Whenever You Call

by Anna King

  Her dark brown eyes glanced at me sideways, sly and calm. “No problem.”

  “Thanks.”

  I saw Annie at the end of the bar, waiting to give me an order, and I managed to get lost in the actions of bar tending, the shaking and pouring, the crush and chill of ice, the corks popping, the dull clacking sounds of my heels on the linoleum floor, the odor of beer froth and tonic water. It was almost like falling asleep and dreaming. So much for bar tending being a door into real life. At odd moments, when things were quiet, I looked around for Ralph. Was it possible that I missed him?

  12

  I HADN’T SPOKEN TO Jen in thirty-one days.

  I hadn’t spoken to Al in ten days.

  I hadn’t heard from Rabbitfish in twenty-nine days.

  Trevor had been cremated and then buried for twenty-five days.

  Naked, I sat in my desk chair and spun around until I was close to falling off. I veered between two feelings, loneliness and freedom, with each of them somehow being a part of the other so that when I was lonely, I was free, and when I was free, I was lonely. I kept taking my phone off the hook as insurance that I wouldn’t hear from Al. We hadn’t had a fight, or even a discussion about our relationship. Instead, he simply left my house one Sunday morning, after a fun Saturday night in bed, and then neither of us called. For a few moments every day, I missed him in an abrupt, violent way, almost as if I just needed to smell him. But the rest of the time, I never wanted to see him again. Perhaps I was being my usual over-imaginative self, but I felt strangely certain that he was harboring lust or interest in Christine, his agent, though he’d been matter-of-fact about her when he’d returned from the meeting in New York.

  I was naked because a steamy bath, with the electric heater blowing hard in the bathroom, had made me so hot that I almost passed out. So I’d flung open the bathroom door and staggered to my desk chair. Spinning around, I cooled quickly, and now I was cold. Late October in a two-hundred-year-old house. I grabbed my nightgown and bathrobe from the back of the bathroom door, then pulled on thick socks.

  In front of the computer, with my legs tucked up under the flannel nightgown, I checked my e-mail, expecting to receive only spam, especially since it was three o’clock in the morning. I was sufficiently in need of human connection that I was actually hoping for some interesting spam. I’d last checked ten minutes before, when I’d first emerged from the bathroom. Usually, after a night of bar tending, I’d have gone to bed as quickly as possible, kicking off shoes, yanking down panty hose, jerking too hard at the zipper to my skirt, pulling the tight top over my head with such alacrity that my hair got knotted in the arms, and everything turned inside out. But this night was different. Despite the busyness of a Saturday evening, I felt untouched by people. Ravi, who’d become a bit of a friend after I told her I couldn’t have a date with her, had been out sick.

  I’m in a terrible funk, I thought as I hit the Inbox icon. Things twirled for longer than usual, so I expected junk. Instead, there was an e-mail from Rabbitfish.

  Since I hadn’t heard from him for so long, my fear that he would murder me had melted away, only to be replaced by something I should probably have feared more: desire for him. How could I so want someone I didn’t know? The only explanation was that I did know him, as I’d told him, perhaps too many times. I think I know you, I think I know you, I think I know you.

  I should know better, of course. After three marriages and countless love affairs, I should know way better than to fall in love with a stranger, particularly a stranger who’d behaved badly by reading my e-mail, lying in wait for me (okay, call it stalking), leaving curious messages that weren’t readily understood, and sending me obscure e-mails.

  I pushed away from my desk without reading his e-mail, though I also didn’t discard it. Up two flights of stairs, in the kitchen, I pulled vodka, martini shaker and glass out of the freezer, vermouth from the ’fridge, and made myself a martini. Then down to the living room, where I threw a fake log, along with several real logs, into the fireplace, on top of pieces of crumpled-up newspaper, struck a match and lit it. I curled into the corner of the couch, without turning on any lights, pulling a cozy throw over my lap. The flames were slow at first, tiny flickers on the edges of the fake log, burning the paper cover before finally catching hold of the actual log. I took a tentative sip of the martini, wondering how it would taste now that I made so many of the damn things as my livelihood, but it’s icy metallic taste echoed something in me, this strange mood of longing and anger and fear.

  What if I never recovered from this guy, Mr. Rabbitfish? So far, he’d been such a unique experience that it didn’t seem like an exaggeration to see him as my fatal flaw, the thing, like alcohol or drugs, over which I’d developed such an addiction I would never be able to recover. I tried to imagine deleting his e-mail forever, without reading it, and I knew that I couldn’t. I simply could not not read his message. Wasn’t this pull toward him something to fear? I thought so. I knew so. And I was at its mercy.

  If only it was merciful.

  By the end of the martini, the fire was burning merrily and sleepiness finally crept over me. I was scared to get up and head for the bedroom because I knew I’d find it hard to resist the temptation to go downstairs and read the e-mail from Rabbitfish. Instead, I slid down on the couch, stretching out my legs and tucking the throw neatly around my body to seal in the warmth. I stared at the fire for a few more minutes until my eyes grew so heavy that they had to close.

  Behind my eyelids, I jumped awake, as if I was the ubiquitous rabbitfish itself swimming underwater, snapping its frightening jaws at anything that moved, or even didn’t move. I began to see (or almost to write) a long scene and dialogue with Jen. We were in the well-known restaurant, Mistral, in the Back Bay. She wore a haughty expression on her face as she tasted the wine I’d chosen, but I knew her look was really directed at me, not in judgment of the wine.

  I said, “Ralph hasn’t been around.”

  “Who’s Ralph?”

  “My angel.”

  She shook her head, the pure blond hair swinging sideways like pleats of a skirt. “I’m glad it’s over, but I’m still worried about you.”

  “What makes you say it’s over?”

  “Because the angel—as you call this hallucination—is gone.”

  I picked up my glass of wine and took a long sip, rolling it around in my mouth before slowly swallowing. “I miss Ralph.”

  I opened my eyes to stare at the fire, then around the room, searching for my angel. Out loud, I said, “Are you here?” No flashing blue lights, nothing at all. Despite the fire, I felt surrounded by only a cold emptiness, like the inside of an oven that’s been off for days.

  I spoke again. “You’re not coming back.”

  I shut my eyes against the rush of tears. I must have done something wrong, I thought, first, to have such a strange-looking angel and, second, for the angel to leave me after I’d finally seen him. Or I was merely nuts, no matter what my therapist thought.

  It occurred to me that it didn’t matter, which reminded me of Brother Ralph’s advice. Ask the question as if the answer doesn’t matter. What’s the question, I asked as if it didn’t matter. I closed my eyes again and smelled the smoke and burning wood. The question was in the fire, I thought; the question was of the fire. My eyes slammed open and I sat up on the couch.

  Fire: creation and destruction.

  The question, as if it didn’t matter, was which one? Creation or destruction? The choice was mine. And, if the question didn’t matter, then the answer didn’t either. I felt my chest fill with air as I sucked in a huge breath.

  “Please come back, Ralph,” I said.

  Then I threw off my blanket and practically ran downstairs. When I clicked on the mail icon, I was dumbfounded to discover there was no e-mail from Rabbitfish waiting in my Inbox. Frantic, I searched everywhere.

  Had I imagined the e-mail, with the tantalizing return address of “Rabbitfish?”
If I could hallucinate a bizarre angel like Ralph, couldn’t I also hallucinate an e-mail? The problem was that no matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise, I didn’t believe I’d imagined the e-mail from him, though I also knew that didn’t mean I hadn’t.

  I could write to Rabbitfish myself and ask what had happened to the e-mail he sent earlier, but, in truth, I didn’t want to. I’d developed what I considered to be a healthy anxiety about this Rabbitfish character, and I wasn’t comfortable being the instigator of any communications between us. Yet, oh my word, how I wanted to know what he’d written. I rechecked all the possible places his e-mail might have landed, but it had disappeared.

  In the living room, the fire was dying out. I could throw on some more logs, but it was now quarter-to-four in the morning and I desperately needed to get some sleep. I crawled between the flannel sheets on my bed, where the electric blanket had turned them into hot toast. I lay still for a long time, determined to give my body a chance to unwind, but it didn’t work. Twenty minutes later, I was still awake.

  Suddenly, inspired, I jumped out of bed and ran back down to my study. When I checked my e-mail, there it was: Rabbitfish.

  It’s in the fire.

  Shock ripped through the center of my body. My breathing went shallow. How could he have known? How, how, how? My palms sprung little leaks all over and I wiped them on my nightgown, then grabbed the fabric in my fists, clutching it tightly, screwing it into fists to fit inside my fists.

  Finally, I wrote back.

  There is something eerie going on. Please tell me why you wrote “It’s in the fire.”

  Since it was now almost four-thirty in the morning, I didn’t expect a reply. I used the bathroom, and then heard the boinging sound to indicate that I’d received an e-mail. I wiped myself slowly. Flushed. Stood and felt my nightgown drop in sweet, gentle folds to my sock feet. Shuffled forward.

  An e-mail had arrived, yes, but it wasn’t from Rabbitfish. Instead, the return address was “Joseph.Finder@mit.edu.” That would be, I realized, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I opened the mail.

  Who are you?

  I swallowed. My eye travelled to the e-mail from me, to which he was responding, and it was precisely the e-mail I’d just sent to Rabbitfish (“There is something eerie going on. Please tell me why you wrote ‘It’s in the fire.’”), but the address of the recipient was, indeed, Joseph Finder at MIT. I quickly googled his name and MIT and discovered that he was a Professor of Religious Studies. His photo looked nothing like my Mr. Rabbitfish, though he was quite handsome, with thick, unruly white hair and a long face wearing a devilish expression.

  I clicked on Reply and began to type.

  I sent the e-mail you received to a correspondent named Rabbitfish. Well, that’s probably not his real name, but it’s his moniker and the only name I know for him. I have no idea how or why you received my e-mail, nor do I understand why you’re awake at this ungodly hour.

  He answered within a minute.

  What’s in the fire?

  (I don’t know why I’m awake at this ungodly hour, either … do you know why you’re awake?)

  Something about the hour of night, or morning, and the strangeness of what had happened to the e-mail I’d sent to Rabbitfish, made me lose all inhibitions. I wrote back:

  I’m awake because I feel alone. My angel, Ralph, seems to have disappeared, and I was only just beginning to get used to him.

  Naturally, I figured I’d never hear from Joseph Finder again. But, not so.

  I have an angel named Ralph. Do you think it’s the same angel?

  Sweat trickled between my breasts. I pressed the fabric of the flannel nightgown to blot it. I knew he must be joking, yet it seemed possible, given all the other oddities occurring, that he wasn’t joking at all.

  Are you joking?

  His answer came rapidly, in an IM message.

  “I’m not, actually. Are you joking about your Ralph?”

  “No.” I hit send, paused, then kept writing. “You believe in angels?”

  “Yes. Normally, maybe not, except that I happen to know my angel and his name is Ralph. He’s not much help, though.”

  “I don’t think my Ralph has been much help, either. I’m curious: does your Ralph have bags under his eyes?”

  “Yes! and no feet and big brown furry wings!”

  “You’re a real person, writing to me?”

  “I’m a tenured professor at MIT. I don’t know what’s going on either, but we should probably meet.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No … you?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I tend to marry a lot. It’s a problem.”

  “Laughing.”

  “Yeah, you can laugh. Not me.”

  “Are you free for a drink tomorrow night?”

  “Suppose so.”

  “Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

  “This is unusual, to say the least.”

  “You mean fun.”

  “Well … maybe.”

  “How about Miracle of Science Bar & Grill at 6:00?”

  “Appropriate, she said dryly.”

  “Is that yes?”

  “That’s yes. See you at 6 tomorrow.”

  “How will I know you?”

  “Do a google image search and you’ll find plenty.”

  “Ciao.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  I ran up the stairs two at a time, with my nightgown hiked so high that my ass was entirely exposed. Throwing myself into bed, I actually bounced a bit, tickled by this turn of events because I was positive the promised happy ending to end all happy endings was right there, within my reach if I would just risk it. I laughed out loud and waited for morning.

  13

  I WOKE TO A howling wind and rain drumming at the window panes. Turning over and twisting into the sheets and blankets, I tried to fall back to sleep. No luck, yet it was such a perfect day to sleep, so dark and cozy. Giving up, I rolled onto my back and let my eyes open. I lay there, somewhat miffed at not being asleep. Possibly I was more asleep than I realized, though, because I drifted into a dreamy state and found myself remembering, of all things, Christmas morning.

  A very particular Christmas morning, the year I was six, the year I didn’t get a single thing I’d asked for, and I hadn’t asked for much. My list had been for exactly three things: (1) the gigantic doll that was as tall as I was, (2) books, (3) a poem.

  The doll was my big-ticket item, so I’d deliberately trimmed the list. We always got books, and I’d been trying to flatter my mother by asking for a poem. Although, truthfully, I really wanted a poem from her. A six-year-old might not have understood, but now I could see how a poem would have flattered both my mother and me, a win-win situation.

  That year in Northampton, Massachusetts had already been extremely snowy and cold. We had a family tradition that on Christmas morning, we went for a walk before opening presents or eating breakfast. Everyone in the family appeared to love this, including my brother and sister, but I loathed it. Perhaps it was because I was skinny, with eczema-prone dry skin, and winter weather was torturous for me. That year, I was already sick of my thick, clumsy snowsuit, and the air felt like a threat as I breathed in and out, an adult-sized scarf wrapped around my neck and lower face so that each breath, despite the cold, was moist and sickly. I managed to peek into the living room, where the Christmas tree lights were dark, but shapely bundles could still be seen under the tree. I searched for a large package, big enough to contain my doll. I didn’t see it, but I was sure that she was pushed way back, hidden and waiting as eagerly for me as I was for her.

  I loved dolls. I had as many as my parents allowed, which was probably more than they wanted me to have. My own daughter, Alex, had thought dolls were totally uninteresting, and by the time she was six years old, I could see her point. It was hard to remember why I’d found dolls so wonderful, but I
had this vague memory of endless cuddling, changing of clothes, constructing cribs and beds, moving them from here to there. The desire for a doll as large as I was different. In the Sears catalogue, the photo showed her standing next to a little girl who was, indeed, exactly the same height. This wasn’t a doll to manipulate—like a baby doll, or even to emulate (the Barbie doll). This was a doll to stand next to, whose eyes would meet mine. I wanted her as desperately as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I understood now, of course. Hard to miss the obvious symbolism. I wanted a mirror image of myself. I wanted … ME.

  Fresh snow had fallen overnight, so there was a soft covering before my booted foot hit the crusty snow underneath. Neither the soft, nor the hard, was easy for me to walk on. I slipped and slithered, and sometimes all the snow broke and my foot would plunge deep into the cold wet. My father, unable to manage, stayed home and started to make breakfast. It seemed strange that we’d have a tradition that he couldn’t be a part of unless it was a Christmas with very little snow. I suppose our mother wanted us to herself, or both she and my father were determined that something which seemed like a good idea—a cold Christmas morning walk—would happen whether or not one of them could actually do it. Often, he could. Even if there had been snow, the sidewalks were cleared and he’d attach clamps to the undersides of his shoes. He would manage, though I can’t figure it was any fun for him. Then again, it wasn’t fun for me, either. Perhaps it was no damn fun for any of us and we were all simply too intimidated by Mom to say anything. The tradition had come from her side of the family, who’d always had the same walk on Christmas morning, and her attitude was like a 4-star army general who was determined to win the battle, though how, exactly, Christmas morning resembled a battle field, I was never sure.

  By the time we returned home that morning, my feet were wet and frozen. Two toes on my left foot have forever since then been quick to go numb in the cold. I plopped down in the center of the entrance hall, and Dad promptly yelled at me to get out of the way because he was coming through to the living room. I literally rolled in my snowsuit, like an awkward puppy, until I came to rest at the foot of the stairs. There was a lot of excitement, and too many high-pitched children’s voices, as we fervently threw off the layers of clothing and rubbed at various cold parts of our bodies. I skedaddled into the living room.