“Hello?”
“Hello, Rosie?” Not Bill. A woman.
“It’s Anna Stevenson.”
“Oh, Anna! Hello! How are you?” From the sink came a persistent reep-reep.
“I’m not doing too well,” Anna said.
“Not too well at all. Something very unpleasant has happened, and I need to tell you about it. It may not have anything to do with you-I hope with all my heart it doesn’t-but it might.” Rosie sat down, frightened now in a way she hadn’t been even when she had felt the shapes of dead insects hiding behind the backing of her picture.
“What, Anna? What’s wrong?” Rosie listened with growing horror as Anna told her. When she had finished, she asked if Rosie wanted to come over to Daughters and Sisters, perhaps spend the night.
“I don’t know,” Rosie said numbly.
“I’ll have to think. I… Anna, I have to call someone else now. I’ll get back to you.” She hung up before Anna could reply, dialed 411, asked for a number, got it, dialed it.
“Liberty City,” an older man’s voice said.
“Yes, may I speak to Mr Steiner?”
“This is Mr Steiner,” the slightly hoarse voice replied, sounding amused. Rosie was confused for a moment, then remembered that he was in business with his dad.
“Bill,” she said. Her throat was dry and painful again.
“Bill, I mean… is he there?”
“Hold on, miss.” A rustle and a clunk as the phone was laid down, and, distant:
“Billy! It’s a lady forya!” Rosie closed her eyes. Very distantly, she heard the cricket in the sink: Reep-reep. A long, unbearable pause. A tear slipped out from beneath the lashes of her left eye and started down her cheek. It was followed by one from her right, and a snatch of some old country song drifted through her mind:
“Well, the race is on and here comes Pride up the backstretch… Heartache is goin” to the inside…” She wiped them away. So many tears she had wiped away in this life of hers. If the Hindus were right about reincarnation, she hated to think what she must have been in her last one. The telephone was picked up.
“Hello?” A voice she now heard in her dreams.
“Hello, Bill.” It wasn’t her normal speaking voice, not even a whisper, not really. It was more like the husk of a whisper.
“I can’t hear you,” he said.
“Can you speak up, ma’am?” She didn’t want to speak up; she wanted to hang up. She couldn’t, though. Because if Anna was right, Bill could be in trouble, too-very bad trouble. If, that was, he was perceived by a certain someone as being a little too close to her. She cleared her throat and tried again.