IT WAS NOT WITHOUT FEAR, OR FEARLESSNESS, THAT I DECIDED to call Melissa and Lorna. I wanted to know. Whatever it was, if anything, that I was to know, I wanted to know it.
This would have been a lot easier, a hell of a lot easier, if I had a few drinks under my belt. The booze would bring forth my words with ease and without anxiety. But those days were over, the days of the slaking silver tongue. The booze was behind me. I took some baclofen, some Valium, poured a glass of cold milk, turned on the telephone, and dialed Lorna’s number. Truth be told, I had a premonition. A bad one. I had the eerie feeling that Lorna was dead. This Venus born from a sea of gloom, this night flower whose wails of ecstasy sounded so much like cries of suicide, or of one being murdered. She was dead and was no more. I was almost sure of this as I listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times. I should be doing this in the light of morning, I told myself, not now, when all was dark. I was about to end the call when I heard her voice.
“Hey, stranger,” I said. “It’s me.”
There was a pause, as if she did not recognize my voice. Then she spoke. There seemed in her a mixture of curiosity, surprise, and concern. The emotion that lay under these things was unreadable.
“What happened to you? It was like you vanished. One day you were there, and then you weren’t.”
It made me breathe easier to know that she was all right, or at least that she was still there, still alive.
“I was sick, baby. I got sick, really sick. I ended up in the hospital for a while. I’m just now starting to feel better.”
There was another pause. I could hear her breathe. I felt that there was anger in her, but that she could not speak it after what I had said. It was good to know that I could still cast my cape of deceit over the cheap prop of the truth on its worn little pedestal.
“God.” She sighed. “I don’t know how many messages I left, how many times I called you.”
“I haven’t listened to any messages. They told me just to rest, to take it easy. But I had to call you.” I took a swig of milk. “I had to call you.”
“Can I bring you anything?”
“I’m OK.” I tried to sound as weak and sickly as I could, and I hated myself as I did so. “I’d love to see you, though.” Why did I say that? Why?
“You sure you don’t need anything?”
Why had it taken her so long to answer the phone? Was she in the middle of prodding that stun-gun gizmo into her own crotch?
“I just needed to hear your voice and know you were all right.”
And to know that you were not dead. To know that you had not killed yourself, and that I had not killed you, and that you do not want to kill me.
“Do you remember the last time we saw each other?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said. For a moment I grew tense, as if she would say no more. “I knew something was wrong then. I knew you’d been drinking. A lot. I was going to ask you to leave, but I was worried about your diabetes. With the drinking and all. I asked you about it and you waved it away. I should’ve done something, but I didn’t.”
“I don’t know. A couple months ago.” Again, her breath, nothing but her breath. “Maybe more. Then you weren’t there. I didn’t know what to think. The worst things went through my mind.” Then a moment of further silence. “But you’re going to be OK, right?”
It was hard to tell if this was an addio senza rancore or an utterance of heartfelt concern, a caress of undiminished closeness. Yes, I assured her, I was going to be all right. I tried to temper my best weak and sickly voice with something like an aspiration of strength.
“I love you,” I said, cursing myself as I said it.
Then there was just the sound of our breathing together. At last I heard what I wanted to hear.
“I love you, too.”
For some reason, a reason I did not seek, that made me feel better, made me feel happy that I had called her.
“Maybe in a few days?” I said. I thought of her, and of that haunted flat of hers and that curtained room with its dim red glow, and her cross and her whips and her stun gun and her blood and her cries. I wanted nothing to do with those things. Nothing. “Maybe for breakfast or something,” I said.
“That sounds great,” she said. The unreadable emotion that lay under her voice was gone. These were plain and simple words of plain and simple happiness.
“And now I’m going to drag myself off to bed again,” I lied. “I’m really glad I talked to you,” I said in all truth. “Really glad.”
I heard her kiss the phone, then I like a fool kissed my phone as well, and then slowly ended the call.
Calling Melissa required a fresh glass of milk and a fresh cigarette. I sipped, smoked, and dialed.
“Hey, baby,” I said, humbly but nonchalantly.
I heard her breathe. It sounded nothing like Lorna’s breath had sounded. Nothing at all like it.
“Fuck you,” she said. And that was that.
I faltered for a moment with the phone dead in my hand before shutting it off. Then I merely smiled and slowly shook my head. Well, I told myself, she was certainly all right. No doubt about that.
And so I knew. Whatever it was, whatever it meant, I knew it. I sat in the dark and savored my cold milk and my smoke.