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“Yeah. Give it to me.”
The directory-assistance operator did. A
She actually toyed with the idea for a moment before brushing it aside. But giving such a paranoid thought even a moment's house-room was unlike her, and it made her angrier. The rings sounded alike because the same little dipshit backwoods phone company sold and serviced all the phone equipment in town, that was all.
“Did you get her?” Paula asked timidly, coming to the door.
“No. She doesn't answer, the town constable doesn't answer, I think the whole fucking town went to Bermuda. Jesus!” She blew a lock of hair off her sweaty forehead.
“Perhaps if you called one of her friends
“What friends? The loony she's shacked up with?”
“Sissy! You don't know-”
“I know who answered the phone the one time I did get through,” she returned grimly. “After living in this family, it's easier for me to tell when a man's drunk by his voice.”
Her mother said nothing; she had been reduced to wet-eyed trembling silence, one hand hovering at the collar of her black dress, and that was just how A
“No, he's there, and they both know I'm trying to get through and why, and they're going to be sorry they fucked with me.”
“Sissy, I do so wish you wouldn't use that lang-”
“Shut up!” A
A
Muffled little clicks like rats” claws on glass, its the operator looked things up on her computer screen. Her mother had fled. From the other room came the theatrically overblown sobs and wails of Irish grief. Like a V-2 rocket, A
“Are you still there, honey,” she asked without opening her eyes, “or did you suddenly run off to the W. C.?”
“Yes, I have a-”
“Give it to me.”
The operator was gone. A robot recited a number in odd, herky-jerky cadences. A
“Well, it's good to know someone's there. My name's A
Berringer's voice was even. “He's a she, Miss Anderson. She died unexpectedly last month. The office hasn't been filled. Probably won't be until next town meeting.”
This stopped A
“Miss Anderson? How did you know I was Miss, Berringer?”
There was no pause. Berringer said, “Ain't you Bobbi's sister? If you are, and if you were married, you wouldn't be Anderson, would you?”
You know Bobbi then, do you?”
Everyone in Haven knows Bobbi, Miss Anderson. She's our resident celebrity. We're real proud of her.”
It went through the meat of A
“Good job, Sherlock. I've been trying to reach her on whatever passes for phones up there in Moosepaw County to tell her her father died yesterday and he's going to be buried tomorrow.”
She had expected some conventional sentiment from this faceless official-after all, he knew Bobbi-but there was none. “Been some trouble with the phones out her way,” was all Berringer said.
A
“Could you have her call me? Her mother is crying her eyes out in the other room, she's near collapse, and if Roberta doesn't get here in time for the funeral, I think she will collapse.”
“Well I can't make her call you, Miss Anderson, can l?” Berringer returned with infuriating, drawly slowness. “She's a grown woman. But I'll surely pass the message along.”
“Maybe I'd better give you the number,” A
“No need,” Berringer interrupted. “If she don't remember, or have it written down, there's always directory assistance, ain't there? I guess that's how you must have gotten this'un.”
A
“Think I do,” Berringer said. This was the second interruption, and the conversation was not yet three minutes old. “I'll go out “fore I have m'di
“Listen-”
Before she could finish, he did the thing she hated the most.
A
She had been grinding her teeth together madly.
Bobbi didn't return her call that afternoon. Nor that early evening, as the V-2 of the wake entered the boozosphere. Nor that late evening as it went into orbit. Nor in the two hours past midnight as the last of the wakers stumbled blearily out to their cars, with which they would menace other drivers on their way home.
A
You'll come back, Bobbi, oh yes you will. And when you do…
When she still hadn't called the next day, A
Her mother slunk away.
That night she tried first Bobbi's number, then the selectmen's office. At the first number the sirening sound continued. At the second, she got a recorded message. She waited patiently until the beep and then said, “It's Bobbi's sis again, Mr Berringer, cordially hoping that you'll be afflicted with syphilis that won't be diagnosed until your nose falls off and your balls turn black.”
She called directory assistance back and asked for three Haven numbers-the number of Newt Berringer, a Smith ('Any Smith, dear, in Haven they're all related'), and a Brown (the number she received in response to this last request was, by virtue of alphabetical order, Bryant's). She got the same siren howl at each number.
“Shit!” A
Upstairs in bed, her mother cringed and hoped Bobbi would not come home… at least not until A