DUTY CALLS : ‘Round Midnight, One Never Knows Who Might Be on the Other End of the Line
He gets bothered by the sound. I try not to be.
Sometimes it’s a sharp, piercing zzzinging that disrupts a delicious sleep. Other times it’s a brrrinnng that resonates. Whatever the tone, these kinds of phone calls always come around or after midnight. Instantly, he jumps up to answer it. Invariably, I’m doomed to miss the end of the movie we’re watching.
“Why don’t you tell ‘em not to call after 10 o’clock?”
“Suppose it’s an emergency?”
I used to make these kinds of calls myself. Most come from the emotional brink, from people about to fall and crack. Someone, somewhere is in need. Abandoning them to the answering machine is not my style. Could be it’s friend or blood kin. Sometimes the caller is drunk, doped or both--whether off booze or adrenaline--and is in a fit of despair. Two out of five calls are long-distance. Rarely do they come collect, but when they do, I stoically accept the charges. Always. Seldom are they wrong numbers.
Often these calls come with a side dish of adventure, and I throw on clothes, go out into an ever-chilly morning, feeling mildly like a schnook, waiting as the windshield too-slowly defrosts and checking the fuel gauge to be sure there’s enough gas for the trek to who-knows-where. Could be I’m delivering an urgent message from a frantic attorney to her incommunicado client, bagging bail money to liberate an indigent jazz musician, rescuing a night-riding girlfriend from a seedy downtown bus depot or depositing a manic-depressive guyfriend at a Skid Row shelter.
Occasionally there’s the deep-ghetto foray to help an angry friend who’s stealthily vacating a hellhole by dark to avoid the indignities of paying back rent to some rapacious manager fronting for an absentee landlord.
But my favorites are calls from ex-Angelenos who miss this city and won’t admit it. Some swear they’re never coming back. Some wish they could but can’t. So I curl up on the living room couch for a little homespun therapy, stifle my yawns and give up some ear.
“How’s the old Fox Venice? Is it still there?” His voice drips nostalgia.
“No, Jeff--it went swap meet a couple of years back.”
“Whatta shame.”
Then there are the night howls from new arrivals suffering culture shock. Like Joyce. A mutual friend gave her my number.
“I don’t understand the black men out here. The black people, period. They look black but after that, the resemblance ends.”
“Well, you have to understand the difference between hot jazz and cool jazz. After all, cool jazz was born here in the West.” We resolved her consternation with an hour’s discussion of the differences in region.
Not long ago Joyce called me a second time, during regular waking hours, to thank me for taking time to listen to a stranger, late that night so many years ago. She has settled in L.A. and is doing very well.
But being receptive has its hazards, including the occasional crank. Once, as I sweated over my typewriter in the wee hours, wondering how I was going to meet a steadily advancing deadline, the voice box screamed. I answered. A chatty young brutha announced that he had written a poem especially for me.
“Yeah?”
“Would you like to hear it?”
“Might as well.” After six hours of typing, I needed a break.
“Here it is!” He sucked in his breath for a pregnant moment, then began to enunciate. “Slow down . . . slow down . . . slow down . . . slow down . . .,” he droned in mid-range alto as I slammed the receiver onto its cradle.
With increasing rarity come calls from old flames. My spouse barely tolerates suh holdovers from my previous life. When answering, he rudely douses any still-smoldering embers, begrudging these brief intrusions. As do I--but one never knows who might be calling, who needs some sympathy, some understanding.
Once in a while, it’s his mother.
Once in a while, it’s mine.
