“Speaking of watching too much movies and television.”
“Exactly.” I liked the way the miles were flying past for me now, ticless, aloft on Kimmery’s voice, the freeway traffic thinning.
The moment I observed the way our talk and my journey were racing along, though, we lapsed into silence.
“Roshi says this thing about guilt,” she said after a minute. “That it’s selfish, just a way to avoid taking care of yourself. Or thinking about yourself. I guess that’s sort of two different things. I can’t remember.”
“Please don’t quote Gerard Minna to me on the subject of guilt,” I said. “That’s a little hard to swallow under the present circumstances.”
“You really think Roshi’s guilty of something?”
“There’s more I need to find out,” I admitted. “That’s what I’m doing. That’s why I had to take your keys.”
“And why you’re going to Yoshii’s?”
“Yes.”
In the pause that followed I detected the sound of Kimmery believing me, believing in my case, for the first time. “Be careful, Lionel.”
“Sure. I’m always careful. Just keep your promise to me, okay?”
“What promise?”
“Don’t go to the Zendo.”
“Okay. I think I’m getting off the phone now, Lionel.”
“You promise?”
“Sure, yeah, okay.”
Suddenly I was surrounded by office buildings, carports, stacked overhead freeways clogged with cars. I realized too late I probably should have navigated around Boston instead of through it. I suffered through the slowdown, munched on chips and tried not to hold my breath, and before too long the city’s grip loosened, gave way to suburban sprawl, to the undecorated endless interstate. I only hoped I hadn’t let Tony and the giant get ahead of me, lost my lead, my edge. Gotta have an edge. I was beginning to obsess on edge too much: edge of car, edge of road, edge of vision and what hovered there, nagging and insubstantial. How strange it began to seem that cars have bodies that never are supposed to touch, a disaster if they do.
Don’t hover in my blind spot, Fonebone!
I felt as though I would begin ticcing with the body of the car, would need to flirt with the textured shoulder of the highway or the darting, soaring bodies all around me unless I heard her voice again.
“Kimmery.”
“Lionel.”
“I called you again.”
“Aren’t these car-phone calls kind of expensive?”
“I’m not the one paying,” I burbled. I was exhilarated by the recurrent technomagic, the cell phone reaching out across space and time to connect us again.
“Who is?”
“Some Zen doormat I met yesterday in a car.”
“Doormat?”
“Doorman.”
“Mmmm.” She was eating something. “You call too much.”
“I like talking to you. Driving is… boring.” I undersold my angst, let the one word stan for so many others.
“Yeah, mmmm-but I don’t want anything, you know, crazy in my life right now.”
“What do you mean by crazy?” Her tonal swerves had caught me by surprise again. I suppose it was this strange lurching dance, though, that kept my double brain enchanted.
“It’s just-A lot of guys, you know, they tell you they understand about giving you space and stuff, they know how to talk about it and that you need to hear it. But they don’t really have any idea what it means. I’ve been through a lot recently, Lionel.”
“When did I say anything about giving you space?”
“I just mean this is a lot of calls in a pretty short period is all.”
“Kimmery, listen. I’m not like other, ah, people you meet. My life is organized around certain compulsions. But it’s different with you, I feel different.”
“That’s good, that’s nice-”
“You have no idea.”
“-but I’m just coming out of something pretty intense. I mean, you swept me off my feet, Lionel. You’re kind of overwhelming, actually, if you don’t already know. I mean, I like talking to you, too, but it isn’t a good idea to call three times right after, you know, spending the night.”
I was silent, unsure how to decode this remarkable speech. “What I mean is, this is exactly the kind of craziness I just got through with, Lionel.”
“Which kind?”
“Like this,” she said in a meek voice. “Like with you.”
“Are you saying Oreo Man had Tourette’s syndrome?” I felt a weird thrill of jealousy. She collected us freaks, I understood now. No wonder she took us in stride, no wonder she damped our symptoms. I was nothing special after all. Or rather my fistlike penis was my only claim.
“Who’s Oreo Man?”
“Your old boyfriend.”
“Oh. But what’s the other thing you said?”
“Never mind.”
We were silent for a while. My brain went, Tourette’s slipdrip stinkjet’s blessdroop mutual-of-overwhelm’s wild kissdoom-
“All I mean is I’m not ready for anything too intense right now,” said Kimmery. “I need space to figure out what I want. I can’t be all overwhelmed and obsessed like the last time.”
“I think I’ve heard enough about that for now.”
“Okay.”
“But-” I gathered myself, made a plunge into territory far stranger to me than Connecticut or Massachusetts. “I think I understand what you mean about space. About leaving it between things so you don’t get too obsessed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or is that the kind of talk you don’t want to hear? I guess I’m confused.”
“No, it’s okay. But we can talk about this later.”
“Well, okay.”
“Bye, Lionel.”
Dial and redial were sitting on a fence. Dial fell off. Who was left?
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Click. “You’ve reached two-one-two, three-oh-four-”
“HellokimmeryIknowIshouldn’tbecallingbutIjust-”
Clunk. “Lionel?”
“Yes.”
“Stop now.”
“Uh-”
“Just stop calling now. It’s way too much like some really bad things that have happened to me, can you understand? It’s not romantic.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, bye, Lionel, for real now, okay?”
“Yes.”
Redial.
“You’ve reached-”
“Kimmery? Kimmery? Kimmery? Are you there? Kimmery?”
I was my syndrome’s dupe once again. Here I’d imagined I was enjoying a Touretteless morning, yet when the new manifestation appeared, it was hidden in plain sight, the Purloined Tic. Punching that redial I was exhibiting a calling-Kimmery-tic as compulsive as any rude syllable or swipe.
I wanted to hurl the doorman’s cell phone out onto the grassy divider. Instead, in a haze of self-loathing, I dialed another number, one etched in memory though I hadn’t called it in a while.
“Yes?” The voice was weary, encrusted with years, as I remembered it.
“Essrog?” I said.
ut onto tht=”0em” width=”1em” align=”justify”›“Yes.” A pause. “This is the Essrog residence. This is Murray Essrog. Who’s calling, please?”
I was a little while coming to my reply. “Eat me Bailey.”
“Oh, Christ.” The voice moved away from the phone. “Mother. Mother, come here. I want you to listen to this.”
“Essrog Bailey,” I said, almost whispering, but intent on being heard.
There was a shuffling in the background.