Phone Calls from the Dead by Wendy Brenner

Author:Wendy Brenner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

MR. PUNIVERSE

YESTERDAY YOU SMELLED like detergent, having biked to work through the feeder bands of a tropical storm that was stalled just offshore in the Gulf, its center breaking up. You clomped in like a draft horse, keys and change jingling, clean shirt steaming sweet ammonia and dripping all over the linoleum in the Xerox room, arms loaded with souvenirs from your recent vacation in a Midwestern state you refused to name: “A Midwestern state of mind,” was all you would say.

To the reporters and editors, you presented trial-size jars of specialty barbecue sauce: Macintosh-smoked, Jack-Daniel’s-spiked, Ginseng Zinger, Grand Marnier Infusion. The custodial staff got a box of chocolates shaped like prairie dogs. For Mabel, the front-desk receptionist, a postcard of the famous fainting goats. For Kenny and Sonny, the other two photographers besides myself, car air-fresheners in the shape of the anonymous Midwestern state. Kenny said he’d take Sonny’s to him in the hospital. “Oh, yes, that’s right,” you said, your eyes meeting no one’s.

After you had given everything out, you turned to me. My empty hands vibrated in anticipation—something was finally going to pass between us. Like a goat, I thought I might faint.

“I’m still working on yours,” you said. Your tone was both secretive and ironic, I thought, a little anxious but also triumphant, frustrated but resolute—sincere, yet more than a little recalcitrant.

“Is something wrong?” I said.

“Ha!” you laughed, throwing back your large wet head, sending out an arc of storm-charged droplets. I watched one hit the bulletin board behind you and blur the word “operations” on a memo. The fluorescents flickered, went out, then blinked back on. “Whoa!” someone in the next room shouted.

“You just look a little anxious,” I said. “Or, not anxious—worried. Worried.”

Your hand moved across your gray-cratered chin, making an amplified, space-age sound. You said, “Well, it takes a worried man to sing a worried song.” And then, backing away as if I had stepped too close, though I hadn’t moved or even swallowed: “I’ll try to bring yours tomorrow. Yours is special.”

A wave of something went through me, tweaked my hyped-up aminos. I saw fish leaping out of the sea before a tsunami, strange fuzzy tendrils pushed out of the ground by the shifting plates of the earth. It didn’t matter what the gift was. I could feel everything that was happening everywhere, and it was all for me.

MY FIRST PHOTO shoot for the paper was the Mr. Puniverse Pageant, in which the editors had jokingly entered you, their colleague, as a contestant. I hadn’t met you yet, but everyone was abuzz about the event, the fact that you were going along with it. “And Jason, you’re the perfect man to cover this,” the editors said to me, with genuine, mean-spirited excitement. “You’ll make these dorks feel even more puny, get some great reactions.” They were a giggling, sweaty, vengeful group, these editors. They reminded me to get some good shots of you for the bulletin board. “You’ll know him, he’ll be the old one!” they hooted.

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