Smooth Operator

Operator, well, could you help me place this call?

Ah, but what a question it is, when the very act of asking implies a dissonance between intention and understanding. How many times have I sought to recall the past? To resurrect those fleeting moments which, in the hazy distance, appear as so much more than they ever truly were? And yet, here I am, once again, with my fingers poised above the dial, as though the act of reaching out could change the shape of things irrevocably gone.

You see, the number I wish to call — etched, now illegibly, on the faded matchbook in my hand — is hardly a number at all. It is an artifact, a relic of a time that feels more and more like a stranger’s entirely different life. The digits are indistinct, worn away by time and friction. Yet my right index finger recalls the number’s rhythm well enough. How very peculiar it is, to know something once so vital, now rendered incomprehensible by the passage of time.

The fair daughter of Eve who was once the object of my amorous intentions, on whom I pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, lives in Los Angeles now, with my best old ex-friend Ray. A man she once described, not unreasonably, as someone she knew well, though at times, she would speak of him with the bitterness of someone who understood both love and loathing in equal measure. It is, I suppose, a reflection of her nature: to embrace the ambiguities of affection, to hold both tenderness and disdain in the same hand, as one would clutch a delicate object and a jagged shard at once.

Isn’t that the way they say it goes?

The words escape my lips in a whisper, though I am quite alone. Of course, it is. The way of the world. The way it must be. Love, in its most poignant forms, is never simple, never free from contradiction. But here, in the quiet of the booth, which smells of urine and ripped yellow pages, I no longer wish to relive such contradictions. My mind wanders, as it always does, to thoughts of what it was like to be in her presence, to feel her warmth, to share those endless nights of ambivalent conversation. How curious that we, who once believed ourselves the centre of each other’s universe, now find ourselves distant as strangers, divided by years of absence and silence.

Let us forget all that, I instruct myself — half a command, half a plea. For what is the point in reliving those moments, if they no longer belong to either of us? I’ve overcome the blow. I’ve learned to take it well. Mostly, I regret denting the hood of the Chevy in that collision with whatever I hit on the Tallahatchie Bridge in my hurry to get to this phone booth outside a little store in Tupelo. Colourful petals and green stems rained from the sky for a few seconds after the crash, so it must have been some kind of flower stand. Couldn’t be sure. There was something in my eyes, but I drove that car as far I could. Abandoned it at the levee, just a half a mile from that Mississippi bridge. And here I am, staring at this matchbook as if it holds some last trace of meaning, something worth salvaging. I’m sitting here wondering if it would hold my clothes. I ain’t got no matches, but I sure got a long way to go.

“Give me the number if you can find it,” I murmur into the receiver, though I know full well that to dial it would be to open a door to a past that no longer exists. Operator, oh, could you help me place this call? ’Cause I can’t read the number that you just gave me. There’s something in my eyes.

Something in my eyes. It is a lame excuse, one I have used countless times, to cover up not just the tears that well up, but the deeper ache that arises whenever I confront the love I thought would save me, only to realize it was never meant to be. It happens every time.

And what, after all, is the purpose of making this call? To hear her voice again? To find some semblance of the love we once shared, as if it might be resurrected with the click of a dial? No, I realize, with a sudden clarity that startles me: I do not need the validation that comes from a disembodied voice telling me I’m fine, or that I’m still loved, or that things might return to what they once were. I know, deep down, that I am not fine — will never be fine, can never be fixed. The very act of dialling the number to reluct at the immutable course of the past will only remind me of how fragile it all was. How fleeting. How easily it slipped away, like sand through my fingers. Let them do the walking. Walking away.

“Operator,” I say, my voice softer now, as though speaking to an old friend. “I think it’s best we forget about this call.”

There is a pause on the other end, and I wonder if she is surprised by my decision. After all, how many hundreds of calls does she take each day from people desperately clutching at the remnants of their lives, hoping to hear a voice that can undo the damage? But I am not like them, I must not be — not today, at any rate.

“There’s no one there I really wanted to talk to.” It is a strange liberation, this acknowledgment that the past is relinquishing its power. That I, too, can choose to let it go.

I only wish my words could just convince myself. Ah, help me, Information, more than that I cannot add. Only that I miss her and all the fun we had. Please, Mrs. Avery, I just gotta talk to her. I’ll only keep her a while. Please, Mrs. Avery, I just want to tell her goodbye.

“Thank you for your time,” I say to the operator, but it feels almost absurd to say it, for she has afforded me no more than a moment of patience, a scintilla of basic humanity. Perhaps it’s her indifference that has allowed me to find the resolution I could not achieve alone. It doesn’t matter much to me.

“You’ve been so much more than kind,” I tell her, as though it were her steadfast equability, her unfaltering punctilio, that has helped me come to terms with the absence of all that once seemed vital.

“You can keep the dime.”

Moved, it would seem, by my appreciation and this final display of manly courtesy useful in our time, the operator finally speaks: “At the tone, the time will be four fifty-six and 30 seconds.”

Beeeeeep.