Skeleton Key(17)

“Like the fact that you have caller ID.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m going home,” Deirdre said again.

On any other night, Peter would have gone to her and tried to make her change her mind. He would at least have grabbed her arm and tried to do something physical. Now he just watched her walk away, her hips moving like waves under the pink terrycloth of the towel. She reminded him of Marilyn Monroe in some old movie.

When she was out of the room, Peter got a towel for himself and brought his scotch out into the main room. He could hear Deirdre in the loft, getting herself dressed, but he didn’t go up to see her. He sat down on the love seat instead and closed his eyes.

He felt as if he were a single wagon, detached from a wagon train, and the Indians were attacking.





7


The call came in at 11:37, and Eve Wachinsky almost didn’t hear it. She had an uneasy feeling that she might have failed to hear a number of calls tonight. With Darla upstairs, sick as a dog, and nothing going on down here but a movie on HBO with the sound turned down too low to hear, the world could have come to an end without her noticing. Darla Barden was the woman whose house this was, and who owned the answering service that was run from this broad front room. The front room had once been a porch off the living room and had then been enclosed. Now it was an alcove off the living room, and the living room had no furniture in it. Eve rubbed at the side of her face and looked at the machine blinking in front of her. This room was full of machines: computers, telephones, fax machines, devices to contact beepers, radios turned to the police band. The movie on HBO was Wag the Dog, which was what everybody had been watching since August, when President Clinton had bombed the Sudan. Eve Wachinsky was not sure where the Sudan was—in Africa, she thought, but she wasn’t sure which part—but it bothered her to no end that her last name was so much like the last name of That Woman.

Now she rubbed the side of her face and stared at the blinking light on the machine in front of her. The light told her which account the call was related to, so that she knew whether to say “Good evening, Southbury Diagnostics” or “Good evening, Holden Tool and Die” when she picked up. Right now, it felt to her as if everything on her body itched. She’d been sitting in the same place so long, it seemed as if every part of her body had gone to sleep. She wanted to cry, too, that was the thing, as if she had nothing to do with her life anymore except break down.

She put the headset on, punched into the machine, and said, “Waterville Physicians Services. Can I help you?”

“Oh,” Rita Venotti said. “Eve, I’m sorry. I couldn’t remember the number I’m supposed to use, and I knew you’d be doing this one, so—”

“It’s all right,” Eve said. It was, too. She hated taking calls for doctors more than she hated anything. The patients were all crazy, and too many of them got abusive. “Bitch,” the women called her, when she would not give them their doctor’s home telephone numbers, or put them through to some doctor who was not on call. “Scum cunt” one of the men had said to her once, and she didn’t even remember why. The patients had terrible symptoms and waited for hours before calling in. They got addicted to their painkillers and then wanted more and more of them, from different doctors, called into different pharmacies. Eve rubbed the side of her face again, as if there was something there she needed to rub off.

“Eve?” Rita said.

“I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I’m a little tired tonight, I guess.”

“Could I talk to Darla?”

“She’s upstairs asleep. She’s got some kind of food poisoning, I think. Anyway, she was throwing up nonstop when I got here. And then she passed out.”

“Oh, dear. Well, I don’t suppose it matters. In fact, I know it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I need the road crew sent out to Four Corners. There’s a telephone pole down on Capernaum Road. You know that road?”

“No.”

“One of those dirt things that’s really a mess, but the thing is, it goes out to that little cemetery and a few other places, so people actually want to use it. And according to the guy who called me, the pole is leaning practically sideways.”

“I’d better call SNET, as well.”

“No, don’t do that. Let the town people do it when they get out. It’s so frustrating, really. I mean, Capernaum Road in the middle of the night. You’d think it could wait until morning. But I know what they’d say around here if I let it wait.”