Calling Collect by Barry N. Malzberg and Arthur L. Samuels

I

"I'll do it," Irma Green said after a long pause. She pushed a strand of hair distractedly back over her ear. "I mean," she said, "I have no choice."

Her visitor shrugged and said, "That is your decision."

"I mean I do have a choice," she said, "but then - "

"Vanity of vanities," her visitor said calmly. "All is vanity." His eyes glowed.

"Ain't that the truth," Irma said reluctantly.

II

Martin Green staggered from the rear patio toward the shrilling phone, looking remarkably like an angry Doberman. Even there, he could not escape the sound of the telephone which sounded peculiarly, malevolently fixated on him. That was ridiculous, of course; the call, as always, would be for Irma. No peace, he thought. No peace. "Hello?" he said.

"This is Jack Jacobs," an unctuous voice said. "Jack Jacobs, you know? We met you at the pool last week - my wife and I, we met you and your wife at the swim club." The voice paused, wavered. "This is Martin Green, isn't it?"

"She's not home," Martin said. "She's out. She's at a club meeting."

"Oh," Jack Jacobs said. He paused again. "When will she be back?"

"Later. Listen, Jacobs, what do you want? Why are you calling my wife?"

"We - my wife and I, that is - wanted to invite you over some evening. Generally I do the calling." Jack Jacobs coughed into Martin's ear and said, "I know that isn't conventional - in the suburbs it's usually the wife who does the social things like that, I know, but we have kind of a liberated marriage, share and share alike, so I thought I'd put through the invitation - "

"Jacobs," Martin said flatly, "I don't think I want to see you. I don't even remember you and I don't want to renew acquaintances. You understand?"

There was a long silence at the other end and Jack Jacobs said, "Oh yes, I understand."

"Don't call my wife anymore, Jacobs," Martin said and put the phone down so abruptly that it bounced off the pedestal. He caught it on the fly. "Don't do it," he screamed and slammed it down again and went back to the patio. But his mood was ruined. He could not do bicycle repair. Strange men were calling his wife now on what was already an instrument of destruction. I can't take it anymore, he thought, but he knew that this was only a pose. Of course he could continue to take it.

What was the alternative?

Irma Green was obsessed with the telephone. Martin could sit and read for hours, work on household equipment; Irma talked. When she didn't talk, she went out. In between times, when feasible, she prepared dinner, slept, engaged in sex. When she was home she was on the telephone.

The calls came in and went out. Irma scurried off on her activities, wooed new acquaintances from her own bed until after midnight. I don't have a wife, I have a switchboard, Martin thought. Once he had even said it to her. She did not take to it kindly. Fifteen years of marriage counted for something, she said. Like autonomy and trust. Trust was vital to any marriage. Beaten, Martin had dropped the issue. But now she was getting calls from a man. Who was Jack Jacobs? What did he want? What was going on?

Martin pondered the issue into the evening, long after Irma had come home, dropped her coat and car keys, returned five telephone calls. She had laughed when told about Jacobs. He had almost drowned in the pool trying to show off last week, she had said. Didn't Martin remember? No, he did not remember. Well, it did not matter; certainly she was far too busy to want to deal socially with people like him or his fat liberated wife. "You look angry, Martin," she said at eleven, the phone mercifully still. "Are you jealous? Do you think I'm having an affair?"

"You're never off that phone," Martin said pointlessly. "You're always calling someone or they're calling you. There's no peace."

"It keeps me young," Irma said.

This was probably true, Martin thought. At forty-five she looked thirty; throughout their marriage she had softened and deepened, while he had merely wrinkled and spread. "It's not keeping me young," he said. "If I haven't got Jacobs for a correspondent, I have the telephone."

"Don't be ridiculous," Irma said. "I sleep eight hours a night, I maintain a full schedule, and we have an active sex life."

"All between. Between phone calls. We haven't had twenty minutes together awake in years - "

"Really?" she said. "How about last Monday?"

Martin tried hard to think of last Monday. It was hard to isolate the day in memory; time kind of flowed. Of course, that was a characteristic of mid-life. He had read that in books.

The phone rang.

Irma picked it up. "Oh," she said, "hello. Hello."

"Good-bye," Martin mumbled. He stood, left the bedroom, stalked into the living room. Behind him he could hear Irma with appalling brightness talking to someone called "Dorothy" about "plans" for a "bruncheon." Martin brooded. The voice from the bedroom rose and fell. The conversation ended; he heard the faint clang of the receiver being replaced. The phone rang again.

Martin closed his eyes, sat at attention in a bright red chair. The new conversation was relatively brief. The receiver clattered. There was a pause. He heard the sound of Irma dialing.

Martin sighed. He stood, shuffled back into the bedroom, looked at his wife as she talked. Her voice was blissful, her eyes lustrous, her skin gleamed with the force and innocence of youth. The telephone did marvelous things for her complexion. As we live so we will die, Martin thought. Irma was immortal. How could you die in the act of returning a phone call?

"You're ridiculous," Irma said nervously when he finally was able to bring up this thought safely after midnight. "You're a strained man, Martin, you're spending too much time hanging around the house. It's never been the same since you free-lanced accounts. Get out into the world, look for a job, see your accounts, go to the racetrack. Try golf. I mean, that's really bizarre thinking."

"What? That you think you can cheat death by that damned phone?"

"I want to go to sleep," Irma said. She pushed the phone away and lay with her back toward him.

He reached - but found that she really did.

Maybe she was right, he thought later. Other interests. Get out of the house. Cease to brood. Martin got up in the shadows of another dawn and drove to the local public golf course, waited outside the gates, rented a set of clubs, went out in the mists alone, swinging wildly. He had not played golf in a decade, didn't even watch the sport. Inhaling great drafts of polluted air, looking at factory smokestacks from the south cheerfully pumping out their industrial filth, Martin plodded through nine holes, trying earnestly to break a hundred. By the fourth hole, however, his internal attention had left the course and shifted to the figure of a man.

A man. Who? Where? Martin could not identify him, but it was definitely a man and he had a picture: the man was in bed with Irma. Right now. An affair. Just like in the works of John Cheever. Skulking through the rooms of desire, the shadow lover while the husband, all ignorance and bouncy cheer, is out at sport. What else? What else!

She had sent him out, hadn't she? It had been her idea! And the incessant phone, the whispered arrangements - the man who had called her a couple of days ago. Jim Jacobs? No. Not quite. Jack. Jack Jacobs. That was it. Martin tore out a divot.

He understood everything.

Martin stumbled through a twelve-stroke ninth, tossed his clubs into the cart, plunged through the pro shop cursing. In his head Jacobs and Irma tinkled ice cubes in post-coital cocktails, discussed Martin's sexual inadequacies. The phone, he thought. The phone did this to me. I'll kill him. No, I won't. I'll be civilized. Maybe it wasn't the phone, he thought; maybe it was Jacobs who was keeping her young.

He drove home. No strange car in front of his house. Still, there wouldn't be, would there? He knew how it was; what you did was park the car blocks away, sometimes miles, and speed fleeting through the neighborhood to land panting with desire at the side door. I'm no fool, Martin thought, I know about this stuff too. It isn't all bills of lading and statutory unemployment funds here; there's educational television and the Literary Guild. I read and think. He came up his steps briskly, opened the door soundlessly, took off his shoes and went up the stairs toward the bedroom to the open door. Shameless! I won't kill him, Martin thought, I'll be civil, offer him a drink. Then I'll kill him.

He heard Irma's voice.

Inside, she sat on the bed, her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette, the telephone cupped to her ear, talking with intensity. "Friday," she said. "Friday is good, Emily. Of course I'll have to call Rona and Harriet to make sure - "

Something within Martin Green broke.

He plunged toward his wife, seized the phone, ripped it away and flung it against the wall. "I am not merely an accountant!" he screamed. "I suffer!" She stared at him incomprehendingly. "I can't stand it anymore!" he said piteously. Her eyes were luminous. He went to the closet, seized an overnight bag, stuffed clothing indiscriminately. "I've got to get out of here!" he said. "I don't even have the dignity of being cuckolded by a man!"

He fled down the stairs swinging the bag, got into his car and drove away.

Later, he found it hard to recall the details.

Twelve hours and five hundred miles later, however, Martin awoke to find himself in a small motel on the outskirts of Erie, Pennsylvania. The air was, if possible, worse here than on the golf course. He belched uncomfortably, the residue of many drinks, a bad dinner, remorse. Shame lifted him toward the cashier, self-pity paid the check, self-loathing carried him from the dining room and to the elevator, the elevator carried him up one flight and shame, doing double duty, took him into his bleak room. He locked the door, tossed aside a tissue box and a Bible, picked up the phone and gave the switchboard his home number.

"And make it collect," he said.

He entered a long tunnel of possibility. The phone purred in his ear. That it was not busy was in itself further inducement to remorse, more fodder for self-loathing. Perhaps he had misunderstood her. Or perhaps she was out with Jack Jacobs.

Irma answered the phone. The switchboard said that it was a collect call. There was a long pause. "I'll take it," Irma said shakily. "Martin - "

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Martin - "

"I am," he said, "I am sorry." He said other things. He talked for a long time. He would not let her say much; he said it all himself. To her credit, Irma had a wonderful telephone manner. She listened. He told her that he had been a fool. Unstable. Recriminatory, immature. Hateful. Suspicious. And selfish. The selfishness had driven her to the telephone for companionship. "It won't happen again," he said. "I'm coming home. I can't stand Erie, Pennsylvania!" he added desperately.

"It's too late, Martin," Irma said.

"There is someone else, then. Is it - "

"No," she said, "it isn't that." There was a sickening pause. "It's too late, Martin," she said, "too late for any of this. I accepted the call."

"You accepted the call? Of course you accepted - "

"Postage due," she said sadly. She hung up.

Martin clutched the phone and stared at the Bible. Well then? he asked it. What now?

III

Irma walked from the telephone, her gait hobbling and cautious. Inside she felt the crumbling, the organs caving into dust, but she would not collapse. Nor would she cry. Not then, not ever. It was the pact, that was all. You accept the conditions; you accept the risks.

She went into the bathroom, supporting herself on the door, wobbling on the tile, grasping at the wall for balance as she came before the mirror. Her heart thudded to a thicker, older rhythm. She stared at her face in the mirror.

The crevices and hollows of that ruined face looked back at her, the mouth of the old woman opened and closed.

Irma whimpered.

"Vanity of vanities," her visitor said behind her softly.

"You're here to collect," Irma said weakly.

"You accepted the charges," Jacobs said reasonably.