There is a telephone in the bathroom. We installed one here just as we’d installed one in every possible room: no need to run for a ringing phone, to leave our sequestered spaces, to cross paths with one another. We were generous with phone hookups and door locks. We live in a large space bisected by individual partitions.
I pick up the receiver. It is not pink to match the toilet or green to pair with the tile. It is beige, and the ordinary familiarity of that color comforts me.
I call my grandfather in Los Angeles. Bernie hasn’t smoked since my grandmother died of emphysema complications two years earlier, so that couldn’t be the sound of him lighting up as I fill him in. Maybe it’s him spreading Smart Beat butter on a low-carb piece of toast. “This is that Bill Solomon?”
“Sullivan. Bill Sullivan.”
“And you smashed his cat?”
“His pig.”
“He has a pig living in the house?”
I didn’t think Bernie lost his hearing. “A fake pig. It had money in it.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
I hear a trilling on the other end of the door: Nails is knocking with her acrylics. My heartbeat starts preparing for the three-minute mile. “She says I have until noon to get out.”
“Or what? Her friend Solomon will drool on you for a while?”
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