Page 64 - WTp Vol. VII #9

Dark as a Dungeon in the Heart
For a number she had never forgotten, Margie Finn was having a hard time hitting all the right buttons. It was the White Pages that was throwing her off, following along with her fin-
ger on the page as she poked the buttons on the phone, not trusting her memory. And there was something strange about this pay phone. She real- ized on her third try, after losing a buck in quar- ters on wrong numbers, that this phone was so low to the ground because you were supposed to use it while sitting in your car. A drive-up phone. She twisted around to gaze across the asphalt at her Beetle, cute as an after-dinner mint, parked at the curb in front of Fred’s Liquors and Liqueurs. Should she go get the car, drive up to the phone, and try punching the number one more time? Driving always sharpened the mind. Click, buzz- buzz. The line connected. Margie waited for a stranger’s voice at another wrong number, but the sound that purred into her ear was as familiar as her old junior varsity letter jacket. “Yeah?”
“Bobby! Hey—you know who this is?”
A few seconds went by, as the last ten years ticked backwards in his head until he got to the tiny wrinkle in his mind that had been reserved for remembering Margie Finn. “Ho-ly cow! Is this Margie Finn on the horn?”
“It’s me, Bobby. Is that you?”
It was him. They chattered for the duration of two more quarters while she stood stooped at the low phone, not taking her eyes off the curli- cued neon signs hanging in the window of Fred’s. Molson’s. Bud. Bobby was saying he wouldn’t let her past the state line into Indiana if she didn’t drop by to say hello and have a beer, catch up a little on these last ten years. “You still remember how to get out here?”
“County Line Road 66, three lefts and three rights.” “Hell, Margie. If you still remember that, then
how come it’s been ten years since you showed your face around here? Did you call it quits with that woman? I heard something about you and this gal–”
“My dad–” she started.
“Yeah, I heard about that, too. Jeremy called. I’m real sorry, Margie.”
But none of this was good for the pay phone. It needed to be a front porch conversation, with the sun gone down and the fireflies hanging like ornaments under the cottonwoods and cigarette smoke curling up from their hands, keeping the moths away. She said, “Hey, you need me to pick up anything? I’m on Orchard, right by Fred’s.”
“Fred’s? Get some juice, then.” A smile curled up the ends of his voice. He didn’t mean fruit juice. Her quarters were gone so they signed off. She crossed the asphalt and stepped inside Fred’s to a blast of cool air that brought out goosebumps on her bare arms. She hugged herself as she walked through aisles of cases stacked shoulder-high. A bottle of Bushmills and a twelve-pack of Negra Modelo. As the cashier rang it up, she let her
eyes roam over the pint bottles on the back shelf. “Give me a little Jack,” she said, waving a finger
at the one she wanted. The pint bottle was flat and curved, made for a back pocket. She could almost taste it already, the heat of it. Two days on the road: highway, highway everywhere, and not a drop to drink. A little sipping now wasn’t go- ing to hurt anything between here and Bobby’s, six miles away. She kept her hand steady as
she handed over the fifty-dollar bill. “Give me a couple bucks back in quarters,” she said. She had another call to make today.
~
Just yesterday morning, three hundred miles east of here, she was sitting on her mother’s backyard patio getting sauced under the Kentucky sun.
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