Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

She went over to the phone. It rang again. Then she began getting nervous. It rang again. I’ve got to get it now, she thought. I better do it now. Too late already, maybe. RRIIINNNGGGGGGGG. Then she was overcome with anger. Who does he think he is? Just what does he think I have to do all day? RRIiinn—she picked it up. “Hello,” she snapped.

“Hello, is Mal there?” came the voice from the other end and her heart melted.

“This is she.”

Pause. “This is July . . . July Montgomery.”

“Oh hello. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” He laughed. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

He laughed again. “What are you doing now? You’re not busy, are you?”

“No. I was just watching television.”

“So you’re just sitting there now, huh?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I’m standing. Why?”

“I was just trying to picture you there. It seems so unbelievable that I’m talking to you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it just seems funny. I mean I guess I think you’re really great.”

“I’m glad,” she said.

“Are you?”

“Of course I am.”

Pause.

“You’re just saying that, huh? Don’t you have a chair there?”

“Well, yes,” she laughed. “Why, do you want me to sit down?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“What are you doing? Are you sitting down?”

“No. Even if I had a chair I couldn’t. The cord’s not long enough. It’s a steel one. I’m at a pay phone.”

“A pay phone! You mean you’re out on a corner somewhere?”

“No. Right outside my room.”

“Where do you live?”

“On Sampson Street.”

“Is it a nice house?”

“Sure. I guess so. Do you think we could sometime get together? . . . I mean, go out or something?”

“Well, I suppose. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, I suppose you’ve something to do tomorrow.”

“When, in the afternoon?”

“Or morning. The morning’s fine too.”

“Say, really, what’s it like over there? Are you really at a phone booth?”

“No, actually it’s on the wall. But, yes, it’s right here. I know you can’t ever be sure, ‘cause you can’t see it—but here it is, black and squarish with a coin-return empty.”

“Say, did you call before today?”

Pause.

“No.”

“You have to admit it if you did.”

“Why?”

“Just because.”

“What time of day?”

“Any time. Did you call any time before?”

“No.”

“That’s lucky. My roommate thought there was an obscene phoner. She picked up the phone when it rang and shouted, ‘Who is this? The police’ll get you’ at whoever it was. They hung up . . . and who wouldn’t?”

“Now that you mention it, I guess I do remember something about that. Is she kind of short?”

“Well, not really. She’s kind of heavy, though.”

“Yes, I do remember now. I guess I did call at that. Slipped my mind. . . . So how about Sunday?”

“You never decided morning or afternoon.”

“Either one.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“Anything you like.”

“Oh, you could just make me shout, as Mother always says.”

“All right—I mean don’t shout—how about ten a.m.?”

“What are we going to do?”

“One decision’s enough for now. Where do you live?”

“In the Rittenhouse Apartments. Number fifty-seven.”

“I’ll be there. . . . Should I just ring for you . . . or call you before I come?”

“Just come over and ring the bell. I’ll come down.”

Pause.

“Well, OK. . . . See you then.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he said and tried to climb into the receiver after her voice in that second before she hung up. Then the hissing stillness. He let the cradle down with his finger and fitted the round earpiece into it, disengaging himself from it as though it were a delicate package-bomb. He backed away and stood in the doorway. Then such an excitement started when he turned and looked into his room he could hardly contain himself. For an instant it was as if he could see through things, the bed, the bathroom door and the refrigerator. Butch jumped up on the table to check for butter or butter wrappers, found nothing and sat with serene indifference.

“Say there, you cat,” sang out July, coming into his room and shutting the door behind him. “Watch out there. You just don’t know whose table you’re walking on.” Butch looked at him in a way that might say, “Lower your voice, please,” and shut his eyes, ending July’s first surge of excitement as quickly as it had begun.

He became filled with anxiety and couldn’t eat anything. Each hour brought more agitation. During the night the phone rang and he dashed across the room and opened the door before he even realized it, only to come face to face with a youngman from upstairs, nearly the same distance from the phone. Both stopped and looked at each other, wondering. July thought he could sense some curiosity over him, the guy who never came out of his room. The telephone rang its loud, clattering ring and the blond youth in his crisp, white shirt came briskly forward, taking control of the situation, and answered it.

“Hello.” Pause. “Oh hi, sure. Say, what’s going on over there?”

“I thought it might be for me,” mumbled July, shutting the door.

No, it couldn’t be for me. She doesn’t know the number, or where I live. But I told her a little about the room. I said . . . and he began another long, detailed reconstruction of everything that’d been said two hours earlier. But, as before, he wasn’t completely satisfied with having remembered it all.

The clock on the windowsill said it was three thirty. Then four. It read five before it even occurred to him that he should try to get some sleep, and he heard the early-morning bells from the church without ever having lost consciousness or strayed from his previous line of thinking.

Footsteps began filling the floors and walls. Running in the water pipes. Toilets flushing. Occasional traffic noise. Doors slamming. The first eight layers of sky were still black, but behind them and especially along the horizon of roofs was some blue.

Inside Mal’s apartment building was a panel of buzzers, and without hesitating for even a fraction of a second he pushed the one above ROURKE—PICKNEY 57 and waited. In