A Song of Love on the Touchtone Phone
                            by Geoffrey Burling

     He didn't expect a response to his answer to the woman's ad.  As he debated with
himself whether to answer or not, he begrudged that it would be a good way to use at least
one of those cards he had bought a couple of years ago, but had never used.  Meeting
someone was such a distant hope he didn't concern himself about it.
     And if a response was to come, he didn't expect it to come so early.  He mailed his
answer almost a week after the ad appeared, and knew a full week would then pass before she
received it, and perhaps then a second week would pass before any answer.  She might
receive as many as a hundred letters and cards, so she would undoubtedly discard those
coming too late unread.  His phone rang the Sunday after he dropped his letter in the corner
mailbox.
     "Hello, is Gus there?" a woman asked.
     "Speaking."  He wondered what she was selling, and how long it would take to get her
off the phone.
     "Hi, this is Valerie.  You answered my ad in the newspaper."
     He took a moment to shift gears.  "So you're the Lady of Box 3325."
     "Yes."  She laughed.  "I thought I'd call and chat with you a while."
     "Sure."  He took the phone off the sideboard and walked across the living room of his
apartment to sit in the rocking chair, next to the window.
     "I really liked your card, and the joke about not liking to cook but liking to eat."
     He smiled, and realized that she couldn't hear a smile over the phone.  "I lied a little,"
he answered.  "I do like to cook breakfast."
     "You're not one of those insufferable morning people, are you?"
     "I don't think so.  Usually before work I only have time for some instant coffee and
toast.  It's only on the weekend when I can sleep in until ten and still have some time for
bacon and eggs."
     "So what is it you actually do?  You said in your letter--"  If there was a rustling of
paper, he did not hear it over the phone.  "--you said you worked downtown in a legal firm. 
Are you a lawyer?"
     He knew that question would inevitably come up, and wished he hadn't mentioned
work.  He admitted he was a paralegal at a certain legal partnership.
     "Aren't they the lawyers who're defending the woman in the Carson case?"
     He said yes.  The Carson case was civil suit with sensational details concerning a
rape.
     "Is Carson really as creepy as he seems on tv?"
     "That's been said of him," he answered, staring out the window.
     Carson -- the man in the case -- had never come to the office, but he had overheard
numerous stories of Carson's pathetic failure as a methamphetamine dealer.  A couple of the
secretaries had giggled at Carson, stating he was an example of the incompetence all men
were capable of.
     "You sound like you only know what you've heard on tv about the case," she said.
     Last week he had been walking across the bull pen when he saw through the glass
doors the woman in the case waiting in the lobby.  She had sat at the edge of the leather seat,
crumpling and uncrumpling a Kleenex, looking up at every man who walked past.  The
delicateness of her permed strawberry curls made her face seem even more plain.  He had
recalled then, and recalled now, how her attorney one morning stood in the doorway and told
his secretary loud enough for the entire office to hear that if it weren't for the publicity he
was getting, he wouldn't bother with the case at all.  As he looked at the woman, he was
siezed with an urge to walk to the lobby, put his arm around her, and try to comfort her; he
only stood there awkward and confused on his side of glass until he returned to his errand.
     "I'm just not interested in office gossip," he told her.  "The only time I have my
antennas up is when new hires, promotions, and lay offs are mentioned."
     "Damn," she said and then laughed.  "I was hoping to hear some inside gossip."
     "Sorry.  I just don't know any."
     He felt that he hadn't been doing a good job of talking to her.  Talking to strangers
made him uncomfortable with the phone, because he couldn't see or picture their faces and
know how they reacted to what he said.
     "So what do you do.  Valerie?"
     "So what do I do?  Well.  I work for the Portland Artists' Front."
     "You're an artist?"
     "God, no.  At times I'm convinced that they think I'm their mother.  I work the phones
in the office, review different grant proposals that come in before sending them on to
whatever public or private funding source, and I get to do the work needed to make various
shows work."
     She chuckled.  "Last year I had a doozy of a time at Artquake.  I had to set up the
booth, and the head of Artists' Front had talked a friend of his into creating a sculpture for the
booth.  I had never met the guy, and every time I called to check up on his progress, he tell
me sure, he's working on it, and after a while I started to wonder if the guy's a flake."
     He found himself listening to her dark, husky voice, and not to her words.  He
wondered what she looked like.
     "Then, Gus, then the night before Artquake starts, I see the guy at a party, and he's
there getting hammered on the keg of beer they had out.  So I cornered his roommate in the
kitchen and asked him if the guy is actually going to deliver, and he tells me the sculpture's
done.  'Oh yeah, he'll deliver.  No problem.'"
     He stared at the ironing waiting to be done at one end of his couch.  He imagined her
apartment simple in its furnishings, the light of the sky through her windows reflected on the
polished hardwood floors.
     "Friday morning Artquake starts," she continued, "and there's no sign of him.  Well, I
don't have the time to go chasing around town for him -- I have to put the booth up.  There's
a huge arch that goes in front of it and I'm putting it up by myself."
     He thought about the work that remained on his car; he had spent most of that Sunday
on his back tightening and untightening different bolts.  Until he finished his work, he was
limited to where Tri-Met would take him, and he was itching to get out of town -- even if to
cruise the countryside for an hour one Saturday afternoon.  He hoped no unexpected
rainshowers would mar the coming weekend.
     "I was wearing this huge tool belt, trying to man-handle the parts into place, and this
guy at the Oregon Symphony booth sees me and helps me by holding on the belt while I
shove the stuff into place."
     She paused for a moment, and he suspected that it was not for breath.  "Sound like
you were risking your neck there, Valerie," he said.
     "I thought so.  And I did it for two hours, Gus, until the sculptor guy shows up, hung
over, with his piece.  First off, I see he did nothing more than just throw it in the back of his
truck and drive it over.  I was pissed.  I had a lot riding on him delivering -- like my self-
respect."
     He made a vague noise to let her know he was listening.
     "So I went up to his truck and chewed him out.  How dare he show up late?  I was
already stressed out from wondering if he was going to deliver, and seeing that he just tossed
that piece of plaster into the back of his truck as if it was something he threw together that
morning was the last straw.  He didn't say anything, just listened to me yell at him, then took
the sculpture out of his truck and with the help of the Oregon Symphony guy put it into place
and left."
     "Hmm."
     "Some days later, Gus, I learn that the guy has a notoriously short temper, and that he
had been working sixteen hour days on that thing for six weeks straight.  That party I saw
him at was the first time he had been able to unwind.  So what happened was he overslept,
just had time to put the sculpture in the back of the truck but not pack it securely, and sped
off.  And the sculpture falls out."
     "Swell."
     She giggled as if about to break out laughing.  "The guy's boiling mad, all six-foot-
three and two hundred pounds looking for an excuse to kill someone, and little me ends up
intimidating him."
     There was another silence on the line.  He thought about how he had answered her
questions about the Carson case, and wished he had answered them differently.  He looked
from his window to the doorway to the kitchen.
     "So would you like to meet for coffee sometime this week?"
     He was surprised she asked, but without looking at his calendar he knew he was free
every evening that week.  "Sure.  Which night is best for you?"
     "Tuesday night would be best."
     Since she lived in Northwest Portland, they settled on a coffee shop on Northwest
23rd.
     "So how will I know you?" he asked.
     "I'm five foot six.  Mousy-brown hair in a shoulder length cut.  You'll love the way I
dress -- I have excellent taste."
     "Indeed?"
     "Indeed, Gus.  Anyway, it's still summer, so I think I'll treat you to one of my
miniskirts -- my legs are my best feature. I'll probably be reading my latest People magazine
while I wait for you."
     "And you, Gus?"
     "Well, I'm definitely not six three or two hundred pounds.  Five-nine, average height,
my hair's brown also, and I'll be wearing sunglasses."
     "What brand?"
     He paused a moment, not having expected this question.  "I don't remember.  I bought
them for ten bucks a couple years back, and I never saw another pair like them."
     "I think I can almost picture you."
     He tried to picture her.  Her voice was deeper than most of the women at the office,
and he had guessed from her voice that she was a brunette.  He wondered idly about her
breasts -- what shape they were, and even how one might feel under his hand -- stopping
when he remembered how foolish it was to speculate on so little evidence.
     "I'll be looking for you Tuesday -- six thirty then?"
     "Six-thirty Gus.  Take care."
     "And you take care, Valerie."
     "Why thank you Gus.  Goodby."
     "Goodby."
     After he returned the phone to its cradle, he realized he hadn't asked her for her
telephone number.  He couldn't think why he might need it -- he planned on showing up for
coffee -- and made a mental note to ask her for it Tuesday.
     When he got home Monday night, there was a message on his answering machine.
     "Hello, Gus?  This is Valerie.  I forgot that I have to teach a class this Tuesday night,
so I guess our coffee is out of the question.  I'm really sorry about it.  Call me, and maybe
we can reschedule.  Bye."
     As he listened to her message, he walked across the room and stared out the window. 
The evening light limned the hair of a girl in a denim skirt who walked down the sidewalk
opposite; he knew her from sight.  Once he had said good morning to her at the busstop, and
she ignored him; once he saw her arrive home from a date, and she emerged from a late-
model Acura Legend.
     He played the message again, and wondered what a second hearing would tell him. 
He knew the woman on the answering machine knew he did not have her number, and that
she had called him while he was a work so her words could be final.  He knew she was not
teaching a class.
     Tuesday he made no attempt to mask his mood at the office.  He slammed file
drawers, threw a couple of boxes full of archived cases across the storeroom, swore in a deep
blue streak at the copiers when they jammed. But he couldn't stay angry after he noticed a
double-breasted suit obviously circumambulating around the far side of the bull pen to avoid
him.
     No one mentioned his outbursts the next day at work, and the lawyer who had
carefully avoided him yesterday treated him today as he usually did, criticizing his ability to
understand vague instructions.  When five o'clock came, a point of time that the day seemed
to revolve around, he was standing on the sidewalk at the busstop.  He watched the young
secretaries in Reeboks, reading their thick supermarket novels or relaxing over a cigarette.   
     Watching them through the evening heat was as dull as it was familiar to him, so he
looked down at the cigarette butts trampled into the dirt around a struggling sapling.  Except
for the Carson case, August had becalmed the office; if he got his car running right with the
mail-order parts, he decided then to take some time off and drive down the Oregon coast.
     The profluence of cars in front of him slowed to a stop, and in the car opposite him, a
Camaro, a woman the age of his mother sat at the wheel.  She turned to the passenger seat,
and her hand moved in something on it -- a purse, or a datebook, or a phone -- and long after
having seen her he idly pondered the various alternatives.  He wondered where she had come
from, picturing her in an office behind a black marble desk, and he wondered where she was
going, picturing her a rest in a kitchen one hand perched on a spotless formica countertop
beside a pottery jar full of wooden spoons.
     Then she looked up and their eyes met.  He smiled.  She looked away, at the bumper
of the car in front of her.  The light changed, the cars began to move once again, and she
slipped back into the endless flow of countless things.
     As he took his simmering tv dinner from the oven, she called.  "Hi Gus.  This is
Valerie."
     "Hello," he replied.
     "I'm sorry about Tuesday night.  I hope I didn't hurt your feelings.  I'd like to make it
up to you."
     "How was your class?"
     "Well...  That's part of what I wanted to call you about.  After I talked to you, I had
another phone call, and, uh, it turned out that of all the nights that week, uh, Tuesday was the
only night he had available."  He waited.  "Please don't hang up, Gus!"
     Her plea took him by surprise; only later did he see where her fear came from. 
Because he was surprised, he didn't hang up.  
"I won't."
     "Thank you, Gus.  You don't know how embarrassed I am.  I didn't know how to call
you and reschedule, so I left that stupid message.  It wasn't the most graceful thing to do."
     "No, it wasn't."
     "I deserved that.  But would you give me another chance?  Say tomorrow night?  I'll
buy you a drink."
     "If you tell me your phone number."

*     *     *

     She stopped at the corner, her red pumps apart, her right hand on the belt of her black
miniskirt.  Wisps of her brown hair lay on one shoulder of her pastel pink silk blouse, its top
button undone.  The fading August light limned the black hose sheathing her graceful legs.
     They had just left Cinema 21, and now walked vaguely towards where his car was
parked.  He had wondered what they should do next.  "We could go back to my apartment,"
she suggested.
     "How about a drive?  I haven't had a chance to take my car out on the road and I'd
like to see if I finally got her running right."
     When she had called him earlier that evening, she had listened to him explain his
work on his car in silence.  He had stared at the sand dollars above his kitchen sink, and
thought of people who were no longer his friends, while he waited for her to say something.
     "Where to?" she muttered.
     "Oh ... let's try Skyline.  The curves there would be the best test for her."  He began
to walk again.  After a moment he heard her heels strike the concrete beside him, so he
added, "After a while, we could park."
     They had met in front of the movie theater half an hour after she had called him, so
she had not seen his car until he crossed the street and climbed into the white roadster.
     "This...is...yours?"
     "Unfortunately."  He adjusted his seat belt.  "The only car that eats money faster than
a British sportscar is an Italian sportscar.  I like the styling of the Fiat X 1/9, so I could have
easily made a worse mistake."
     She walked past the driver's door, around the hood, stopping to throw a bang behind
her left ear as she studied the grill, and over to the passenger side.  "This isn't an MG, is it?"
     "No -- a Triumph.  A TR6 to be exact.  Sometimes I wish I had just bought a
Mustang or a 240Z."
     "Gus -- this is sexy."  The way she ran her finger slowly over the top of the passenger
door reminded him of how she had run it over the top of the foot board the other night.  "I
have to tell you, Gus, the way you bitched earlier about all the money you spent on this car, I
imagined some old trashed-out heap like my ex-boyfriend's Dodge."
     "Did it have rust up to the windows, and burn a quart of oil a week?"
     "Well -- no.  I don't know much about cars.  But I was always embarrassed to be seen
anywhere in his junker.  I used to ask him to wash it or vacuum it, but he'd just say that there
was no point to it.  The car was just to get him from home to work and back -- nothing more. 
Meanwhile, Gus, your car is an investment.  It'll always be worth something."
     She raised one leg to crawl over the door as he had, reconsidered, and opened it
instead.  After placing one foot on the floorboard, she drew the rest of her body onto the
leather seat with a motion so fluid he could not help imagining that she spent weeks
practicing it.
     "When I think of my years with Scott, in that house on Woodward, I see that old
Dodge.  Maybe I would've liked that house a little more without that ugly car parked in front
all the time.  Maybe if Scott had mowed the lawn once in a while.  Maybe if he had bought
that living room table I saw in Sellwood instead of that dumb second-hand stereo that died
after three months."
     Her thumb thumped the inside of the open door on its own accord.  "Maybe if we had
something I could call a sex life."
     She paused to close the door.  Over the past three days he had become so exhausted
by her constant presence -- yet found himself lonely for her during the day at work -- that he
no longer wondered if he should interrupt her or allow her to unburden herself.  He floated
along the profluence of her words, drawn deeper in the dream that had risen around him.
     "Craig.  I used to go over there and talk to him while he did his sketching, just to get
out of that depressing house.  Scott probably thought we had an affair going on, but he never
mentioned it.  Besides, Craig was gay.  Anyway, Craig mentioned one day that Artists' Front
needed a secretary and suggested that I apply.  I had been doing temp work off and on for a
couple years, so a steady job sounded inviting.  After surviving three months at the Front, I
realized I had a life, and moved out."
     "Your neighbor?"
     She had been rocking the wooden knob of the gear shift, her hand close to his thigh,
and now released it.
     "Craig.  I used to go over there and talk to him while he did his sketching, just to get
out of that depressing house.  Scott probably thought we had an affair going on, but he never
mentioned it.  Besides, Craig was gay.  Anyway, Craig mentioned one day that Artists' Front
needed a secretary and suggested that I apply.  I had been doing temp work off and on for a
couple years, so a steady job sounded inviting.  After surviving three months at the Front, I
realized I had a life, and moved out."
     "So you told me the other night."
     "I'm sorry that I repeat myself, Gus."  She paused, and stared at the sun visor.  "I
know I go on, but I get angry when I think how I wasted three years living with that nerd. 
And he never understood why I got angry.  Even at the end, when Craig and I were hauling
stuff out of the house on Woodward."
     He watched her put her seat belt on,and reflected that one of his lesser hopes had been
realized: to go on a date with a girl who not only wore a miniskirt and heels, but looked good
in them.
     "You never told me if you liked my legs," she said, eyeing him eye her.
     "Didn't I?"  He raised his eyes to hers.  "I thought I had."
     "Well, you didn't."  She looked away, hiding any smile that might be on her face.
     "I'm sorry, Valerie.  You have nice legs, and I should have mentioned that much
earlier.  I like them a great deal."
     He expected her to say "it's about time you told me those things," but she didn't.  She
sat unusually still.  He inserted the key into the ignition, but ran a finger over the wooden
steering wheel while he waited for her to speak.  At last she said, "You wouldn't want me to
give up my cat for you, would you?"
     He couldn't remember if he even glimpsed the animal when he was at her apartment
the other night.  "I don't see why I'd demand that.  You talk about her as if she were your
child.  You've had her since that house on Woodward."  He looked at her; she was still
looking away.  "What's this all about?"
     "Talking about Scott got me thinking.  Before I moved out he--  Oh, screw it."  She
looked at him and forced a smile.  "Skyline, then?"
     After starting the engine, the Triumph seemed to glide from the curb.  A flick of the
wheel onto 21st, a long wait at the stoplight at Burnside, then after patiently threading
through traffic he opened the throttle at the foot of Washington Park.
     The darkening canyon's walls echoed the machine's engine, a dark growl
counterpointed by the rush of the passing closed passenger cars.  She leaned back in the seat,
having secured her long hair with a rubber band from her purse.
     "Man, Gus, I've always dreamed of this.  This is truly sexy."
     He wondered for a moment if he should ask her to shake her hair loose in the wind. 
Part of him wanted it, the part that had made him buy a roadster.
     "I've had to turn down requests by the lawyers to borrow her," he shouted.  He
downshifted as the road twisted.  "All I had to do is make a big deal of the problems with the
tranny, and they'd stop asking."
     He felt good confiding his dodge in her.  He had grown tired of the masks he wore at
work, and around the friends from college he saw from time to time.  Sometimes when he
stood up to stretch while wrestling a frozen nut loose or working a stubborn bolt into place,
he would wonder if he had a life outside of his car.  He hoped he would remember other
things he could confide in her.
     "The car's working okay now, isn't it?" she asked.
     They emerged from the tunnel at the cemetery at the top of the hill, and the roar
dimmed.  He shifted back into fourth.  "Sounds like it."
     He allowed himself to relax, knowing that his car would not disappoint him for now. 
He had an attractive woman by his side, a fast car with plenty of gas, and -- for the moment -
- plenty of open road.  He followed the right lane onto Skyline, allowed the rise to slow the
car into the curve, then raced into the down slope so he could practice his double-clutching at
the curve.  He was content with how his machine handled, when he notice his girlfriend of
three days was saying something.
     "I couldn't hear you back there," he said when he stopped at the light below Skyline
Burger.
     "I said, I've never been laid in a British sportscar."
     He almost laughed.  He had known her for less than a week and already he could
predict her every move.  "Everything comes to she who waits."
     "You've been an eager little boy so far."
     "Wouldn't you rather discuss the movie?" he asked, hiding his smile.  "I thought there
was some brilliant cinematography."
     "Don't you think I'm cute?"
     Her sudden shift in tone surprised him.  He did not answer until they had passed the
next intersection, and had swept through several curves.  "I find you very attractive.  Sorry,
Valerie, I'm still a bit disoriented from last few nights."
     "So why do I always have to make the first move?"
     They passed another cemetery and entered a gradual bend.  He shed speed so the wind
would not drown out his answer.  "I was planning to stop at a certain place up ahead."
     The road raised and lowered, dipping down to cross Germantown road, then climbed
upwards again.  It passed a number of houses, and divided the park-like meadows between
the Douglas Firs, continuing deeper into an increasingly rural landscape with barns and
parked full-sized trucks.  Past where Skyline crossed Cornelius Pass Road, he slowed by
several shoulders, but the lights of distant houses made him reconsider each place until he
reached a bend just past a green milepost.  The roadster bumped over the gravel until it came
to a stop, and he put in the parking brake.
     "Here?" she said.
     "You wanted to pull off the road."  He stroked her knee beneath the nylon knit.
     "Then let's get down to business."
     He turned off the engine.  "Only if you find a parking brake in your back erotic."
     They took care to avoid the parking brake, at first reaching over it to embrace, to kiss,
then to touch, to unbutton, to caress.  She felt warm in his hands like oil after it is drained
from an engine, and she felt solid like dry land to a sailor too long at sea.  He could not keep
from his mind their first date, the awkwardness he had sensed while they talked at the bar,
where high schools and work places, movies and events from the evening news substituted for
other topics.  "You have to make your dreams real," she said, her fingers around an empty
hurricane glass.
     Through drinks and dinner they talked small talk while the other matters lurked
beneath the surface like sea-going creatures from myth.  They had walked from downtown to
her apartment in Northwest, laughing about songs they had liked in the Seventies and now
were embarrassed to say so, when they wanted to laugh at what lurked beneath the surface.
     "You have to make your dream real," she had said.
     At last, almost midnight in her apartment, only half a bottle of wine left, the light in
her living room dimming as sunlight does when one goes deeper into the sea, these other
matters at last surfaced -- as they had now -- and with a passion he believed people neither
knew, or might know of, they made love, as they did now.
     Or tried to.  In fifteen minutes' time two cars passed, their headlights pornographic on
the woman lying on the back of the Triumph, her blouse unbuttoned, on the man sprawled
above her, his jeans and belt undone.  The second car slowed, and he rose from his love,
passion turned to anger, his thoughts turned to the tire iron behind the driver's seat.
     "Gus."
     "What?"
     "It's -- it's not right."
     He looked at her.  She smiled an apology, and he knew better than to take offense. 
Their other nights of lovemaking had an incompleteness also.  Afterwards, thinking about
this, he recalled a summer day when he was eleven, when his mother took him to a public
pool to swim, and he had tried to touch the bottom of the deep end.  Inches from the tile, he
could hold his breath no longer, and he had fled back to the surface.  He was puzzled why
this memory came to him, since later in that eleventh summer he achieved that goal;
something about the weight of the water and the urgency to freely breathe must have
unlocked a primal, instinctual emotion which still stalked him today.
     He lifted himself off of her, paused for a moment on the other side of the gas cap to
stare at the pink-orange lights in the valley below, then after zipping his jeans and buckling
his belt, threaded his legs under the steering wheel and sat down in the driver's seat.
     "Well, it was a good idea, Valerie," he said, his eyes on the tachometer.  "Maybe we
shouldn't be out in the open like this.  Should I take us off Skyline, maybe down that road
over there?"
     A car swept past them, leaving the red glare of its tail lights behind with them.
     "No.  It's okay.  Let's just sit here a while."
     She had now crawled down into the passenger's seat.
     They stared wordlessly up the road, at the line of Douglas Firs on the opposite slope. 
A lone star flickered in the wind, and he wondered if it was Venus.  His astronomy was not
strong.
     "I think I finally got all the bugs out of the car," he said.  He could hear the branches
of the douglas firs brushing each other in the night.  "I could drive this car down to the
beach."  Having said this, he felt something more needed to be said, and turned to her.
     She was looking at her hands, running her index finger over the ridges in the back of
her left hand.  Although the darkness stil had a transparent quality, he could not be sure she
was not shivering.  He thought of how deep he had been into his own, inexpressible
memories of frustration, airlessness, and panic, and recognized that she now was submerged
in her own sea of inexpressible thoughts.
     "Would you like to do that?" he asked.  "Say, next weekend?"
     "That might be pleasant," she said, her voice as opaque as if he heard it over a touch-
tone phone.

*     *     *

     Tuesday he called the woman who had told him the previous week, "I don't think it'd
be good for us to see each other any more."
     He knew that after four rings her answering machine would come on, and he planned
on hanging up then.  But she answered on the second ring.  "Hello?"
     "Hello, Valerie?  This is Gus.  How're doing?
     "I'm good.  How are you?"
     "I'm okay."
     He didn't feel comfortable beginning with the point of his phone call.  He could ask
her about the man she had gone out with that previous Tuesday in August, instead of meeting
him for coffee.  He could ask if another man had come into her life; she had answered the
phone promptly.  But he knew he would never ask those questions.
     "I saw an ad for a sale of men's jackets at Mario's and thought you might like to help
me select one."
     "I don't know, she answered.  Her words came slowly; he tried to understand why.
     A memory appeared in his head.  When he was ten, he had seen phone numbers
written on the walls of the public bathrooms at Cannon Beach, and had told his father he
wanted to call them.  He wished he hadn't thought about that now.
     "It was just a thought," he said.  "I know you have good taste in things--"
     "I have great taste."
     "--and I felt that anything you approved of couldn't be a bad buy."
     The subject of her taste inthings had been one of their jokes, and he was optimistic
that it had come up.  He wanted to be friends with her.  Their parting had been as sudden as
an amputation, and he still felt attached to her.
     He thought he heard her shift in her chair.  "I don't know.  It might not be a good
idea."
     He took his time to think of an answer.  "Are you worried that I might hold you
responsible if I don't like the jacket you suggest?"
     "No.  It's not that..."
     "I only wanted your opinion," he said.  "It's my decision to make, Valerie."
     "No, Gus.  It's not--"
     "You couldn't make me do anything I didn't want, so you aren't responsible -- not at
all.  For the purchase."
     "I'm not talking about that."
     "Then what are you taling about?"
     "You know, Gus."
     He didn't know.  He thought if he could see her face -- or even her hands -- he might
be able to know.
     There was a silence on the phone between them.  He needed to fill it, and found
something to say.
     "Do you remember our first date?"
     "Of course.  Thatr was only a couple of months ago."
     "I wonder if we remember it the same way."
     She didn't say, "Of course."  She said, "What do you mean?"
     "For example, you didn't look like how I imagined you."
     "How did you imagine me to look, Gus?"
     He realized that he should have introduced this topic in another way, after all the
experience he had with her.  "Different."
     "I see."
     "What I meant was--"
     "No, Gus.  You don't have to say.  I understand."
     He didn't think so.  When they at last met, she had told him she would be wearing
jeans and a denim jacket.  What she didn't tell him was she would also be wearing an off-
white silk dress blouse and red pumps.  She also told him later that night in bed that her very
small breasts didn't bother her, and if they bothered him it was something would would have
to live with.
     Another silence, a very long silence.  Talking about their first date had been the wrong
thing to say,but now he saw that anything would have been the wrong thing to say.  He could
have never introduced the business of his call, unless he had mentioned it at the beginning. 
Fixing problems on his car was much easier: a process of trial and error, the machine never
took offense at his prior mistakes, and if he ran into a dead-end, he could stop, walk away for
a while, then start in refreshed and usually solve the problem.  One could not stop in the
middle of a phone call.
     He said, "I guess you would be busy anyway on Saturday."
     "I would be, Gus.  I really am, too.  I'm sorry."
     "Well, uh, okay.  I hope I didn't interrupt anything."
     "Gus, you --"  He waited for her to recover.  "No..  No, Gus, you didn't interrupt
anything."
     More silence passed until she said, "Take care, Gus."
     "And you take care, Valerie."
     "Goodby."
     "Goodby."
     After he put the phone back on its cradle, he thought about the first time she had
come to his apartment. One weekend in college, he had gone to the beach with a girl he had
known, and had collected the sand dollars in the cold January morning as they were
clamming.  She had been delighted at seeing so many whole sand dollars, so he gave her one. 
He had never gotten into bed with the girl from college, a fact he recalled only after he had
given that one sand dollar away. 
     When she broke up with him, she gave him a box of things he had left at her
apartment.  He went through the box the next day, and in it was a couple of shirts,
underwears, a toothbrush, and the sand dollar.  He had forgotten all about the shell until he
saw it.  He had called her that evening to ask her why she had given it back.

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