“That reminds me of my wife,” my friend said. “The voice. I’m divorced now, but I was married five years to this girl. She was everything you could ask for. Beautiful, sexy, intelligent, loving, a great cook—she even had some money. She had planned to be an actress, but when this didn’t work out she wasn’t bitter or disappointed or anything. She realized she wasn’t up to the competition, and she gave it up, just like that. I mean, she wasn’t one of these women who claim to have given up a big career. We had a little apartment in Bayside, and she looked around for a job, and because of her training—I mean, she knew how to use her voice—they took her on at Newark Airport as an announcer. She had a very pretty voice, not affected or anything, very calm and humorous and musical. She worked on a four-hour shift, saying things like ‘Will passengers for United’s jet flight to Seattle please board at Gate Sixteen? Will Mr. Henry Tavistock please report to the American Airlines ticket counter? Will Mr. Henry Tavistock please report to the American Airlines ticket counter?’ I suppose that girl is saying the same sort of thing.” He nodded his head toward the loudspeaker. “It was a great job, and just working four hours a day she made more money than I did, and she had plenty of time to shop and cook and be wifely, at which she was very good. Well, when we had about five thousand in the savings account, we began to think about having a child and moving out to the country. She had been announcing at Newark then for about five years. Well, one night before supper, I was drinking whiskey and reading the paper when I heard her say, in the kitchen, ‘Will you please come to the table? Supper is ready. Will you please come to the table?’ She was speaking to me in that same musical voice she used at the airport, and it made me angry, and so I said, ‘Honey, don’t speak to me like that—don’t speak to me in that voice,’ and then she said, ‘Will you please come to the table?’ just as if she was saying, ‘Will Mr. Henry Tavistock please report to the American Airlines ticket counter?’ So then I said, ‘Honey, you make me feel as if I were waiting for a plane or something. I mean, your voice is very pretty, but you sound very impersonal.’ So then she said, in this very well-modulated voice, ‘I don’t suppose that can be helped,’ and she gave me one of those forced, sweet smiles like those airplane clerks give you when your flight is four hours late and you’ve missed the connecting flight and will have to spend a week in Copenhagen. So then we sat down to dinner, and all through dinner she talked to me in this even and musical voice. It was like having dinner with a recording. It was like having dinner with a tape. So then, after dinner, we watched some television, and she went to bed and then she called to me, ‘Will you please come to bed now? Will you please come to bed now?’ It was just like being told that passengers for San Francisco were boarding at Gate Seven. I went to bed, and thought things would be better in the morning.
