telephone

THE WELL MEANING TELEPHONE

Dominic Ambrose

It was Darko Brkvic's expressed desire, oft repeated both in person and over the telephone to Beverly, the Car Service dispatcher, that he not be called for pick ups during his siesta, which he scheduled from two to four in the afternoon, just as he had always done in his own country. However, considering the single, forty-ish lady's strange and, Darko might add, highly emotional contrariness to any of Darko's expressed desires, it was no surprise to him that she would somehow be obliged to ignore this particular request so often.

Darko would come home from the noon rush of fares and lay down precisely at 2:10 P.M. hoping fervently for silence. His standard issue Western Bell telephone sat on the nightstand right beside his pillow and every day he would reposition the clumsy, overweight apparatus so that its dial was looking wide eyed right into his face, the two ends of its receiver drooping down its sides like silly, bulbous ears on a cartoon dog. It was the last thing he would see before closing his eyes.

And the first thing he would hear before opening them again. Beverly would manage to have an emergency pick up for him two or three times a week between the hours of two ten and four. The scenario was as inevitable as it was unchanging. Beverly would dial his number jerkily with her thumbnail, the only one of her two-toned daggerlike fingernails strong enough to drag the plastic rotary of her phone accurately around the dial. Then she would arch her carefully drawn brown reproduction eyebrows as she listened to the rings, as she imagined the libidinous foreigner awakening moistly from his folklore dreams.

On Darko's end the phone would ring nervously, its metallic trill doubled alarmingly by the kitchen extension. Darko would open his dark eyes and glare bare inches into the innocent face of the Western Bell telephone and mutter those ugly words, "I hate this phone!"

At first the phone ignored him. But that unmitigated hostility expressed several times a week from such close proximity, rendered all the more ominous by his Balkan accent, redolent with vendetta and centuries of struggle; the sheer weight of it began to slowly crush the feelings of this delicate, sensitive instrument. The phone wondered sadly why it was being drawn into this personal struggle between the unmarried lady and the alien driver. This was unfair and cruel, considering the long years of unfailing service that the phone had performed and had every intention of continuing to perform in the future.

Months went by and a year went by and the routine never changed. Every word was predictable, including the cruelest ones of all, "I HATE THIS PHONE!" The telephone's self-esteem had already been seriously eroded in recent years by the appearance of a plethora of sophisticated and glitzy telecommunications equipment in the telephone network. Darko's phone would hardly ever find itself connected with a fellow model, for nowadays it was a rarity indeed to interface with anything so mundane as a fat, plastic Western Bell Desk Phone. On bad days the phone would feel acute pangs of embarrassing inadequacy just in making the simplest over the wires contact.

"Yeah," Darko sputtered half asleep into the receiver.

"Yeah?" Beverly repeated dryly, obviously trying to communicate something. "I hate t' interrupt y' beauty sleep, Darko, but I got a call and I got nobody else disposable right now."

"It's the ring. It's like knife. I jump," he responded, liquefying the words for her one by one with a fat, moist tongue.

Beverly screwed up her face into the receiver, imagining the proximity of that tongue; it sounded like he was licking the disgusting thing or something. "What the heck are you talkin' about, Dark-o?" But business couldn't wait for a response, "It's on Bay Ridge Avenue and Third. I said you'd be there in 10 minutes."

So that was it, thought the phone. It's ring, "like knife", was causing the negative reaction in Darko. We never hear our own voices as others hear them, reflected the phone gloomily. Could it be that its own businesslike warble was not nearly as full-bodied and resonant as it thought? No one had ever complained before, back in the good old days when the only real competition was the effeminate toot-toot of European instruments echoing faintly over crackling undersea cables. It thought about all of the new sounds it was hearing over the wires, all those mindless, birdy chirps and tweets. Could it be that they were making the Desk Phone sound like a blaring, shrill banshee in comparison?

Darko's phone began a ruthless self examination. It had always been especially proud of the scrupulous objectivity of its ring. In no way had the phone ever hinted at the nature of an incoming call, announcing friend and foe alike with the same serviceable, albeit high pitched treble. Perhaps Darko would prefer a bit more personality in each audio signal?

During periods of inactivity the phone began softly experimenting with different sounds, practicing chirps and spurty little burps. Sometimes the car service driver would be right there, on his pillow, eyes squinting at the tinkly phone. At the first tentative little peep he would strangle hold grab the receiver, shout "Hello? Hello!" into the mouthpiece and then snarl at the dial tone. The phone cringed. As much as it enjoyed the manly grasp of his warm, hairy paw, these rough handlings were impossible to savor, knowing that in a moment he would be slamming the receiver ferociously back onto its stoic, solid cradle. Eventually the phone learned to rehearse sounds only when Darko was at work.

After many trials, though, the phone did finally come up with a new, sympathetic ring. It was so proud of itself that it could hardly wait to show it off to the resident alien driver. Not being terribly sophisticated about human relations, it figured that the new, soft and sexy sound would be especially appropriate for Beverly's calls and it decided to try it out one day during a real siesta call.

"Did this phone sound funny when it ringed?" Darko asked.

"Waddaya mean, funny?" Beverly shot back.

"Like, weaker, like."

"Nah, y' dreamin' Burkovich," she said, as she tried not to consider the sensuality of those dreams. She could do that later.

That was the first time she had called him by his last name. He was flattered that she knew it and had figured out some kind of half ass way to pronounce it.

"You right, I guess. Look at me, I even dream about this stoopit phone. Like it's soundin' funny. Like a woman cryin'."

"Uh!" Beverly emitted unintentionally. "Somethin' muss be wrong with it," she added quickly.

A definite setback, the phone thought with dismay. But the persevering telephone didn't give up, and in the following days it came up with some other manipulations of its timbre, as much as its mechanical parts would allow. However, this only confused Darko even more.

"It's slow-like now, and low. Like a happy cat with a lot of spit in its throat."

"Fer cryin' out loud, Berkowitz, quit talkin' about your phone!" Beverly said over the wire.

"I mean it!"

"Well then, fiddle with the little thing," she advised, getting the double entendre too late. "You know," she added self consciously, "the thing on the bottom!" Oh no, she thought, that just made the image worse.

"What are you talkin' about, fiddle with the thing on the bottom?" Darko said grouchily, rising up from the pillow and scratching his crotch.

"The plastic wheel thingy on the bottom. It relegates the loudness."

Darko took his hand away from his balls and fiddled with the thing on the bottom. This made the phone queasy, and his now habitual shaking of the whole apparatus made it positively sick. It would have to remember not to repeat this particular purr. The phone's attempts to find a new sound became desperate. Each ring was different from the one before, as the phone knocked about in uncertainty and intense desire to communicate. But Darko saw these pathetic attempts as signs of progressive degradation and imminent failure. They were just the excuse he needed to finally retire the old clunker in favor of something more modern.

On Monday, August 12th, Darko Brkvic bought a sleek, new apparatus, imported from Taiwan and available exclusively at Mt. Olympus Electronics over on Fort Hamilton Parkway. He couldn't wait till he got home and so he took it out of the box right there in the Car Service storefront when he dropped off his receipts.

"Haddaya like it?" he said proudly to Beverly.

"Comin' up in the world, huh?" she said, trying to mask her approval as her eyes traveled up from the sleek, smooth instrument, up along the trail of straining buttons of his tight shiny shirt, quickly hopping the little patch of skinny black hairs that arched about above the last button as though gathered in a vase, up past the stubble printed neck and chin and then only as far as the mustache atop his full, dark lips.

Darko watched appreciatively as her carefully painted eyes ascended his shirtfront. Her eyes had a certain Middle Eastern quality today, they were really attractive. "Mmmmmmm, you like it?" he said slowly, lips grinning and unseen eyes atwinkle.

Beverly's phone rang. "Very nice. I oughta get one just like it," she said in a rush as she picked up. “Car service!” she shouted rudely into the receiver. In a moment Darko was gone.

For some it was a pleasant evening indeed, but for others it was the cruel end of an illusion. The Western Bell Rotary Desk Phone learned its bitterest, and final lesson that evening, from the dark depths of the kitchen garbage can: no matter how capable human beings are of adapting to the use of intricate communications networks, they remain, as ever, totally impossible to communicate with.

THE END