Billy is roused from sleep by Roger Coop, eternal keeper of the phone, a Tantalus condemned to reach for a call that never comes. "You've got a fucking phone call," he tells Billy.
"Me?"
"Unless there's another Schine around here."
"Do you know who it is?"
"Do I look like your secretary?"
"Could you ask who's calling?"
"No fucking way."
"Okay, is the voice male or female?"
"This isn't twenty questions. Answer the phone or I'll hang up."
"No, yeah, okay."
Billy rolls out of bed and into the hallway where the receiver hangs down like an unwritten form of pay phone misdemeanor. Ragnar skids his stomach, Ragnar skip-tracing his ass to Albany. Or maybe Sally asking what she should do about all of his books, Sally slightly recovered. Billy stares at the phone's black pendulum, still holding Roger Coop's bitter displacement. He picks it up, hears heavy breathing and background chatter and a few violent coughs. Ragnar, he thinks, definitely Ragnar.
"Anybody there?" comes over the line.
It isn't Ragnar. It's something worse.
"Abe?" Billy says.
"Billy?" Abe says.
"Yes, Abe."
"Billy, is that you?"
"Yes, Abe, it's me."
"It's your father calling."
"I know."
"Where are you, Billy?"
"How did you get this number?"
"I called you not long ago and your lady friend gave me this number."
Billy curses caller ID. He thinks of Sally's cool revenge as she constructs a dozen book boxes.
"I got a shipment of stuff from you," Abe says.
"I moved," Billy says.
"I thought for a moment you were coming home. I thought I would come home one day from visiting Doris and find you, waiting for me, but it was always just the boxes. I started wondering if something was wrong, if these were personal effects. That and the flowers you sent. I started thinking, so I called."
"Were the flowers nice?" Billy asks of Ragnar's floral threat.
"Sure, lilies. Very nice."
Billy wishes he knew what lilies looked like. "What'd the note say?"
"Thinking of you or something like that. Always in my mind. Can't really remember."
Behind Abe, voices chatter, disrupted by the occasional announcement over a loudspeaker.
"Where are you calling from?" Billy asks.
"An airport bar," Abe says.
"You going somewhere?"
"Me? No. Not me. But there's a Marriott not far from Whispering Pines and it has a free shuttle to and from the airport."
"Oh."
"I come here after a visit when I'm in no mood to go home. All those bus transfers. Too much. So I come here and walk around and sit and read and watch the news. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I spend the night like my flight's been canceled and I'm stuck here, that way I can get back to Doris first thing in the morning without two hours of commute. It's not a bad place to be, plenty of bathrooms, water fountains with good cold water, bookstores, food courts. It's one of the few places where a man can still get a shoeshine. The people, they assume you're like them and you're traveling and you're just waiting for your plane. It's not a bad place for an old man."
It sounds too depressing for words, and while Billy almost serves his father a thick slice of mockery ("I hear Charles de Gaulle is beautiful this time of year") he relents, knowing (a) the effect would be lost on him, (b) the idea of his father pleasantly wandering around the Cincinnati airport trounces any humor, and (c) he could hear himself in his father's words. It's one thing to see yourself in your father's face, the same eyes, the same chin, but it's another thing to hear yourself in your father's words, in gestures and phrases, in those small recognizable ways that dislodge you from the inside. Instead, Billy says, "You're not old."
"I'm old enough."
"You should come to New York. We can spend the day at JFK." Billy is half-serious. "Come for the weekend and we'll hit Newark and LaGuardia as well."
"I knew JFK when it was Idlewild," Abe tells him. "There wasn't a better name for an airport. Shame about the man but too bad we had to lose Idlewild as well."
"You all right, Abe?"
"That's why I'm calling you."
"How's Doris?"
"She'll outlive me."
"What'd you mean?"
"I mean she's stronger than I am. Always has been. I fear the time when I'm no longer here for her and that kills me, her being alone, untended to."
Billy catches laughter, odd, almost mechanical laughter somewhere near his father. A tattered parrot could be perched on Abe's shoulder, the original owner having died years ago and all that remains are recycled expressions of affection. "What the hell was that?" Billy asks.
"What?"
"You didn't hear that?"
"What?"
"That laughter."
"That's the gentleman on the bar stool next to mine. But he's not real. He's a robot who sits here and tells jokes with his other robot friend. Not robots, animatronics is what the bartender says. They're the regulars here. They sit together and tease each other and pretend to drink beer. People seem to find them funny. After every hour they repeat their routine. I know all their jokes by now, as does the bartender. He says it's part of the theme of this place and one day soon he's going to crack a bottle over their heads and give them the bum's rush even if they're worth a fortune in electronics."
"I think it's based on a TV show."
"I think that's right."
"And what're you calling from, a cell phone or something?"
"I got one so Doris can always be in touch, not that she calls, that part of her is gone, but she still answers the phone, that part is still intact, the answering part. I call her when I'm on the bus on my way home. I talk to her and I know she's listening because I can hear her breathing."
For some reason the fact that his father has a cell phone depresses Billy.
"You know what I was thinking, Billy?"
"What's that, Abe?"
"I was thinking you should go to Forty-seventh Street and visit the family store. You should storm in and tell them who you are, the offspring of Abraham Schine and Doris McMinn. That would be something. Kick open the doors—no walk in quietly, yes quietly, with dignity, and stare down all those Schines and Sappersteins and curse their hard hearts. Find my brothers and tell them how happy I am, how glad I am I barely escaped their clutches, how I lived for love and they lived for something much harsher and look at them now. I'm sure they look awful. Oh yes, you really should. Today. Or tomorrow. But soon. I can imagine their faces. They might take great pride in their handshakes but they have no honor. Tell them that exactly. That their idea of family is as bad as what we barely survived. I'm sure we're a Wanted poster in their minds. Tell them you went to Harvard and maybe dress like you're a big success and could buy the store because I bet their sons are working the counters and hustling estates, waiting for the grande dames to keel. Offer them an outlandish sum. Oh yes, you must."
Billy hears the laughter again, though explained, no less creepy. He considers telling his father that he already visited the store (Schine Brothers Gems in shimmering rhinestone) a few years back. He went in on the sly and posed as a boyfriend looking to become afiance and told the black gabardine behind the counter he was willing to spend twenty grand on an engagement ring. Perhaps the salesman was a relative, bearded and bespectacled but with a surprising sense of humor that contradicted his appearance, as if his warmth came from someplace ancient. He brought forth his merchandise and said, "Some lovely tombstones for the bachelor." He explained the varieties of cut and setting, using his pinky as pointer, then he called over a raven-haired beauty, Sasha her name, who possessed a glorious left hand and an intriguing Russian accent. She slipped on the rings and presented her paw as if ready for a waltz. "I like the baguettes on this one," she purred. Billy agreed, as did the relative Schine who eyed Sasha up and down and teased, "Sometimes I think you weren't our wisest hire for men seeking wives." She greeted this with a blazing bit of smile. Around the counter came another salesman, another possible Schine, but younger, with payos instead of a full-grown beard. He edged by the first salesman, affectionately bumping his shoulders and saying, "Is Sasha ruining another engagement?" Billy played along, Sasha as well, with easy nonbinding flirtation. The older salesman joined in and muttered, "If you want her you'll need a minimum of four carats." Billy was tempted to give himself up, in the company of these men and this pretend bride, reveal himself as the son of Abe, quietly whisper the truth—lam Billy Schine—and leave these black coats less villainous. Instead he told the salesman, "I'm going to have to think about it." The salesman, disappointed, gave him his card—Lev Halevy, sales associate. "I know we can find you something, so call me when its' time." That was that. Outside, Billy stood in front of the store and hated himself for saying nothing of consequence, his heart pounding with ridiculous adrenaline, his feet stutter-stepping with notions of going back inside before finally giving up.
"Billy?"
"Yes, Abe."
"Where are you?"
"I have to go," Billy says, spotting Roger Coop down the hall.
"I'm glad you called," Abe says.
"You called me."
"The flowers, they were nice. You should know, I'm terribly alone.
Even when I'm with her, I'm terribly alone. Please come home, Billy. We need your help."
"I really have to go," Billy says.
"Come home, Billy."
"Abe—"
"I have the right pills."
Billy winces, like a hacksaw is the only way to unshackle his hand from the phone.
"But we'll need help with the plastic bags. That's what the Hemlock Society suggests, pills and plastic bags, to be certain, absolutely certain, of the act."
"Abe—"
"Please come home."
"I—"
"Together in bed, that's the way we want to go. On our anniversary. Do you remember the date?"
"September fourth," Billy answers.
"Year?"
"Nineteen sixty-one," Billy answers.
"That's a good boy. It'll be thirty-eight years married. Too bad we couldn't get to 2001, then it would've been forty. I would've made her a gift of rubies though I probably could've only afforded a garnet. But September fourth will be our day. We'll empty the pills into ice cream and mix in some alcohol, rum, I think. But I'll need help getting her back home and into bed. And once we're asleep, we'll need help with the plastic bags."
Billy laughs, unfortunately laughs, awful but he laughs as hollowly as the robotic barflies near his father. "Sorry Abe," he says, "but I'm not going to kill you. Maybe if I were younger, but not now, not in my late twenties."
"But I have it all planned. You do nothing but slip the bags over our heads and fasten them with rubber bands, all of which I'll provide."
"Abe, please."
"You'll be doing us a favor."
"I don't know how to say this, Abe, but our relationship isn't really strong enough to handle me killing you and Mom. I'm sorry." And this is the truth. Billy wishes he loved them enough to kill them, to kiss their foreheads before easing them into death like a good euthanizing son. "I could also end up in jail. No, no, no. It's a supremely poor idea."
"We want to die together, not like this."
"We are not having this conversation."
"I can try it on my own," Abe says. "It just might be messier." Messier strikes Billy as highly disturbing. "Abe, listen to yourself."
"I'm serious."
"Please don't be serious," Billy says. "And let's think about me for a second. I'll be orphaned." Orphaned? A twenty-eight-year-old orphan? "Okay, maybe not orphaned," Billy says. "But parentless in one fell swoop. I'm not prepared for that kind of, well, swoop. No, I need more time. Because September fourth is not far away. For my sake, let's lay off the double suicide for now."
But Abe is unmoved. "We want to be cremated," he says. "We want our ashes mixed together and divided into four equal parts and spread in four different locations: one in front of the Winter Garden Theatre; one while riding the Cyclone in Coney Island; one while cruising the Circle Line; and one on the observation deck of the Empire State Building."
"Jesus Christ, Abe, you're describing a montage."
"I'll put all our wishes in the note."
"I won't do it," Billy warns. "If you do this, I'll bury you in separate plots divided by a highway."
"You won't do that, Billy, because you're a good boy."
"You can't do this to me, lay this on me."
"Come home and help your mother and father."
"This is crazy," Billy says, drained. "Just hold off. Promise me that you'll hold off until I get back in touch with you or come home or whatever."
"No matter what, September fourth is when this is happening."
"Be flexible, for Christ's sake."
"Come home, Billy."
"I don't know if I can come home for this."
"I love my wife, Billy."
"Believe me, I know."
"Come home, Billy."
Back in bed, Billy in shock, the kind of shock that transforms the future into a series of impossible knots, ad nauseam ad infinitum, Billy closing his eyes, Billy rubbing his eyes until blackness grinds with galaxies of rubbed-on light, like a thumb on liquid crystal, like the final scene in the movie 2001, before the intergalactic four-star hotel room, before the baffling fetus conjoins with the atmosphere of earth, when David Bowman travels through jet streams of color, the speed of light scored by the otherworld, Billy rubbing through this retinal space, not wanting to stop for there's pleasure in this abuse, a self-created itch, rubbing long after a mother would say, okay, enough of that.