“Give it again. I think I have it but—”
We’re cut off.
“326(8) 108(9)8,” I wrote on Leonard’s title page. I pick up the receiver, put it down. It’s too crazy. And he’s got to be lying. Head, phone, locksmiths, newsguy, coat snatcher, numbers scratched out, one and only book and so on, and I drop the manuscript and pen on the floor and shut the light, hoping he won’t call back. He does, I’ll say “No, goodnight,” hang up, pull the plug out of the jack and go to sleep.
But I can’t leave him waiting. It’s raw out, or sort of, or was, and if it wasn’t all a story he gave just to come up here…I turn on the light, go into the living room, see out the window it’s not raining but is very windy, tree branches and some trees — not just the leaves — swaying, thermometer reads 45, but could be ten degrees warmer where he is since I’m sure he’s not on the river, and get his book out of the shopping bag. All this fast. Looking for some sign he’s real and no fake. He’s the one who said he could be but didn’t want to and that’s the time I really start believing someone’s one, but doesn’t always have to be so. Jacket photo’s real enough. No pose, eyes caught in the act of wanting to avoid the camera. Fine, but if he was faking it, then again trying to present himself as he wasn’t. But photo was at least four years ago. His actions at the party. Seemed real and honest enough. He was attracted to me, came over — all right, at the last moment, but could mean he was shy but could overcome that shyness if he thought the person he was attracted to was about to leave, or that he’s not so shy but wanted to give the impression he was because a shy person was what he thought I’d be attracted to. Could also mean other things, but don’t forget my actions to him. I was attracted too. He knew that. Only man I was like that to at this and maybe my last five parties. I was looking at him on and off for half an hour before he stopped me at the door, caught him looking at me several times, hoped he’d come over and then gave up he would. Right before I left I thought I’d ask Diana about him in a few days and if she said he was available and all right, maybe try to get her to encourage him to call me. I also thought of going over to him and saying “Odd as this familiar approach must sound coming to you from a woman, or maybe I’m a bit out of date and don’t know what approaches women have raised themselves to make to men today, but you look familiar — do we know one another from some place?” But I find that hard to do to a man even when I do know him from some place. But fast, he’s out there, waiting, it’s got to be cold, might start to rain, so what’s it to be, call or not? Maybe he intuited I wouldn’t call back and has left. Thinking right now, block or two from where he called: “Knew it would never work; clever girl, can’t be conned.” But if his story’s real? “Stinking bitch, knows my head’s aching, maybe bleeding, I’ve no money, and in this freaking weather? Least she could have done was call to say she didn’t want to keep me waiting out here and she’s turning in.” Fool, go to a hospital if your head’s really bashed, but if your story was bunk, then bad try and goddamn gall, calling so late.
I open the book to his introduction. “…But no matter what I say about these stories, some readers are still going to think, ‘Of course you’re saying that, praising the work up and down, it’s in your interest to, being the translator/introducer/anthologist, so what else could you say: “The stories stink, the writers are no good, this was the best short fiction, bad as it is, I could find written in Japanese in the last thirty years”? Because not only do you stand to gain financially from it, you’ll in all probability land a good teaching job or be elevated in the one you have, if you’re up for renewed contract or tenure and your department chairman or the school’s ad hoc committee thinks you need one more book.’ But not so. If this book nets me $1000 for the year’s work I put into it, I’ll feel lucky. As for a university position? Sure, I’d love one, as long as I didn’t have to teach bonehead Japanese four times a week, but I don’t expect to get one from this or a half-dozen books like it. No, I translated and put together this anthology because, and please don’t think I’m trying to hoodwink you into buying or reading or thinking more seriously about either of those by first coming on in such a strong nonintroductory way and then compiling a list of negative rhetorical reasons why I might have anthologized this…” No, call. Only decent thing. If only to say I’m sleepy and have nothing more to say and I’m very sorry what happened to him tonight and concerned for his head and because of the wound his future well-being, but I barely know him — I don’t know him — and there have to be several other people he hasn’t thought to call who could help him, even if he has no more dimes, which really, isn’t my responsibility, but if he wants to call me some other day at a much earlier time, fine.
I go into the bedroom and pick up Leonard’s paper and dial the number without the numbers in parentheses. Phone rings seven times and I’m about to hang up, thinking “Great, one down, few more to go and maybe the most likely one down also, though if he did leave, after waiting for my call, he has a right to be ticked off,” when the receiver’s picked up and a man says “For godsake’s what?”
“Daniel Krin?”
“You want to speak to someone, on this floor, now?”
“Is this a public pay phone?”
“Yes. In a public hallway. You didn’t know when you called?”
“Is this three-two-six, ten eighty-eight?”
“It’s a senior citizen home, lady; you almost now made me break a leg answering this. I thought it was an emergency the way you rang.”
“I’m very sorry. Someone gave me this number for a Daniel Krin.”
“Maybe on another floor. Because I know all the first and last names on this one and Daniel and Krin aren’t it. This is the fifth.”
“Really, sir, I’m sorry for waking you up—”
“You didn’t. I was out walking; I couldn’t sleep.”
“I’m still sorry, but please answer me so I won’t have to call back and possibly disturb you again: is this three-two-six, ten eighty-eight?”
“I’ll say this much to you. You call that number again and I’m not in as good a position to answer it then, you’ll wake up everyone but the deaf and almost dead ones on this floor. The walls and doors are that thin, even if they were supposed to be built as, catch this, self-contained soundproof apartment like units. I know because I was one of the original tenants to move in to this papier-mâché house, but you can be sure the owners never thought I’d live this long to tell it.”
“Thank you. Goodnight and sleep well,” and I hang up.
I write on Leonard’s page, under the original phone number: “326-1098, 328-1098, 328-1088.” Only four? Thought there’d be more. I write all four numbers this time, original one first, which I cross out. Only four. Which should I dial next? Start with the second and if no answer or the wrong number, go down one more. I dial. Phone’s picked up on the first ring.
“Helene Winiker?”
“Hi. What took me so long was I dialed two of the other possible numbers—”
“Which one it turn out to be?”
“Twenty-six, ten ninety-eight.”
“That would’ve been the second number I called. But everyone’s got his own system. Yours next time might work on the first shot while mine would hit it on the fourth. Not that I’m complaining, now that you’re here.”
“The first number was always busy.”
“Then I would’ve gone right to the next one — and this is also no complaint — because the busy number never would’ve been mine.”