A man was talking on the pay phone already and four others were ahead of her, including Sylvia. They could all hear, although the man tried to hold his mouth close to the receiver and cup his other hand around it. Still, when his wife could hear him, they could hear him too.
“So how come you haven’t brought it? I’m not angry … . I can’t talk louder, baby … . So sell the goddamned house before they foreclose! Never mind what your brother said … . Now listen … . I’m not yelling! … Listen, so call a real estate man—that’s what they’re for … . Never mind what he says, the commission comes out of the price. If they don’t sell it, they don’t get anything, Margaret. Listen to me!”
“Hurry up, you,” the kid next in line said. “I got to call by eight o’clock. You been on ten minutes!”
The whole line wriggled with excitement, anxiety, the dreadful force of focusing all longing on that black object waiting to eat their precious coins. The attendant leaned smoking against the far wall, idly flirting with a woman patient giggling in short nervous bursts, her eyes fixed on his shoes. Dolly might not be home. She might be with a john. Geraldo might be with her, and he would hang up. To get Geraldo would be worse than not to get anyone, because that would alert him to Connie’s trying to reach her niece. If she could only call in the morning!
The kid was talking to his mother and father at once, presumably on different extensions. He was about fifteen, with acne run wild in the hospital, a tubby build, hands that shook on the phone. It depressed her to see a kid with hands that shook. She stared at the greasy texture of the wall opposite, like the skin of a dirty old lizard. Geraldo’s sharp lizard boots. He would be there, of course, he would answer the phone. She could try to disguise her voice. If he answered and she hung up immediately, maybe her coins would come back. No, that didn’t work; once he answered, the money was lost and the chance blown.
The kid left the phone dangling and shuffled off. “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he mumbled and slammed headfirst into the opposite wall. The attendant seized him by the scruff.
Sylvia grabbed the phone for her call. Behind them five others were waiting. Sylvia dialed her number. It was busy. Her face would not accept that. She dialed again. It was busy again. Without a word she went to the end of the line to wait another turn. Her face was wondering who her boyfriend was talking to. Her face was naming women, her face was inventing women he was about to run over to see, hop into bed with, love in total forgetfulness of her.
Connie fumbled at the coins, dropped a dime, stomped it and scooped it up in blurred haste before she could lose her place in line. She dialed deliberately, not too slow, not too fast. The number rang. Third ring. Picked up. Her heart rose like an express elevator.
“Hello, this is Dolly Campos’ residence. I am busy right now but I will call you back as soon as I am free. Please state your name and number, and I will get back to you just as soon as I can. That’s a promise! Love from Dolly. You have sixty seconds after the tone.”
She could not comprehend for a moment and then she realized it was a recording machine. She said quickly, for she had already lost seconds, “Dolly, my baby, it’s me, Connie, in the hospital. Please, come to see me! This weekend or next. Please! Bring me a little money and clothes! Write me. Please, Dolly! Don’t forget me!” It beeped again before she could get in “Don’t forget me,” and she spoke to dead air. She hung up the phone and drifted away. A machine. Across the hall the attendant was muttering in the ear of the woman patient, who fidgeted and shook her head limply.
What was Dolly doing with a machine? She must still be in the life. That way could she pick and choose? Fat chance. A machine! She had worked Skip for a dollar to speak to a rotten machine.
Friday she got a letter that had been opened and read, pawed through, inspected, and passed upon by staff, but still it was hers. From Dolly, in English. The staff took an extra week on Spanish; maybe Dolly remembered, or more likely she could not write Spanish.
Saturday her excitement strummed like a wire. She noticed every visitor. So that was Sharma’s husband, the one she was always accusing other women of sleeping with—that awkward sleepy-faced middle-aged boy who kept gaping around him but never looked into any of their faces. Introduced to him as she passed—Sharma was proud of having her husband visit—she tried to meet his gaze but he stared unwaveringly into her torso, breast high. She mistrusted him instantly. Yes, she felt he had another woman already, who cooked his breakfast and laundered his shirts and lay in his bed. She could feel that coming off him. Sharma knew too. Connie fled.