By
the time he comprehended himself to be speaking on the telephone he was already
within the resultant conversation.
cog:
I think she might be sleeping, if you hang on a second I’ll just go and check.
Hang on.
deleted
name: Tell her it’s important. Tell her it’s deleted name.
cog:
Okay, hang on a second.
A
clatter and the nurse’s muffled profanity accompanied her dropped telephone; deleted
name winced for both reasons. He heard the receiver carefully positioned
and her fading footsteps, and strained then to hear past his hope of other feet
coming cold across the hospital floor.
The
refilled shotglass sat upon the ruled and margined page of notes and in the
continuing silence he stared down directly upon those of his words arbitrarily
refracted through the fluid’s bright liquid amber: “dust testament”
ache1:
Hello?
deleted
name: Hello.
ache1:
Hello.
Pause.
deleted
name: I’m sorry.
Here
between them the telephone’s abstract medium did not lend itself to an already
difficult dialogue, long pauses hinting at the running through of words before
their giving them voice, which now came simultaneous.
deleted
name: Are you alright?
ache1:
What did I do?
deleted
name: I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
He
would put anything into the empty static that followed.
deleted
name: Is the doll alright? I told them not to touch your doll.
ache1
(with weak sarcasm): Thank you. Yes, E.T. is fine. Now. Someone repaired
him for me. He’s fine...
Something
in this strength of tone absolved him of that initial impetus to call and beg
her forgiveness, a certain quality of character that suggested with this now
behind them and, he hoped, to be forgotten, life would indeed go on as it had
and so he was not surprised to hear her say
ache1:
Nothing changes.
deleted
name: Nothing changes... no. No.
ache1:
I have to go now, I’m going back to my bed.
deleted
name: I’m sorry, again.
The
dead tone burned itself in to his hearing and still he stared at the words
inside the whiskey, the paper’s lined fibres tattooed deep with black ink: “dust testament”
