmiths have? I’ve nothing to steal anyway except an old manual typewriter, twenty-dollar radio, lots of classical records with no player, and those other books of Hasenai’s and what I’ve already translated of them, which he’d never take or any of his pals would if he gave them my keys.”
“They won’t know you’ve nothing to steal till they get there. Then they’ll turn over your apartment looking for what you don’t have or they think you’re hiding and all the translations you’ve done could be destroyed.”
“I doubt anyone will come. Why wouldn’t they also think I got in with a spare key someplace and then bolted the door or had the money to have the lock changed tonight? And the guy who grabbed my coat off the sidewalk, where I threw it to defend myself more easily, was an elderly derelict and saw how furiously I defended myself once I got receivered on the head, so I’m sure he’ll be happy with just the coat and the wallet he didn’t expect to be in it.”
“After all you’ve gone through tonight, or say you did—”
“I did. If you saw me you’d know.”
“You’re a mess?”
“Worse. But nothing spilling out or that hasn’t dried by now, so I’ll live if I can find a place to bunk down.”
“I’m sure you will. But the police. They can’t take the door off for you or the lock?”
“The lock cylinder and they couldn’t because all the proof I had on me that I lived there was in the wallet. And to get the proof I have inside that I lived there, I needed proof on me that I lived inside.”
“Then this. You can’t expect me to do more. I’ll loan you enough cash to pay a locksmith to open the door.”
“Too late for that now, but thanks. Because ‘all-night’ doesn’t mean all night for them or to the two who answered.”
“I’ll make other calls for you. Meanwhile, you should start getting up here. I’ll find one, but you can’t just stay on the street.”
“Excuse me,” the operator says, “please deposit ten cents—”
“Miss, Miss,” I say, but she keeps talking and then begins repeating the message. “Give me your number there, Dan, quick.”
“Three-two-six, or eight — got that?” he says over the recorded voice. “One-zero, eight or nine I think it is — yes, eight or nine, and then eight. Thirty-two, six or eight, ten eight or nine. And then eight.”