Stephen Dixon: Letters to Kevin

Dear Kevin: I’m writing this letter only because something keeps happening to stop me from speaking to you on the phone. First of all, I thought of calling you from my apartment in New York City, but I don’t have a phone. So I picked up my bed pillow, held it to my mouth and said “Hello, Operator? I’d like to place a call to a Kevin Wafer in Palo Alto, California.” Nobody answered, so I picked up my alarm clock and shook it to get it ticking again. Then I pulled out the alarm switch to make sure the clock would ring when the call was made to you and said to the clock’s face “Operator, I’d like to place a person-to-person call to California.” I of course knew I needed a real phone to make along distance call. But I thought using my clock or pillow would be a much cheaper way. I remembered that the family who lives across the street from me has a phone. Both our apartments are on the fifth floor of five-story buildings, and almost every time I looked out my window to see how the weather was, someone in that family was on the phone. So I yelled across the street “Hey, can you call a number for me in California and ask Kevin Wafer there to speak extra loud into his phone so I can hear him from across the street? Then I’ll speak extra loud from here so he can hear me through your phone.” A young girl on the phone at the time waved for me to shut up so she could finish her call. Iyelled across the street “But my callis kind of important also, so could you please hurry up with yours?” She put her hand over her free ear as if she couldn’t hear the person she was speaking with on the phone because I was yelling too loud at her from across the street. I waited till she hung up. Then I yelled the Palo Alto number I wanted her to dial. She pulled down the window shade. Since then I haven’t seen anyone on that phone whenever I look outside to see how the weather is, as nobody’s let the shade up since she pulled it down. I next tapped a message on the floor to the man who lives below me. The message went: dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. That’s SOS in Morse code, even if the message I wanted to tap was “Could you please dial this number for me and ask for Kevin? When he gets on the phone and you tell him that you’re calling for me and ask how he is, could you then tap on your ceiling in Morse code what he said? Then I’ll tap back my answer to him and you can tell him in plain English again what I just tapped out, and so on.” But all I kept tapping to the apartment below was SOS… SOS… SOS, as that’s the only message in Morse I know. After a half hour of tapping these SOS’s without getting an answer from you from this man, the police knocked on my door and asked if anything was wrong. “No, why?” “Because the guy in the apartment below yours has been getting SOS distress signals from you for the last half hour.” “I wasn’t sending him an SOS to get help for me. Just a message to call Kevin Wafer in California.” “From now on would you mind tapping this message on your own ceiling?” “There’s nothing to tap to above my ceiling except the roof.” “Then tap your fingers nervously on a tabletop if you have to tap, but no more to the man downstairs,” and they went away. So I gave up trying to call you through the man below, who may or may not have a telephone, but who certainly doesn’t know anything more in Morse code but SOS.

I then wrote a letter to my uncle in Canton, China. The letter read: “Dear Uncle. Please call Kevin Wafer for me at this number. Hold a conversation with him with the questions I’ve written on the other side of this page. Then write back and tell me what he said. If the other side of this page didn’t come with this letter, ask Kevin anything you want and write me your questions to him and his answers. Your nephew, Rudy.”

I don’t know if there’s any phone connection between Canton and Palo Alto. I did read in a newspaper that Shinking, a small city a few hundred miles from Canton, will only have phone service with Palo Alto and no other place in America, as Palo Alto is the sister city of Shinking. I suppose most sisters like to continue to talk to each other once they get older and move away from one another, which is fortunate for me as my uncle can fly to Shinking and call you from there. Anyway, if you do get a call from my uncle in China, ask him if he got my letter.

I then went to the street corner where there’s a public phone booth, put a coin in the slot and got no dial tone or my coin back. Iput another coin in, dialed Operator and got Information. I asked Information how I can get Operator. She said “Put another coin in and dial Operator.”

I put a third coin in, dialed Operator and asked her to return my first two coins and then dial your number for me.

“Yes sir,” she said, and several hundred dollars in coins poured out of the coin return and covered me and the phone and then filled up the entire booth. By the time I dug myself out, some people passing by had taken all the coins, the phone booth and then the entire corner. What I learned from this incident was:

1) Before you ask Operator for your coins back, make sure you lost them.

2) If you did lose your coins, make sure you lost them in the phone.

3) Before you ask Operator for the coins you’re now sure you lost in the phone, shake the phone first to make sure it isn’t filled to the slots with coins.

4) If the operator insists on returning your lost coins before you’ve shaken the phone, tell her to give you thirty seconds to get out of the booth before she pushes the button that releases the coins.

5) If she does push the button before you get away in time, dig yourself out quicker if you want to make a phone call from the same telephone all the coins just poured out of.

I went to the phone booth on the opposite corner and got the operator. She took your number, asked me to stick my change in, and a boy said hello.

“Kevin?” I said.

“Kevin who?”

“Kevin Wafer, of course.”

“No, I meant my name is Kevin Who.”

“Excuse me, Kevin Who. I was calling Kevin Wafer,” and I clicked the receiver hook for the operator. She said she was sorry she dialed the wrong number and did I want my money back?

“No thanks. I got all the money I need from the corner booth that was once across the street on the corner that was once there too,” as my pockets had accidentally gotten filled with change when the coins covered me. “Could you just dial the number I gave you?” and she said “Right away.”

This time a different boy got on and said his name was Kevin Wafer.

“Hi, Kev. It’s Rudy Foy in New York.”

“Rudy what in the where?”

“Listen, is this really Kevin Wafer in Palo Alto?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have to be the same Kevin Wafer I last saw a year ago.”

“But I’m Kevin Wafer Too.”

“I see the mistake now. Because I’m only calling a Kevin whose name Wafer is not his middle but his last.”

“That’s me. My first last name and probably my last.”

“Kevin Wafer from Leary Street?”

“No. Kevin Wafer from O’Leary Street.”

“Oh,” I said.

“That’s right, O.”

“I meant Oh, like I’m disappointed.”

“I thought you said your name was Foy,” and he hung up.

That last call discouraged me from trying to reach you again from this booth. Maybe I’ll be luckier with a booth on the next street, I thought, and I pushed the door to get out. But while I was speaking to that other Kevin Wafer, someone had parked his car in this small parking space with his back fender jammed up against the booth door, and I couldn’t get out. Ibanged on my door. The driver got out of his car.