Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

“Not necessarily. If someone dials a number the same time that phone’s ringing because someone else dialed it first—”

“That’d produce a busy signal for the person dialing a little behind? Didn’t think of that in relation to this. And ‘dialing a little behind.’ That could be misinterpreted, but please don’t. Should’ve kept it to myself. It was unintentional, but repeating it wasn’t. Though the repeat was just my surprise at my unintentional line, not said to be suggestive. And now I guess whenever I dial someone late — which I don’t normally do; I don’t like getting calls myself after eleven.”

“Same here.”

“Even after ten. I occasionally go to bed early just to get an early start the next day.”

“Between ten and eleven’s all right, even from someone I just met, but never a call around two. Or if your clock’s right and it wasn’t that it stopped—”

“It hasn’t.”

“—then five to ten minutes past one. Never. But where’s my watch? I’m looking at the alarm clock right now — hold on.” I go into the bathroom, get my watch off the shelf under the medicine chest, put one of the pearl ear-studs back into the cockleshell on the shelf from which it must have rolled out of but got stopped by my toothbrush, put the toothbrush back into the wall holder, go back. “Your bank clock runs slow or is still suffering from an outage of an hour and a quarter some time ago, because both my watch and clock says it’s twenty after two. And earlier tonight I set my watch by my clock and then checked my watch against the wall clock at that reception I told you I was going to.”

“If I’d known it was past two I probably still would’ve called you. It’s that important.”

“I can imagine. You want to come up.”

“Not for the reason your tone says. Please, give me a little credit. You see, I’m locked out of my apartment. If I started to tell you the scenes that led up to it — and I’m sorry, by the way, for my calls to your service, which happened way before I got locked out. I was a little drunk then. Now I’m not. I’m stoned sober — stark sober — very stark but what’s—”

“What calls to my service?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t call it.”

“You’re the first person I know of with one who doesn’t call it every three hours. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong in calling it that—”

“I got home after it closed. Even if I got home before that I wouldn’t have called it till tomorrow. I really only need it on school days. I’m a teacher—”

“I know. I spoke to a couple of people about you at the party. Casual. I didn’t probe. Oh, so I probed. I was interested in you after you left — you must have known before you left how interested I was in you. In fact we both spoke about it — our mutual interest — so of course I’d be just as or more interested in you after I left, which caused that brainless yelling to you from the window, for instance, or helped cause it. All the drink I drank at Diana’s didn’t hinder it, not that I’m not responsible for how much and then how I act under it. Nor do I want all this drink talk to downplay the interest I felt without drink before or after the window incident.”

“Less said about that window—”

“Thank you. The very least would be the best, but it’s good it’s out and that you know it’s also not something I normally do. But I was interested so I asked a couple of people, Diana, mostly, ‘Who is she? What does she do?’ Nothing detailed, not personal life—but that has nothing to do with why I called now and my emergency.”

“Excuse me, but since you knew I had a service — and I hope you didn’t insult anyone there. It’s a good service, nice hardworking people work there—”

“I didn’t. I forget what I said but I know, because I was still a little drunk — and I also hardly ever drink that much or get the way I’ll describe — that I must’ve sounded drunk and perhaps unrefined to them the two or three times I called — I hope not. So next time you speak to them I wonder if you could apologize for me. But you were saying?”

“The service is called Lip Sinc, with an I-n-c. Why don’t you look up the number tomorrow and call it to apologize?”

“I will. Lip Sinc. I’ll remember it since I don’t have a pen. Now can I tell you about the spot I’m in and why your reasons for thinking why I want to come up aren’t the ones why I do, or should I just forget it and quietly hang up? And I would very quietly hang up. For I know I’m disturbing you — I just hope I didn’t get you going to sleep.”

“You didn’t. But let’s say your reason is you’ve been locked out. So what’s that got to do with me?”