is,” his words came out in torrent, “I could talk, talk until kingdom come, excuse the expression, you know I’ve been talking to people since Adam, I really have gone out of my way,…”
The wind expired. Just dropped away, like a moth that circles a light bulb and suddenly burns its wings. Outside was calm--deathly calm.
“…and you know I fully realize your limitations. I mean I ought to. But there has to be a point, yes? There has to be a point where after all the trying, all the inexplicable stuff of the centuries and a universe that runs like a dream,--you know, there comes a time when the ball is in your court. Do you know what I’m saying? Instead, I get all this griping from people—do you have any idea what several million complaints sound like when they come at you all at once? All this whining about when am I going to reveal myself to mankind and when am I going to end all the ignorance and doubt. Nobody says, ‘well, I think you’ve done your share of the work, really’, or ‘they can’t say you haven’t held up your end’. No, nothing like that. Just more complaints. And everybody has their breaking point, yeah? Including me. I know you don’t think that, nobody thinks that, I suppose that’s why they just go on wearing me down…just wearing me down…and all the time they’re doing it they never realize that on the other end, on my end of the line, I’m getting a little less patient each day that goes by, just that little less patient until one day, one day that seems like any other day, I’m going to get one complaint too many and that’s going to be the last—“
Ten feet from my window, a psychotic bolt of electricity split the sky. It blasted down to the street below, to the red, cast iron telephone box the council had voted to preserve. The windows blew out in time with more thunder. The frame turned gold, then blue-white, then black. I stood out of my chair.
“That’s just going to be the last straw,” he said quietly.
I swallowed hard. I turned to see Mabel watching me, her face concerned. But I doubted she would understand. I tried to smile, and nodded my head to reassure her; I covered my mouthpiece a moment to expel the breath I'd been holding. Then I sat down.
“I…I see what you mean,” I said.
“And sometimes,” his voice was sinister now, “sometimes I feel I could go all the way. Do you know what I mean, all the way? I mean I could close my eyes to the whole, idiotic bunch of you and just—,"
“No!!” I blurted out. He stopped. I wondered whether my sympathy had got in the way of common sense. In an effort to appear professional, I cleared my throat.
“I…I really don’t think you should do that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because…,” I struggled, “because…because you must have some friends here. You said yourself, ordinary people. Some people must like you.”
There was a considered pause.
“Umm. A few. Less than I'd like. What of it?”
Brains, brains, I asked myself. Where were mine? I’d trapped myself now; my mind was blank. I thought of childhood, so many years ago for me, when faith was such a simple thing, as was trust, and hope, and kindness. All the things that made for a better world. I could remember sitting in the little back room at St. Cuthbert’s, reciting Old Testament tales of righteous judgment to the vicar’s wife, and winning a prize. Putting things right seemed so easy then. But now--? Then something came to me; I said it though I didn’t feel entirely confident, but I simply didn’t have anything else.
“Well, it’s like Abraham, isn’t it?”
“Abraham?” he asked.
“Yes. Like Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah. You must remember, you promised Abraham that if you found even ten righteous people in those cities, you wouldn’t destroy them.”
“And?” he demanded, unmoved.
“And so…if you had enough friends,…er…it might be worth it. Sparing the world, I mean.”
“Might be,” he said.
“Well,…you have me.” And I waited, wondering if I’d painted myself in a corner. Nothing in the training notes ever prepared me for this; I was operating on instinct. “How many more would it take?” I asked.
He said nothing for a long time. I bit my lip, and scrutinized the weather. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I thought I saw some brightness peeping through a slit in the cloud cover.
“You might be enough,” he said quietly, “for now.”
If I’d ever imagined I knew relief before…
“I could talk to you again,” he asked, “sometime, if I wanted?”
“Oh yes,” I gasped, “yes, yes of course. Tuesday and Saturday afternoons. That’s my shift. You just ask for Dorothy.”
“Dorothy.”
When I put down the phone, Mabel left her desk and came over.
“Good job,” she said, “I’m really impressed, because he’s a tricky one, that fellow. Rings up three, maybe four times a week, and always seems to catch the new operators. He overwhelms a lot of them. But you handled him very well.”
With that remark I realized I was halfway between one reality and another, not sure where to settle. I smiled at Mabel, made some self-effacing comment, and managed not to give anything away. The clouds outside were thinning.
When my shift was over, I walked home in assured, post-storm sunshine, umbrella swinging at my side, the wet foot almost dry. I felt restored after the tempest, relaxed; I noticed only good things: children playing in the park, a couple my age sitting on a bench holding hands. And so many smiles from unexpected faces, from the greengrocer, a bus driver, a woman who passing me on the pavement walking her dog. Even the dog looked up and smiled. Or was it that I was smiling?
I thought about many things as I walked. It was only when I reached my front doorstep, with key in my lock that I went back over the events at the Crisis Hotline and wondered. Which reality was reality, anyway? I gave the key half a turn, as if I’d decided, but then paused. I took a whiff of freshened air, sweet with the smell of puddle and trees, turned my face up to the sun’s warm beneficence and whispered, just in case.
“I’m glad you feel better.”
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