Unknown Caller by Debra Spark

Author:Debra Spark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

HE ARRIVES IN AN OLD PICKUP. He must be coming straight from work, since he smells faintly of sawdust, and he is wearing a beat-up pair of jeans with holes through which one can see the waffle weave of his long underwear. He’s not got his coat on, the heat in the cab is on full blast, and though he is slight, she feels uncomfortably aware of the musculature of his chest, apparent under his blue pullover.

“Freezing,” he says when she hops in. He rubs his arms.

“I know,” she says, a visible puff of air coming from her mouth.

When he puts his hand back on the wheel, she notices that half of the second finger of his left hand is missing.

They arrive at the library only to be told they have come too early. The session is from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., not 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m..

“Since when?” Peter asks. There are others who have shown up too early too, all of them standing in little puddles left from the snow they’ve tracked in.

“We posted it.” The librarian points to a flyer above a coffee urn at the entrance.

Peter shrugs. Why would they have the notion that people were going to come to the library in advance of the seminar and study the wall above the coffee pot? He turns to Liesel and says, “What do you want to do?”

“I’d like to come back, but if you don’t want to hang around . . .”

“Um . . . we could get dinner?” he says. “Then come back?” He talks to her as if she is older, as if he needs to defer, a trick Liesel notices mostly because it is something she does. She always wants the other person to be the grown-up in the room.

“Um, yeah, dinner,” she says. “Dinner would be great.”

They drive to a restaurant in the next town over, which Peter says is a basic all-around place. “It’s not great,” Peter adds as they get out of the truck, a shrug of an apology. “There’s better in town,” he says, clearly meaning Portland.

Inside, it’s fairly crowded. A record is playing a little too loudly: Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” They sit in a booth in the corner. He gets a beer, she a wine. The menu is long, and all the dishes have stupid names. “Lighthouse Linguini,” the “L. L. Betcha Love It” for a surf-and-turf dish. She can see ordering is going to be hard for her. Hamburgers, French fries, pasta, lobster stew. If she doesn’t eat a salad or vegetables, she’ll be cramped up in the bathroom all night.

When he wraps his hands around his glass, she notices his finger again, stubby and lewd.

“Is it dangerous? Your work. In the mill, I mean.”

“Not so much. I don’t actually mill the wood. I lay the floors. I’m usually out and about during the day. Different houses.”

“Oh.” She nods.

“And you. What do you do?”

What can she say? “I’m kind of between things.”

Peter has left his thin wool hat on, and his hair curls out from under it.

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