Whenever You Call

by Anna King

  “Isaac, you don’t believe in God. You told me so yourself, many times. Anyway, I thought Buddhism was anti-God.”

  “I believe in God,” he said firmly, finishing the Scotch and standing up to head over to the cabinet, where he poured himself another.

  “You won’t be drinking Scotch when you’re a monk.”

  “That’s why I’m doing it now.” He grinned mischievously and for the first time that evening I saw the old devil dog, Isaac.

  I shouted, “I’m not going to bed with you!”

  “I have to admit it did occur to me, but I know it would be wrong. There are degrees of difference between sex and Scotch.”

  “Love and Scotch.”

  He looked confused. “Yeah, but weren’t we talking about sex?”

  I shook my head. “The stuff for a Tom Collins is in the kitchen—I’ll be right back.”

  I stirred the tomato sauce, added a little red wine, and left it simmering. It had started to smell good to me again. After I made the second Tom Collins, I went back downstairs. Isaac was stretched out on the couch, reminding me of Jenny earlier that day, when I’d arrived at her apartment. Briefly, I wondered how her date was going. I still had irrationally positive feelings about it. Please, let her find happiness in love.

  Now, if you’d asked me to whom I’d directed that little prayer, I wouldn’t have anything logical to say, other than to explain that, when desperate, we human beings have a tendency to say and do dumb things. I meant well by asking, but I can’t say I believed I would be answered. Not a chance.

  Meanwhile, it appeared that Isaac had actually fallen asleep. The nearly full glass of Scotch sat sweating on the coffee table. His hands were folded across his chest, like a dead person laid out in a coffin. I sat in an armchair close to the fire and sipped my drink. I studied him, up and down his body, trying to imagine him in the robes of a monk. Then I imagined going over and unzipping his fly. I zipped it back up again, pronto. Finally, in a moment of pure nuttiness, I began to laugh. I laughed so hard and long that I woke him up. He started to laugh with me.

  He said, “When are you making the spaghetti? I’m getting hungry.”

  “Monks don’t eat spaghetti, either.”

  “You don’t know thing-one about what monks do.”

  I sighed. “Okay, I’ll go make the pasta, but you have to do the salad.”

  We spent a pleasant couple of hours, but even the nostalgic experience of having dinner alone together didn’t, in the end, create intimacy between us, for which I was surprised, but grateful.

  After Isaac left, I curled up in the living room, nursing a cup of tea in front of the fire’s deep glowing coals. The good news was that I’d enjoyed talking with him about his crazy plans to become a Buddhist monk. I’d even told him that I thought he’d look handsome with a shaved head and orange robe, but that I doubted he’d survive very long without sex. He tried to convince me that the point was to do something you believed you were incapable of doing. I didn’t get the rationale for that, but I’d stopped disagreeing with Isaac years earlier, and even his reincarnation as a Buddhist monk couldn’t alter my resolve on that one.

  I wanted to call Jenny, except it was only ten o’clock and I knew it was too early. Instead, I did what any sane single woman would do when she was alone on a Saturday night. I checked my e-mail. I had no real expectations, except, perhaps, something from one of my kids, sent in a fit of confused Mommy-love. I hadn’t heard from my youngest, Noah, in more than ten days, which was right on the edge of causing me worry, especially since he was the most gentle and sensitive of the three. He’d graduated from college the previous spring and was trying to become a literary writer, unlike the more commercial bent of his mother and older brother, Elliot. Trevor, his father, had agreed to partially support him for one year. His deadline loomed. That’s when it hit me: I hadn’t heard from him since I’d announced my decision to quit writing. Maybe I’d upset him in some way.

  I sat down at the computer, already composing an e-mail to him in my mind, but first checking on what mail might have arrived for me.

  Rabbitfish!

  I gasped with surprise. On Saturday night? He was revealing his alone status on a Saturday night? I clicked so fast that for a second the e-mail seemed to disappear. I was afraid I’d actually deleted it, but then it exploded onto the screen.

  Whatcha doing?

  Those words moaned with sexual suggestion. To me, anyway, in my present celibate-induced coma state. I clicked Reply and began to type, my fingers flying. It took twenty minutes, even at a rip-roaring speed of 85 wpm. No braking, no turns, and my foot heavy on the accelerator. I wrote him all about my evening with Isaac. Everything. Then, with a careful proofreading but few revisions, I sent it to Rabbitfish. Or, actually, Mr. Rabbitfish, as I’d begun calling him in my mind.

  In another fit of possibly excess energy, I wrote Noah a brief e-mail. I tried to keep it light by describing Isaac’s monkish plans, but I finally approached the subject of his own writing. Usually, I didn’t ask how it was going since I wasn’t sure whether he appreciated his mother’s, who happened to be a writer, curiosity. But, I figured, now I wasn’t a writer, so it would be all right. If I didn’t hear back from him within 48 hours, I’d call his house, which he shared with innumerable others, in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C.

  The phone rang, making me jump. For some reason, I thought it might be Mr. Rabbitfish, even though my number was unlisted, not to mention that it was ludicrous to imagine he’d actually call me when he hadn’t even given me his real name.

  “Hi!” Jen’s voice was nearly unrecognizable. She often sounded happy, but never maniacally happy.

  “That you?” I said.

  “Yeah!”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Don’t you want to hear about how it went?”

  “You sound really, really drunk.”

  She giggled. “Drunk with love, maybe.”

  I stood up and sat down. Then I did it again, up and down. I’d never heard her like this. “Tell me.”

  She started to talk, and she didn’t stop until an hour later. My right ear felt permanently folded and stapled against the side of my head. Apparently, after waiting forty-eight years, Jen had found her soul mate, that elusive dream of every woman. At various moments during her recital, tears filled my eyes and I had to blow my nose. I kept imagining the unknown Tom Callahan carrying her in his arms, down the aisle.

  Thanks, I mouthed to Isaac’s Buddhist-deity-entity-whatever. Had to thank someone. No one else came readily to mind.

  6

  FIVE ODD HUMAN BEINGS gathered on Monday morning, in a sleazy unkempt room with a bar running along one wall. We each sat at a separate table, clutching our little notebooks. Here we were on the first day of first grade, except that we lacked that fresh dewey look of most first-graders, and instead of first grade this was a school to learn how to serve alcohol. Put that way, the sleazy room became uncomfortably suitable. There was something equally out of sync about each of us, myself included. I’m not sure why I’d felt compelled to wear an Austrian dirndl skirt, with matching puffy embroidered blouse. I think I was trying to recapture my lost innocence, but why did I think innocence was appropriate to a bar tending class? I’d even braided my hair and twisted it into a knot at the back of my neck. Thankfully, I hadn’t gone the two pigtails wrapped into packages over each ear route. I’d been convinced, when I checked in the mirror before leaving my house, that I was attractive.

  And I was attractive compared to the other four. A very, very, very fat man with no hair and a bright red nose was clearly an alcoholic. The only other man appeared to be midstream into a sex change transformation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell which direction he, or she, was going. He wore exceptionally tight black jeans, a black muscle shirt, and his/her bleached blonde, shoulder-length hair swirled with frizz, like a ball of cotton candy. Someone needed to teach him/her about straighteni
ng devices, and I had the feeling I was elected. I knew I couldn’t stand looking at that hair for long. It made me itch.

  The two other women were both in their twenties and they were obscenely thin, like a cartoonist’s pencil sketches, all fast line and bone. Their skin was dead white except for the slash of blush across each cheek. Both had dyed black hair. They were obviously buddies. Despite the similarities between them, they looked nothing alike. One, with a round face, was the follower and the other, whose face was as long as a hammer, the leader. I felt sure that hammer-face would somehow end up in prison and I just hoped round-face would wake up and cut the cord before she followed her friend. To that end, I picked up my notebook and moved to join them at their table. I gave round-face a big smile.

  They glared.

  Didn’t trouble me. One thing about being an older woman with plenty of experience was that I wasn’t easily spooked.

  The teacher walked in. At first, actually, I thought he might be another student. He was probably about forty years old and beautiful. I glanced at the two other women and wasn’t surprised to see that they, too, were gaping at him.

  He strode to the bar and in a long lovely fluid motion lifted himself backwards so that he was perched above us.

  “Hey, everyone, I’m Al.”

  Not a peep from his little chicks.

  He grinned. I had the feeling he knew what kind of an effect he had on people. But, really, of course he knew. The man was a gift. First of all, his body was hunky and languid at the same time. Thin and elegant, but with wide endless shoulders and thick thighs that pressed against his jeans. His face looked like it had been carved from a tree, shaped into planes and angles that caught the light and framed a gigantic mouth, large well-shaped nose, and deep blue eyes. Tousled blond hair hung about with a determined carelessness. I kept thinking he’d been made, shaped, created. He was an actor, clearly, but good grief, couldn’t he get a better part than being a teacher for a bar tending course?

  I said, “Hello.”

  His eyes found me. I regretted having worn the Austrian dirndl skirt, but maybe we wouldn’t be standing up and moving around during the first class.

  “Your name?”

  “Rose Marley.”

  He snapped his fingers and pointed. “You’re the novelist, right?”

  Everyone’s head did a total swivel.

  “Yes.”

  “Welcome to the class.” Al looked around. “Let’s take a minute to introduce ourselves and maybe say a little something about why you’ve signed up for Bar Tending 101. Rose, how about you go first?”

  The man made me shy. If I’d had pigtails, I’d be sucking the ends into little points.

  “So, I’m Rose Marley. I’m taking a break from writing because, well, because I just think.” I stopped. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I was doing this. I dared to look at Al, who was broadcasting his magnificent smile of encouragement.

  “I need to get out more,” I said.

  The man/woman laughed out loud. “Know what you mean,” s/he said.

  “You next,” Al said.

  “I’m Jerusalem, but call me Jelly.”

  Al said, “Jelly, I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I gotta ask—,”

  Jelly interrupted, “Man to woman.”

  “Cool, cool.” Al’s hands landed on his thighs and did a quick squeeze. Very sexy. “What’s your deal with bar tending?”

  “Gotta make a living, thought it might work for me.”

  “Next.” Al looked at the very, very, very fat man.

  “My name’s Ike,” he whispered. “I figured this would be a good way to lose some weight, you know, because bartenders are always running up and down, plus I could meet nice people.”

  Finally, my table mates.

  “I’m Cathy, this is my friend Joan. We were working at a daycare center and just got so sick of it, all those whiny kids and dirty diapers and stuff, so we thought that women get good tips, you know, and this would be a lot of fun.”

  Al actually stood up on top of the bar. He was towering over us as he said, “It’s going to be work, work, work. Most of you won’t make it to certification, I may as well tell you right now. That movie with Tom Cruise, Cocktail, gave a lot of people the wrong idea.” Al paced down the bar.

  Cathy said, “Also the movie with the girls on top of the bar like you’re doing right now, where they dance and stuff.” Her face was animated and showed a faint resemblance to that of a human being instead of a hammer.

  “Exactly.” Al strutted a bit.

  My fantasy life for the next week, factoring in both Al and the mysterious stranger, Mr. Rabbitfish, was all set. I could hardly wait to go to bed that night. Maybe Mr. Rabbitfish would be hidden in a closet, for some reason I had yet to figure out, while Al … well … Al would be making love to me. I only vaguely paid attention as Al continued to lecture us about how hard it was to be a bartender.

  “That’s why bartenders get good tips. They friggin’ earn ’em.”

  I looked at the others and noticed that Jelly was grinning and Ike looked like he was going to pass out. Cathy and Joan had regressed into a terror-stricken state. I felt a little frisson of concern. Maybe I wasn’t physically up to the task.

  “You’ll have to memorize one hundred drink recipes, then you’re timed as you make the drinks. We have very rigorous time standards. If you don’t have the speed, you don’t get the certification.”

  He jumped down from the bar and passed out thick pamphlets. “Test on drinks is tomorrow morning, covering the first 25.”

  I turned the cover page and saw the first drink, called Angry Angel. I decided that I’d make myself an Angry Angel before I got into bed that night.

  Al clapped his hands so that the sound echoed and made an explosive noise in the half-empty room. “Everyone up and behind the bar!” he screamed.

  With scraping chairs, we pushed nervously away from our safe little tables. I was the first behind the bar, Miss Goody Two-Shoes in her dirndl skirt.

  “Okay, spread out so that you’ve got at least two feet of your own space. We start with setting-up.”

  Because I’d been first, I moved all the way down to the end of the bar, with a wall on my left and Jelly on my right. She shot me a quick smile.

  I whispered, “I’m going to be so bad at this.”

  Her adam’s apple bobbed as she swallowed. I couldn’t help wondering whether it would eventually shrink, or what. Since that thought made me feel guilty, I said, “I admire what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks.” One thin white hand reached up and scratched at her scalp. Her hair was making both of us itch.

  “Behind you on the counters is everything you’ll need for a pared down, essential setup,” Al said. “Open your pamphlets and follow the diagram on page three to find what you need and get yourself organized. I’ll be up and down to help out.”

  I turned to page three. A hand-drawn diagram showed the particulars. For a moment, everything went blank and I thought I might be losing my mind. What was I doing in this disgusting room, with a bunch of weirdoes (not counting Al), on a Monday morning, following some cockamamie diagram of how to set up a bar when I could be sitting in a cafe with my laptop inventing witty dialogue for a couple of non-stressful hours? This becoming a bartender idea suddenly seemed stupid. Then I reminded myself that in one week I could have the certification and go out into the real world, get a real job, and be a real person.

  The problem with being a novelist was that nothing was real. I was always making things up, and I had the feeling my imagination worked overtime, turning my whole life into one of my stories. Lots of drama, some high moments of joy, then the inevitable tragedy that’s the only thing to make Life, or the Story, meaningful. I just had to get real.

  So I threw myself into it. My setup was the first to be finished. I waved to Al, signaling that I was ready to have it checked out.

  Obviously, Al knew his bar setup inside out, s
o with a single sweeping glance, he could see I’d aced it. That’s what he said.

  “Good job, Marley, you aced it.”

  I hadn’t had anyone call me by my last name in quite some time, if ever. Still, it reminded me of how a book review always referred to the author by a last name. I was used to being Marley, but not hearing Marley. Which gave me an idea. I would start to call myself Marley when I went to get my first bar tending gig. Rose was too feminine and effete, anyway. Marley was the perfect name for a bartender.

  Al arched an eyebrow at me. “I have a feeling you’re going to be good at this.”

  I grinned. “I have a feeling you’re wrong.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, then went to help Ike who was perplexed by the arrangement of cherries, olives and picks.

  By the time we broke for lunch, I’d made three dozen martinis. Obviously, we didn’t use real liquor, although they somehow made the “vodka” have a thick, syrup quality so that we could fine-tune our pouring time. Water would come out a lot faster and our rhythm would be thrown off. The hardest part for the women, from my point of view, was reaching the bottles on the tall shelves behind us. Al said high heels were pretty much de riquere if you were under 5’5”.

  Cathy of the hammer-face said, “And heels are sexy, too!”

  “Definitely.” Al smiled at me, not her, as he agreed.

  Holy shit, I thought. Is that man coming onto me?

  The whole class decided to go to the pizza parlor on the street-level below us for a quick lunch. Al was right behind me on my way down the stairs. He said, “Are you Austrian?”

  I turned partially around. “Excuse me?”

  He pulled up next to me on the stairs, which brought him very close. With his hand, he twitched at my skirt. “Are you Austrian?”

  “Oh, no! I just wore it—” Since I knew the skirt looked awful, and I in the skirt, it became more and more inexplicable why I was wearing it.

  “I wondered because I am.” Al picked up a bit of the skirt again and gave it a little tug. “Nice memories of my mother.”