Whenever You Call

by Anna King

  “And?”

  This time, I waited for a few seconds, trying to think, but not to seriously think. Instead, to think as if the answer didn’t matter.

  I shouted, “It’s funny!”

  Brother Ralph burst out laughing, then agreed with me. “It’s funny.”

  I dropped my head forward, into both hands, and scratched my scalp vigorously. “Did it ever occur to you—,” I hesitated.

  “Umm?”

  “That there actually might be a God, but it would be nothing at all like we’ve ever imagined?”

  “It’s occurred to me.”

  I peeked at him and saw his mouth split wide with a yawn.

  “Maybe God is our imagination,” I said.

  “Or our imagination is God,” he said.

  I closed my eyes, then reopened them. “Brother Ralph?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” he whispered back dramatically.

  “My angel is here.”

  He looked around, eager. “Where exactly?”

  “Sitting right next to you.”

  He tilted his head left and then right, eyebrows raised in a question.

  I gestured to my left. “He’s copying you.” I giggled. “I think you amuse him.”

  Brother Ralph stuck out his tongue and still managed to form words. “Now what’s he doing?”

  “Sticking out his tongue, except his is blue.”

  The Abbot’s eyes widened. “Blue?”

  “It’s not very attractive,” I said.

  “What’s he wearing?”

  I squinted. “I can’t really see—it fades out.”

  “Ask him if God exists,” Brother Ralph said.

  In my head, I spoke the question to my angel ‘Does God exist?’ Then I started to laugh again.

  “What?”

  “One big wing, the color of muddy water, spread way out and then folded over his head and started scratching. It’s like he’s saying ‘Good question, let me give that one some thought.’”

  “Sounds like a real angel,” he said.

  “Gone now,” I said.

  “I probably intimidate him.”

  I rolled my eyes and stood up. “Is there such a thing as coffee at a Buddhist monastery?”

  “Of course not.” He got to his feet, groaning loudly and brushing off his skirt.

  “Would it be terrible form if I drove into Mt. Pleasant and had a cup of coffee?”

  The Abbot said, “Answer that question as if it didn’t matter.”

  7

  DURING THE REST OF that day, despite actively searching, I never caught sight of Rabbitfish again, and it did no good describing him to Isaac. A tall bald man with classic Anglo features fit half the male population of the monastery.

  I attended both morning and afternoon meditations, where I grew more and more agitated instead of less so. I was probably anticipating dramatic visions, or, at least, a mysterious squiggle. When nothing happened, my mind raced with replays of the nutty activity and puzzling conversation I’d had early that morning with Brother Ralph. Luckily, Isaac and I made plans to talk again after dinner because, by the end of the day, I felt like a heap of scrambled eggs served too dry and without the sausages I’d ordered.

  We walked through a dilapidated garden gate that looked like it had been original to an earlier farmhouse, the kind of structure I’d have found preferable for a monastery, and followed a thin path into the woods. Mosquitoes whizzed around so thickly that they seemed to form, paradoxically, a dense mosquito net around us. I slapped and waved my arms. Ahead of me on the path, Isaac flipped his hood up around his bare head. Except for his toes, hands, and the front of his face, he was protected from the bugs.

  I said, “Could we borrow a robe for me? I’m being eaten alive.”

  He whirled around, grinning. “You bet.”

  We retraced the short distance we’d come, to a walk-in closet off the large reception room. Monks’ robes hung haphazardly. After a few tries, we found one that didn’t entirely drown me. As we moved back outdoors, I enjoyed my outfit. It was like wearing a ball gown, where the flow of the long skirt automatically conferred grace and elegance. Back at the gate into the woods, I flipped up the hood and understood why monks wear a hood, besides for mosquito protection.

  The world had narrowed to a straight-on view. Obviously, no peripheral vision. But, less obviously, it seemed to open the world backwards. That made no sense, of course; the rear was totally covered by the hood, and, besides, the back of the head had no eyes. But it felt like my front-on view was actually a rear view.

  I said as much to Isaac.

  He said, “Hold up some fingers and I’ll tell you how many.”

  We were still walking along the slender path, with Isaac in the lead.

  I held up four fingers, splayed widely.

  A beat of time went by. I thought about telling him that I was doing it, but I figured that would defeat everything. Anyway, it turned out to be only a ticking second before he spoke.

  “Four,” he said, without so much as a hint of triumph.

  Holy fuck, I thought, and then immediately felt guilty. At least I hadn’t said it out loud.

  What could I see behind me? At first, what would be expected: tree branches, masses of mosquitoes, shadowy light. Then it shifted and, though my eyes still registered the back of Isaac, I “saw” the same slightly crooked black line, I’d seen in my mind during meditation the night before. That, too, was really my imagination, I thought, or simply the representation of something that had been perplexing me. So I kept looking, concentrating, even. In fact, staring.

  It was rude to stare.

  Ralph appeared, dressed in his ultimate angel outfit, white and ethereal, with his incongruously bulbous face staring right back at me. I giggled. For the first time, Ralph’s eyes softened and I realized that he was scared of me. That pissed me off a bit. I had much more of a right to be nervous of him than vice versa.

  Out loud, I said, “Everything is backassward.”

  Isaac kept trudging along, without answering me.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah—we’re almost there.”

  Sure enough, within three minutes we emerged from the woods into a rough clearing. Tall scraggly grasses and weeds grew around a murky pond. Though it was early evening, and mosquitoes massed to form a screen from the sun, the light still shone strongly. So far, this walk and our destination had been unpleasant. I tipped my head back gingerly, making sure to keep the hood in place, and looked at the hazy sky.

  “There’s a place to sit closer to the water,” Isaac said.

  Whoopee.

  Again, he led the way. The skirts of our robes dragged over the grasses, and I immediately imagined the creep and crawl of lyme-carrying ticks edging up my legs.

  The place to sit was a large boulder or rock. We had to climb, holding our robes in one arm, to get to the top. Our hoods fell backwards and a massive mosquito landed on the top of Isaac’s head. I tried to speed up so that I could smash it to smithereens, but I was distracted by the hum of incoming mosquitoes who appeared to have the hots for my earlobes.

  When we’d settled on top of the rock, we flipped up our hoods. The pond, still and dense with a skin of green, was as unattractive as much of the rest of the monastery.

  I tried to peek at Isaac, but our hoods really made it impossible. Something about not being able to see his face made me realize that I’d been obscenely self-interested over the last few days.

  “Tell me how you’re feeling about being a monk, living here, and stuff,” I said. “When you called me last week, you were on the verge of quitting.

  His large body shifted and seemed to melt into the rock. “I’ve fallen in love,” he said, “with a woman with no hair.”

  “You mean one of the monks?”

  “We call ’em nuns,” he said.

  I could hear the amusement in his voice.

  “Isn’t that forbidden?”

  “No, or not ult
imately.” His head turned, shifting the hood a bit so that I could see his right cheekbone. “We can marry, but we’re celibate during training.”

  Softly, I said, “Why do you love her?”

  “Because she’s ugly.”

  Shock zipped up my backbone. “The bald head?”

  “That doesn’t help.” He laughed. “But she’d be pretty ugly no matter what.”

  “Shouldn’t love be about something, I dunno, more positive?”

  “Maybe.” He reached over and pulled back my hood. “But I fell in love with your red hair.”

  “That’s positive.”

  “I’m not so sure—,”

  I shook my head and shifted the hood forward again.

  Isaac said, “It makes her incredibly interesting.”

  My right hand slapped a mosquito that had landed on my ankle. A splatter of bright red blood appeared.

  “Does she know how you feel?”

  “Probably, but I’m not sure.” He leaned forward to pick up a small stone, which he threw into the pond. The splash rippled slowly, thickly, hotly. “I’ve confessed all to Brother Ralph.” He turned to look at me. “What do you think of him, by the way?”

  “A riot.”

  He chuckled and nodded his head.

  I picked up a stone and threw it toward the pond. It fell short by about three feet.

  “Stand up and you’ll get it in.”

  “That’s okay.”

  He was quiet.

  So I stood, scrabbled for another stone, pulled my arm back and threw with much more oomph. The stone landed with a satisfying ker-plop in the water.

  “Huh,” Isaac grunted.

  I leaned over, grabbed another rock, and threw again. It went even further.

  Isaac gathered a handful of stones in his left hand, lumbered to his large feet, and began tossing stones. Soon we were throwing so rapidly that the pond exploded with bursts of water. The green scum opened into a wide circle of clear water.

  “See how far you can go,” Isaac said.

  “I want to go deep.”

  He gave me look. “How can you possibly tell if you’ve gone deep?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  We started to laugh, then threw the stones even more wildly. “I’m going deep, I’m going deep,” I yelled.

  Isaac walked me back to the guest quarters soon after. “Are you leaving in the morning?” he asked.

  “You know, I think I might drive back tonight.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, so I have an angel named Ralph. I can see him sometimes, and I don’t really understand why this has happened to me, but it is what it is.” I looked into his familiar eyes. What else, they seemed to say. A trickle of sweat meandered down from both his temples.

  I kissed him on the cheek and we headed to the guest quarters so that I could pack up. It wasn’t until I hit the bathroom that I remembered I was still wearing the monk’s robe. I looked in the mirror, pleased to get a chance to see what I looked like. Flipping up the hood, I was especially taken with the way my red hair curled around the edges. Bald would not have been nearly as attractive. For the first time, it occurred to me that when an angel appears to you, it might mean that you’re being called to a religious life of some sort.

  “Not me,” I said out loud. Not me, I said silently, as I removed the robe and went to take a pee. Not me, not me, not me.

  The refrain continued as I climbed into my car and took off down the winding back road away from the monastery, except slowly it shifted to Knot me, knot me, knot me.

  Me knot.

  I’ll be damned. That was neat. Me knot. Now I just had to figure out how to unknot myself. No prob.

  8

  THE CEILING IN MY bedroom groaned as Al trundled around the kitchen directly above me. I rolled onto my side and stared out the open bedroom window where the light from a full moon drifted through the leaves of the sweet gum tree. I yelled, “What are you doing up there?”

  “Surprise!”

  Dishes clattered together, the refrigerator door kept opening and closing, clunk-clunk, and the microwave signal dinged from time to time. I smiled to myself and stretched my legs across the sheets, scissoring them languidly against the soft woven cotton. It was two o’clock in the morning, following a busy Saturday night at The Harvest. Al had picked me up and we’d barely gotten through the front door before we were grappling with each other, spilling onto the bed and going at it like teenagers, which teenagers might dispute, but what did they know? Cambridge had been ruled by a massive heat wave for three days; Saturday’s high was 101 degrees, and things really hadn’t cooled that much. A layer of sweat from the exertion of making love still clung to me.

  Al’s footsteps, despite his bare feet, thundered down the wooden stairs. He rounded the corner into my bedroom, carrying a tray.

  “Move over,” he ordered, “and no jostling the bed.”

  I shifted to the other side. He placed the tray directly down on the bed, then sat at the foot and busily handed me a napkin wrapped around a fork. Using utensils, he distributed salad into two bowls. A truly gorgeous salad, by the looks of it, with flecks and suggestions of vegetables, tuna, olives, and grated parmesan cheese.

  I said, “First time a man has made a salad for my post-coital pleasure.”

  “I’m a unique man.” Al grinned and my innards made the not unexpected flip-flop when I looked at him. Shifting my gaze down, into the bowl of salad he handed me, I forked a gigantic helping into my mouth. Something about eating in bed, where we’d just finished making love, seemed to allow for the cessation of normal manners. Which is to say that I shoveled in that salad, suddenly starving. Al rose from the bed and disappeared back up the stairs.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Quit being so inquisitive.”

  He returned with an ice bucket. I could see the snout of a champagne bottle sticking out. Two champagne flutes dangled between the fingers of his left hand.

  With my mouth crammed full of salad, I nevertheless asked, “Are we celebrating something?”

  He nodded, eyes shining with such charm that it was nearly unbearable.

  Al pulled the bottle out of the ice, wrapped it in a white dishtowel he’d brought with him, angled it toward the ceiling and, before I could suggest he do it outside, the cork exploded and flew to hit the ceiling with a satisfying plop, then tumbled to a landing on my bed. He poured two glasses and handed me one.

  “Here’s to signing with an agent,” he said.

  I took a small sip of champagne, buying time.

  “Remember when you said I could write to your agent, Steph?”

  Oh yeah, I remembered. I’d felt like a colossal hypocrite, but also as if I hadn’t had much choice When I’d never heard anything more from either Steph or Al, I figured that was that. I couldn’t believe that Steph would’ve offered to represent Al without telling me. I also, frankly, couldn’t believe that he would be a good enough writer for him to get an agent like Steph. Such was the mythology I’d developed around Al’s character: he wasn’t really as impossibly handsome as he appeared to be, he wasn’t a talented writer or actor, he wasn’t in love with me, and, no, he hadn’t been married to a famous woman.

  “She thought the book was good, but she was too busy to take on new clients, so she passed it along to a newer agent in the firm, a young woman named Christine Yudofsky. And … ta da!” He opened his arms wide and made a palm upwards gesture with the hand not holding his glass of champagne.

  I knew Christine Yudofsky. She’d graduated from Harvard five years ago—she was elegant, smart, and about as beautiful as Al was handsome. Too young for him, I thought before I could stop myself.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “Is she making you do a rewrite before submitting it?”

  He looked puzzled. “No.”

  I backtracked. “Impressive.”

  Al put the ice bucket and champagne down on the floor so that he could sit on the bed again.
r />   “Who’s Christine going to show it to?” I said.

  “She gave me a preliminary list of ten editors, but she wanted to review her choices with the other agents before making a final decision.”

  I started to say something until I realized that he wasn’t finished.

  He continued, “Then she plans to auction it.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Nope, not kidding,” he said happily.

  I sipped the champagne again. “Do you realize how rare that is for someone who’s never been published?”

  “She said the same thing, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe her.”

  Remembering, again, the incredible package called Christine, I asked whether she had invited him to New York for the obligatory agent/author lunch.

  “Going down on Monday!”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me—when did all this happen?”

  “Only yesterday, and I wanted to make the announcement special.” He looked away momentarily and I realized his voice had trembled. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.” His gaze returned to look me right in the eye.

  I speared up more of the forgotten salad. “Don’t be ridiculous.” I chewed forcefully. “The manuscript’s obviously very good, and you’d have found an agent on your own.” I raised my champagne, “Success for Tie Me To The Bedpost.”

  Al leaned forward and we clinked our crystal glasses together. Their high-pitched chiming echoed through the room. Soon we were chomping on salad and sipping champagne in a companionable silence, interrupted from time to time by further discussion of publishing. Al was, quite naturally, wound up about the subject, with plenty of questions.

  My real mind and full attention was on the roar of jealousy that had erupted in me at the idea that Al could soon be signing a book deal and meeting the gorgeous creature, Christine.

  I couldn’t decide which of the two things was worse, but I was certainly more surprised by my reaction that his book might be published. To begin, I was humiliated at my failure to recognize that Al’s writing was good. I wish I’d made the recommendation to Christine. Second—and not to be avoided—I had a terrible rush of desire to be signing my own book contract, receiving the first payment check, and looking forward to its publication with the all the subsequent excitement.