I slammed down the phone. My cheeks burned. I felt so stupid. This was my mother’s mistake. She had let feelings come her way over the phone and it had cracked open her heart. I hated to admit that for a second I saw it all before me. How easy it would be to tell him where I was and just see if he came, and if he came, how easy it would be to get in that car and have him drive me on out to another life, trust him and let him help me. The prospect of another life was mysterious and blank. Who knew what horrors would fill it, but I knew they would be different horrors, and somehow that sounded like a risk I could be stupid enough to take.
After Forne, I sat with my head down on my mother’s desk imagining that each second passing was really just hurtling me closer to my inevitable death. I would quit the phone lines. Every call I took was just making me dumber and dumber, no closer to my mother. I went downstairs. I told Florin never to connect me with Forne again.
“He’s your best caller,” she said. “Anything that went wrong on the call I guarantee had more to do with you than it did with him.”
“Just don’t connect him to me. I’m done, actually. I quit.”
She smacked her gum. Looked at her phone lighting up. “You sure? Got a new one here. Don’t you need the money?”
I did need the money. Of course I did.
“Just be cool,” she said. “Take a breath and let it go. These are just voices. They don’t mean anything unless you let them.”
I stood there thinking. She picked it up. “Welcome to your fantasy, where nothing’s finer than a call with a Diviner.” She looked at me, motioned for me to get upstairs. I didn’t want to leave the red house, not really. I went and picked up.
The man cleared his throat and a tingle ran through me. Something different, my body alerted.
“Hello, darling,” I said. “Have we had the pleasure of speaking before?”
“Honey on a muffin,” the man said. The low and long voice was familiar and different all the same. Where had I heard it?
“Well, you’re cute,” I said. My pulse raced. Florin had forgotten to tell me his name. He might not tip now if I couldn’t come up with his name, give him a real personal experience. But I didn’t have to say anything. He started in.
“Speak to me, are you lonely?” he said. My mind ran and ran. The voice was familiar but who was it? I saw the answer up ahead of me, just out of reach. I closed my eyes, tried to steady my breath. I looked at the photograph of my mother but she provided no answer in her closed-mouth smile.
“I’m lonely,” I said. “Does that make you happy?” I’d meant to say horny, but happy came out.
“It makes me real sad, honey,” he said. “Makes me wonder if I could make you less lonely.”
“That’s what I’m here to do for you,” I said.
“Now, I’m listening to you here, and I’m thinking wild thoughts. I’m thinking, this gal’s a star,” he said. “Tell me, what does your pretty face look like?”
What did my pretty face look like? I didn’t know. Instead I saw my mother standing before the edge of a cliff. Falling free, chest open into a pit of fire. Rick Walden, Rick Walden, I imagined her chanting as she fell. For it wasn’t a regular client. It was him. It was the Turquoise Cowboy calling from a new number, out fishing.
I wondered then if God worked in more mysterious ways than I had ever imagined. If God had sent me a direct line right to her. Here you go, I imagined God saying. What, you thought I forgot about you? I heard Florin’s voice: Be cool.
“How’s the weather where you are?” I said. I pressed my ear into the receiver. Would I be able to hear my mother in the background? Would she sense it was me?
“Weather’s always fine in heaven,” he said.
“You got rain?”
“We got wind and sleet and just the other day I drove through a flash flood and nearly hit a stag. Lightning every which way. You looking for that kind of excitement, dolly?”
“You got a lady with you in that flood?” I tried to imagine my mother in the passenger seat while