New Hope For Small Men: Chapter 21

Robert returned to work that night having only slept for twenty minutes. The third shift manager — who really seemed to be a much nicer person than Robert’s regular manager — asked how his sister’s son was and Robert had to think for a moment before saying: “Fine.”

His eyes drifted close between the infrequent calls and the fleeting images of half-dreams ran across his brain: a field of grass; a hissing radiator; a person running; a woman’s ass.

The phone rang and he pinched the meat of the palm of his hand as hard as he could to wake himself up before answering. When he answered he just said, “Hello,” and forgot to say his opening line.

The person on the other end said: “Listen, don’t say anything. I want you to just listen and let me explain. I’ve done bad things. I know that. I don’t know why. I tell myself I won’t but then something happens and there it is again. It’s like a switch or something going off.”

“This is the cable company,” Robert said and the line went dead.

Later, his eyes closed again and he saw clouds rushing by in a sky — fast clouds like he had seen in movies where time was passing and the sun was bouncing from horizon to horizon like a red, rubber ball.

The phone rang. He said the line this time. Someone old and sleepless complained about their bill and also about the quality of movies on TV these days which were filled with sex and violence and did not have the decency to just turn out a bed table lamp anymore and let the viewer imagine something more sublime and beautiful than what could ever be shown.

The night dragged on like that. And in the morning he returned to his apartment and slept despite the cable installers and their usual litany of car horns and swearing. The sounds invaded his dreams, which were jumbled and incoherent and full of sex and violence and no one ever turning off the bed table lamp.