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dispatch two
Never Enough by Dave Morrison
debuted 15 April 2009 | kept 572 times | click to keep
I had just dozed off when the phone rang. Lately sleeping had become like hide-and-go seek. I would hide under the blankets and hope that the coughing spasms wouldn’t find me. Because when they did, they dug their rusty fingers into my neck and breathed their dust down my throat. I was actually developing coughing muscles on my stomach and sides.
Of course, I smoke too much – way too much, I’m told - but not smoking makes me tense and anxious, and that makes me cough too, so what kind of choice is that?
Sleeping was tentative and anxious; dreams were little dry things, dead leaves. I have friends who smoke a bone before bed and swear by it. My dreams are weird enough without that shit, thank you very much. Drinking doesn’t help - I have to get up to pee in the middle of the night, and I wake up with a big thick head.
So, like I said, the phone rang, and chased away the sleep I’d just coaxed in. I had a moment of religion.
“Please God, not him...”
There is no God; it was him. I lit a smoke.
“H’lo?"
“Hey, Gina - hey...”
“Jesus, Jimmy, what?" Cough.
“Gina, I got something for you, to show–”
“No, Jimmy! It’s late–”
“Gina, I’m here...”
“What’re you talking about?”
“...look out your window...”
I looked. He was at the payphone across the street. He lit his lighter, and held it up in front of his face. He looked like a solemn Boy Scout in front of a campfire. I hated that he was doing this.
At that point I would like to have said that I didn’t love him...maybe it was true, I don’t know. I had loved him a little, once, but I lost my nerve, like a thief that replaces the stolen article before it’s missed. Jimmy had not been gentle, but he had tried to be kind. He might have loved me a little. We weren’t friends, not really: it was something more and something less.
“Gina, come down! Come out with me... there’s something I want to show you.”
“Jimmy...I feel like shit, I just fell asleep...” I lit another smoke. I was shivering, wearing just a T-shirt and panties. “Why now, why tonight?”
Silence. I waited. Annoyed, I looked out the window. He stood holding the tiny flame, his face a beautifully scared jack-o-lantern. The payphone receiver swung.
I hung up the phone, cursing. As I pulled on my clothes, I wasn’t silly enough to think last time or never again.