John Lutz - Nightlines

"I think we're sure," Jeanette said, decisive as always. "He killed her and he killed those other women, and probably he killed more women he met over the lines."

"All right," Nudger conceded, "we're sure. Sure enough, anyway. What we're trying to do now is determine if we're right."

"Agreed," she said, obviously not meaning it. Nudger wondered if she had doubted herself even once since she had popped from the womb.

"Your phone conversations will require some convincing acting," he said.

"Don't worry, my heart will be in it." She seemed to turn her attention inward, as if seeking pain, like a method actor gearing up for a role. "Do you think this plan will produce results?"

"It might, if we have enough patience."

"Ever seen a cat poised patiently watching a mouse hole?" Jeanette asked.

"Only in a cartoon."

"Well, that's how patient I am. Like that cat." There was nothing cartoonlike about the intensity in her voice. Or in her eyes.

After she'd left with a list of phone company service- line numbers, Nudger sat for a long time at his desk, chewing antacid tablets and watching the office darken as the evening sun forsook the city.

He thought that if he were a mouse he wouldn't go outside his door.

Nudger's stomach lay weighty and solid as cement just beneath his rib cage. He was at his desk in his dim office, watching the big hand of the clock with the intentness of a school kid eager for the bell. The telephone receiver was jammed against his ear and he could hear his own pulse pounding on the line, merged with the faint hissings and distant clickings of the phone company's electronic monolith. It was as if the phone were draining him of something that it needed in order for its infinitely complex whole to exist and disseminate information and gossip and dispatch monthly bills.

He'd been on the line for almost an hour, discouraging hopeful romantics and listening to outpourings of desperation and sometimes madness. And waiting. It was thirty-five minutes past midnight.

At sixteen minutes to one, she was there. Nudger recognized her beaten, tenuous voice immediately as she asked if anyone was on the line.

"I'm here," he said. "I've been waiting for you."

"Were you worried about me again?"

"Yes."

"But you don't even know me."

"I was worried about you."

She let go of the subject. Nudger hoped she believed him. "It's odd," she told him, faintly amused through her despondency, "but I found myself actually looking forward to hearing your gorilla jokes."

"Not so odd," Nudger said. "Millions of people stay alive for nothing more intriguing than their golf games."

"How drab."

"Sub-par to you but important to them. It's a subjective thing."

"Okay, let's have it," she said wearily. "This gorilla walks into a bar and…"

"Exactly!" Nudger said with enthusiasm. "But stop me if you've-"

"Please!"

"Okay, this gorilla walks into this bar where there's nobody but the bartender, polishing glasses. So the guy looks up and is astounded to see a gorilla, more astounded when the gorilla saunters over and sits on a bar stool."

"I'm properly astounded. Get on with it."

"The bartender goes to the owner in the back room and says, 'A huge gorilla just walked in and sat at the bar. What do I do now?' 'So ask him what he's drinking,' the owner says."

"So the bartender goes back…"

"Right, the bartender goes back and says-"

" 'What'll you have?' "

"Very good. And the gorilla growls, 'Beer.' The bartender checks with the owner, who says, 'Well, give him a beer.' When the bartender sets the mug on the bar, the gorilla hands him a ten-dollar bill. So the bartender goes back to the owner and says in a shocked voice, 'That gorilla gave me a ten. What do I do?' 'Gorillas aren't very smart,' the owner says, 'so give him back a dollar for change.' The bartender does that and gets by with it, and starts polishing glasses again and is getting very nervous because the gorilla just sits there silently, sipping beer and staring straight ahead. Finally the bartender leans an elbow on the bar, to look casual, and says in a shaky voice just to make conversation and ease the tension, 'You know, we don't get many gorillas in here.' "

"And the gorilla says?"

" 'I guess not, at nine dollars a beer.' "

Nudger waited. Static on the line, no laughter. But then he hadn't really expected any.

"Is that the end?" she asked finally.

"Uh, yeah. It's one of those 'all hell must have broken loose' jokes. You know the type. Based on the listener's imagination. Rooted in the future."

"Very apropos, not very funny."

"More interesting than a golf game."

"I'm not so sure."

"How do you feel tonight?" Nudger asked. "About the future?"

"Not much different."

"But different?"

"Jesus, I don't know. You didn't save my life with that gorilla joke."

"I know more of them."

"Don't threaten me." Her voice became calmer, more serious. "I did want to talk with you again. I don't know why, except that for some reason you seemed…"

"To understand?"

"No, not that. You seemed to care, even though we're strangers."

Nudger looked at the blackness outside his window. "Sometimes two strangers can talk for a few minutes and then not be strangers. A rapport is there that springs from something deeper than they know, like the confluence of rivers underground."

"Very eloquent. Probably nonsense."

"If you took your life, I'd care a great deal. Do you believe that?"

"I'm not sure. I seem to believe it, despite myself."

"What's your name?" Nudger asked. "What's your conventional phone number?"

"No!" she blurted, almost shouted the word.

Too fast, Nudger warned himself, too fast. "Take it easy," he said gently. "I'll give you my name. It's Nudger, Alo Nudger. Short for Aloysius. Everyone just calls me Nudger."

"I never met anyone actually named Aloysius. I'm sorry for you."

"Will you tell me your first name?" He felt like a teenager coaxing a reluctant sophomore virgin.

"It's Claudia," she said. She spoke the name as if she disliked it.

"Would you like to have my phone number, Claudia? In case you want to get in touch with me during the day."

"No."

"Can we talk again this way, then? I'll tell you more gorilla jokes."

"We can talk again only if you do not tell me more gorilla jokes."

"That seems unreasonable."

"Most of the good things in life are unreasonable."

Nudger had never really thought about that. It might be true. "Will you tell me more about yourself, Claudia?"

"No."

"That leaves me as the subject of conversation. I'm quite handsome, with a large disposable income, and enough suffering in my past to be graced with wisdom and nobility."

"Bullshit."

"That, too."

"Your suffering is going on right now, only you seem to have learned to live with it, almost to regard it as an unwelcome old acquaintance that's moved in with you and won't go away. You've come to an accommodation. Maybe that's what there is about you that is more interesting than your gorilla jokes, so-called."

Nudger smiled slightly and licked his lips, tasting the salt of his perspiration. This wasn't suicide talk at all. "You're a damned good psychoanalyst," he said.

"I've learned from experts."

"Why don't you tell me-"

"Tomorrow, Nudger."

"-at least some trivial thing about yourself?"

But she had hung up. The vacated line sighed in Nudger's ear like the plaintive echoes of a vast lifeless ocean heard in a seashell. It was a lonely sound, a residue of pain.

He replaced the receiver in its cradle and leaned back in his swivel chair. He was pleased. Claudia was her name and for the moment she was no longer bent on suicide. That was progress. Gorilla jokes seldom failed altogether.