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There’s more where that came from, but it should be enough to demonstrate: I am a Romantic Genius, and a Dreamer.
I was still scared to call her, though. In fact, it took me a couple of days to get up the nerve even to dial Holden Caulfield style—that is, with the intention of hanging up. Our secret date had been on Thursday, Veterans’ Day. I stalled on Friday. I took the weekend off. Then I took a deep breath on Monday and picked up the phone with steely determination.
I needn’t have bothered with the s. d., however. Her answering machine was full, and I couldn’t have left a message even if I tried. I hadn’t realized that it was possible for frustration and relief to come in the same box, but it did. Maybe her family had gone out of town for a long weekend. So who had been leaving all those messages on her machine? That thought drove me crazy and made me cry, though not quite literally.
She could have gone away with her boyfriend—Tim, was it?—instead of with her family. Or perhaps the boyfriend had 224
gone along on the family excursion. Maybe they were riding in the backseat of the family car surreptitiously groping each other underneath a blanket. Maybe they were ramoning right now. I was starting to feel a little jealous of Ted, or Dan, or whoever. In fact, I thought I might be starting to hate him. But I squelched that thought. There was no future in that line of thinking. And I was impressed with my own maturity for realizing it. The whole thing was very adult and sophisticated.
I had settled into a comfortable pattern of dialing and being informed by a robot voice that the machine was full, which I did several times a day, causing some turmoil in the household because Amanda thought of the phone as her exclusive property. So I dropped the phone in shock when, on Thursday evening, I heard not the robot voice, but the voice of my imaginary girlfriend saying “Didi’s phone, leave a message.” I picked the phone off the floor without being able to think of anything to say, but it was too late anyway, so I had to dial again, once the dial tone came back on. Then it was busy. In its own way, this unexpectedly retarded attempt to make a phone call was like a little Hitchcock film: all suspense and delayed gratification with plot twists and multiple false endings. I waited ten minutes and dialed again, and waited another ten minutes and dialed again, thinking that I would not be too surprised if it were answered by a mysterious German-accented voice asking me if I had the formula and telling me to wear a red carnation and come to the Oberausterplatz. But no. “Didi’s phone, leave a message.”
I took a deep breath. “This message is for Deanna Skoo—”
Deanna Schumacher picked up the phone, and she didn’t mention the Oberausterplatz.
“Jerk.”
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I didn’t know what to say. Finally she said, “Hello? Hello?
Are you there?” I cleared my throat and said that I was there, and that I had been trying to call—
“Jerk,” she repeated, breaking in.
We were back where we started.
“I’ve been trying—”
“Whatever,” she broke in. “I don’t mess around with just anyone.” Now, how I was supposed to know that was a little unclear: it seemed to me, on the evidence, that her criteria in that regard were in fact rather broad. “I’m not used to being ignored,” she said, “and, in case you’re wondering, I don’t have any trouble getting dates.”
I’m sure you don’t, I thought. It’s the phone conversation afterward that you seem to have not quite gotten the hang of.
But I doubted this was the right answer, so what I said was:
“I’ve been trying—”
“Well, I’ve been away.”
“—to call—”
“What?” It struck me that despite all the “this is she” and
“say hello to your mother” stuff, she was a lot less polite on the phone than she was when she was offering to give you an illicit blow job in the fifteen minutes before her boyfriend arrived. Did she ever let anyone finish a sentence?
“I’ve-been-trying-to-call-you-but-your-machine-has-been-full,” I said as quickly as I could. And I almost got to
“your” before she broke in: “I’ve been away—are you deaf ?
My machine was full.” I was at a loss, and I almost hung up.
But then, her voice softened.
“I’m glad you called, Tom-Tom. I was beginning to think you had used and forgotten me.” Now there was a
