Into Thin Air (20 page)

An actor called every hour to see if he had gotten any messages, making Lee feel so sorry for him, she finally told him someone had called without leaving a name. The worst was an 800 number for people to order an eighteen-piece set of Chinese cooking knives. There were only four hundred sets, and Lee was supposed to have kept count, to stop answering the phone as soon as she had the four hundred, but in her panic she just kept taking orders. Toward four, when Roxanne was sequestered in the back room singing along to an old Rolling Stones song, when Dolly was in the bathroom down the hall, Lee quickly separated four hundred slips from her pile. The switchboard flashed and flickered and buzzed. “Dr. Balmont's office,” Lee said loudly, her fingers tripping over the paper. “Yes, I will.” She stuffed the rest of the sheets into her purse and plugged into a call, just as Dolly wandered back in, zipping up the fly of her striped pants.

Except for the hour and a half Dolly and Lee were allotted for lunch, Roxanne mostly stayed in the other room off the side, with the door closed. Sometimes Lee could hear country-and-western music. Sometimes she heard ice clinking in the glass. “What does she do in there all day?” Lee asked Dolly, but Dolly just shrugged.

At night, when her replacement came, a sallow thin blonde in a too long plaid dress, Lee yanked off her tight headset, rubbing circulation into her bruised ears. She walked alone to the bus stop, trying to shut off the buzz in her ears.

She found when she lay in bed at night, the voices sometimes didn't stop. She kept hearing the gritty accents, the ringing tones, the pleas and arguments and polite requests, all those momentary contacts, like sparks of static. And all those voices traveling and clamoring toward her made her suddenly hungry for a body, and it was a hunger she didn't know what to do with.

She tried to talk to Dolly. Their lunches were staggered, but once in a while she would bring Dolly a doughnut. “Thanks,” Dolly said shortly. She ate the doughnut, but during lulls in the blinking board, when Lee tried to make small talk, Dolly froze her out. “I talk all day,” she said. “What do I want more for?” At night Dolly never waited for Lee. She took the stairs four at a time. “Good night,” Lee called, down toward the silence.

She tried to talk with the clients when they called in for their messages. “So, busy today?” Lee said, but the voices rushed past her. The doctors wanted their messages with no nonsense; the plumber called her Miss Kate, even though she had told him her name was Lara. The only one who would talk to her at all was the actor. His name was Bobby Estev, and he told her stories so funny that she'd put him on hold so she could take the other calls and get back to him. “This last audition,” he said. “They made me quack like a duck. Can you believe it?” He quacked for her, and she laughed so loudly that Dolly flashed her a steely look. “They should have asked me to bark. I do a mean golden retriever.” He told her he had a trust fund—“I'm trusted not to blow all of it at once,” he said—and contrary to popular belief, he wasn't depressed by the lack of calls. “All it takes is one, right?” he said.

Because of Bobby, Lee slowly began to look forward to work. His conversation gave shape to her days; she could count on calls at noon, at two, and just before she left. It was just enough. It buoyed her spirits; it made the weeks fly. She began, too, to think about him, to imagine him. He sounded blond, she decided. He had longish hair and eyes so black they mirrored yourself back to you. She saw him, but never with her.

They had been talking together for almost three weeks when he asked her out to dinner. “Italian,” he said. “This place, they know me, I could make reservations tonight.”

She felt an odd flicker of annoyance. “Oh, I can't,” she said.

“Why not? You involved?”

“No, I—”

“Look, it's just dinner,” he said. “You think you'll ever want dinner?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he said, “That's the day after tomorrow, right? Let me just write that down in my busy schedule.”

He didn't call her for the rest of the day. She kept watching his line, waiting for it to light up. Just talk to me, she thought. Just talk.

That evening she was leaving work when a man took her arm. Startled, she sprang back, her heart racing. “Lara?” he said. “Are you Lara?” He was taller than she was, with a thicket of dark curls. He dressed like a kid, in red high-tops and a blue baseball jacket over a white T-shirt. He grinned at her. “Bobby,” he said. “I thought if you saw how cute I was, you couldn't resist.” She laughed despite herself. “Come on, what do you say, dinner, that's all, nothing fancy.”

He took her for hamburgers. He leaned across the table toward her, his smile so bright and earnest, it unnerved her a little. He kept asking her questions, where had she grown up, what was she like as a little girl. What was it like working at the answering service. “So who are your clients?” he said. “It's not confidential or anything, is it?”

She told him about Dolly's singing lawyer. She told him about her two Dr. Ambroses, one who treated feet, the other who was a dentist. “Waiter,” he said. “Two beers.”

She kept drinking, kept talking and laughing. She was surprised how relaxed she felt, how good. On her fourth beer the room began to swim. She was woozy enough that when he touched her face, her heart amplified in her chest. She felt a heady pull of desire. “Come home with me,” she said.

She woke at four in the morning, and as soon as she felt him beside her, she panicked. He was too close. A voice you could disconnect, you could detach, but here he was, with one arm looped around her belly, his head nuzzled toward her shoulder, making himself at home. All the attraction she had felt was suddenly gone. She jostled him awake. “Listen, you have to go,” she said. He pulled the covers over his head. “I have to go late night shift tonight.” “I'll come with you,” he said. She shook him from the bed. Startled, he staggered for balance. He gave her a soft, sleepy smile. “So how about dinner tomorrow?”

She shook her head. “Bobby,” she said. “Listen, Bobby. I can't do this.”

“You want to slow it down?” he said. “Anything you want,” he said. He pulled on his shirt, stepped into his pants, and put on his sneakers. “You need a lift?”

She floundered, shaking her head. “Dolly's coming for me. She's on the same shift.”

“I'll wait, then.”

“No, I have to shower, really.” She prodded him toward the door. “No, don't kiss me. Morning mouth.” She waved her hands. “Please. Go.”

He was gone. She locked the door, exhausted. She moved toward the bed, but his body seemed imprinted there. She pulled off the top blanket and made a bed on the couch.

The next morning she still felt invaded. She was late to work because she had to remake the bed with sheets no one had slept on but her. She rushed into the office. Roxanne was covering her board, and when she saw Lee she tapped her wristwatch with annoyance. Lee sat down, plugging immediately into Dr. Ambrose's line, when she heard his voice. “Hey, gorgeous, you working all night?”

“How'd you get this number?” Lee said.

“Hey, you told me the names. I have a great memory. Nice surprise, huh?”

“I thought we were going to slow this down,” Lee said.

“I'll pick you up tonight,” he told her.

“No,” she said, but the connection was gone.

That day he called five times, twice on the Ambrose dentist line, three times on the plumber's line. “Look, I don't want to go to dinner,” she said. “Just talk to me a little,” he said, but his voice suddenly annoyed her. She didn't take pleasure in his jokes anymore; his stories about auditions were suddenly tedious. She didn't like how he kept telling her about all the things they were going to do together. She left work early, complaining of a cold, wanting to avoid his waiting outside for her at closing time. All that evening she left the phone off the hook, but she couldn't relax. She felt somehow watched.

She began to dread going to work. She was late more and more. She sometimes left before closing time. She began taking her time plugging in the calls, and once she made the connection, she waited for the caller to speak first. When Dolly pointed it out, Lee snapped at her.

She plugged into Dr. Ambrose's line, told the caller to wait, and quickly took Wayland Plumbing. “I stood outside your house all last night,” Bobby's voice stormed on the line. “You didn't go out at all. I slept in my car, and believe me, the weather's getting too nippy to do that.”

Lee felt a chill. “You watched me?” she said.

“I can see your window right from the street. I know you. I know things I bet you don't think I know.”

“You do not,” said Lee, uneasy.

“I know your name is Lee, not Lara, you said it in your sleep the night we were together. I know other things, too.” She disconnected him, so violently that a spark of electricity crackled from the board. She plugged into another line. “Why'd you put me on hold! I need Dr, Ambrose! It's an emergency!” a woman sobbed.

“Right away,” Lee said. She scribbled the woman's name and number, then she called Dr, Ambrose's secretary with an emergency. She was flustered all day. She took a cab home, and that night she kept getting up to test the windows behind the blinds. She was an hour late for work the next morning, and when she walked into the room Roxanne was sitting on her seat. “I'm late,” she said. Roxanne looked at her, her eyes steel.

“It's a real habit with you, isn't it,” she said. “You want to come in the back with me for a minute?”

Lee looked at Dolly, who was plugging into a line.

The back wasn't much different from the front. Roxanne had a flowery couch, a minirefrigerator and a stereo. She sat Lee down. “When I hired you, we agreed it was three months' trial basis. Well, the months are over, and I can't say that I think you're answering service material.”

“What?” said Lee.

“You got to be quick. You got to remember. I got three complaints this morning. Dr. Ambrose the podiatrist got an emergency call for Dr. Ambrose the dentist. Wayland Plumbing got an emergency call for a fake number.”

“I was—I was ill yesterday,” Lee said.

Roxanne shook her head. “It isn't just yesterday. Dolly tells me you take your time on the board, that you're getting personal calls here. Is that true?”

“No, not personal,” Lee said.

“That's not what I hear. You're always late. You're distracted. Listen, I think we'll both be happier, you work someplace else.”

Lee nodded, numb. She got up and got her purse, and as she left she noticed that it was the first time Dolly was really looking at her, her eyes flickering with real interest.

This time leaving wasn't as easy. She was tired of traveling, of being in a different city every month or so. And she had loved Lubbock. She had thought she could stay. She threaded her hair through restless fingers. It felt rough and unbeautiful. Wherever she went next, she wouldn't dye it anymore. She'd let it grow.

It took her two hours to pack her one small bag because she kept stopping to look around her apartment, the first one she had ever had all by herself. It shocked her, how hard it was to go. The phone kept ringing, but she simply watched it dispassionately. She thought about Lubbock and Bobby and the tumbleweeds that Bobby said would soon be decorated in points of ice, and by the time she had finished packing, all that was left was a gray eyeliner in the bottom of one chipping drawer.

She took a cab to the airport. It was early enough so she could take her time deciding where she wanted to go. She craned her neck at the monitors, gravely studying the cities quivering in fluorescent green on the screen, and finally she chose Madison because it seemed so different from Lubbock.

Lee slept the entire flight, not waking until she was on a Wisconsin runway, the windows dusted with snow.

It continued to snow the whole first week she was in Madison. She stayed in a hotel room, drinking complimentary room service cocoa and staring out at the bleached landscape, at the drifts that seemed to be breeding ominously. In the distance, from her window, she could see someone skiing down the road, skidding a network of zigzags. She listened to the weather reports on her transistor radio warning of more snow, droning about school closings, about water freezing in the pipes and old people dying in unheated apartments. In the early morning, when she woke and couldn't sleep, she heard the farm reports. Cattle were freezing in the bams. One farmer brought out so many oil lamps to warm them that he had started a small fire.

When the weather finally cleared, she looked for an apartment, taking the first one she saw, a small bright studio near the university, Resolutely she scribbled a name on the lease. Sara Lee Rider.

She began fixing up the place, determined to stay in it, to make it her own. She bought a bed and a desk and a cheap imitation Oriental rug. She bought dishes and towels. The one thing she wouldn't do was install a phone. She had had enough of voices kindling through the wires.

She thought she'd waitress until she found something better. She walked into the first restaurant she passed, a small cozy-looking place called Valerie's. She was a little dazed to see the waitresses dressed in Hawaiian leis, wearing grass skirt aprons. On the walls were photos of Hawaii, and on each table was a tiny miniature lei made up of plastic beads. Don Ho was piped in over a scratchy intercom. “Hawaiian menu,” a woman said. She was only a little older than Lee, wearing a simple black sweater dress, and she had a blue paper hibiscus pinned into the black shaggy braid down her back. She grinned at Lee, lifting up a bright blue menu. “Next week it's Mexican, and you really ought to come back for that. Best salsa in town.”

“I'm not here to eat,” Lee said. “I've come to apply for the waitressing job.”