Call

Eric tried to call Trinity later that week (from the phone in his father's living room. His cell phone was both dead and missing, an unfortunate situation to be in since everything he owned was in boxes, and he suspected that he had dropped it into one of them by mistake. Or he had left it in the pocket of a suit jacket when he'd donated all but one of his snooty professor suits to Goodwill. Either way, he was now dialing an ancient corded telephone with cheap metal numbers embedded in the wood. Eric had hated it for as long as he could remember, not only because the rest of the world had moved on to buttons and cordlessness, but also because it would have been ugly even if it wasn't chipped and peeling in places. It stuck out as the most hideous feature of that unlivable room. The whole house, minus the kitchen, needed work, but Poul had never changed so much as a throw pillow. Eric could never figure out whether it was sentimentality or apathy that kept the room in stasis), but her answering machine picked up every time.

He tried to leave a message, but every word that came to his mouth sounded cliché, so he hung up without saying anything. Five times. Then he sat with his head in his hands and berated himself for about ten minutes.

Two weeks and twenty-six phone calls (and one feeble answering machine message) later, Trinity picked up the phone.

"Eric," she said at once. Damn caller ID. "How are you?" she asked.

He started to say, "I would be better if you hadn't been ignoring my calls for fourteen and a half days," but that was not the way to start a conversation with a girl you hoped to sleep with again. Instead, he said, "Great. How are you?"

"Good, thanks. Still going to Burundi?"

"That's the plan."

"You want to get together tomorrow night?"

He wondered if the invitation had depended on whether or not he was soon leaving the country. He also wondered what was included in the phrase, "get together."

"Sure," he said. "Do you like Greek food? Because there's a—"

"No, actually, I have dinner plans. I was just thinking…after. You know, drinks. At my place."

You know. Yes, he thought he might. Did dinner plans mean an uncomfortable meal with extended family members or a date? Did it matter?

"Ten o'clock?" he said.

"Ten-thirty," she said. She gave him directions, which he jotted onto the same pale purple notepad that had sat beside the phone since his mother died. Except, he realized, it couldn't be the exact same notepad. They were probably stockpiled somewhere and Poul hadn't run out of them yet. Ten years, and there were no doubt hundreds left. The notepad stash would outlive them all.

His mother had never bought one of anything in her life. If there was a heaven, she had enough canned vegetables hoarded there to last through the end times, just in case.

"Got it?" Trinity asked.

Eric dropped the pencil beside the notepad and rubbed his eyes. "Got it." Nothing like reminiscing about your dead mother while setting up a rendezvous with your lover.

He hung up the phone and lay down where he was, kicking his feet up on the arm of the couch. Poul hated that. Eric decided to take a nap there so Poul could take joy in yelling at him about it when he got home from following his girlfriend around antique stores. He fell into a dream about Trinity, in a tight black dress, and his mother, wafting through space on a cloud.