All Around Atlantis by Deborah Eisenberg

hand of an old lover. Absently, he stroked the receiver, then lifted it, releasing a loud electronic jeer—the sound, as silence is not, of emptiness. He would tell Beale that he was unwell, that he had to go rest.
    Shapiro paused at the entrance to the restaurant. Beale was sitting at the table alone, his narrow shoulders hunched and his spaceship head bent over the tape recorder as he spoke into it. There was urgency in Beale’s posture, and his face was anguished. What could he be saying? Shapiro took a step closer.
    â€œAh!” Beale said, clicking off the machine with a bright smile, as though he’d been apprehended in some mild debauchery. “Get through?”
    â€œExcuse me?” Shapiro said.
    â€œGet your call through?”
    â€œOh,” Shapiro said. He sat down and passed his hands across his face. “No.”
    â€œNo,” Beale agreed with unfocussed sympathy. “Oh, it’s all so difficult. So difficult. Now—” He smiled sentimentally. Amazingly, he appeared to have completely forgotten he’d been in the process of attacking Shapiro. “Not to worry—we’re going to get a very nice little segment about you. In fact”—he twinkled slyly—“I’ve already done something by way of an intro. Your name and so on, you’re down here for the festival, you’ll be playing the García-Gutiérrez…Hmm.” He removed his glasses to study a crumpled piece of paper. “And, let’s see.” He turned on the machine and spoke into it again. “You’ve played the piece before with great success…Mr. Shapiro, I understand.” He nodded encouragingly and indicated the machine.
    Shapiro looked at it. “Yes,” he said, wearily.
    Beale gave him a wounded glance. “In fact, you premièred the piece in the U.S., I believe.”
    Shapiro closed his eyes.
    â€œYes,” Beale said. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Well, any how, that was back in, let’s see…nineteen…goodness me! You must be very fond of it.”
    â€œWell,” Shapiro said, “I mean, it is in my repertory…”
    Beale emitted a giggle, or hiccup. “I have a set of little spoons,” he said. “Tiny little silver things. For olives or something of the sort, that someone gave a great-aunt of mine as a wedding present. And somehow I’ve ended up with them.”
    Shapiro opened his eyes and looked at Beale.
    â€œWell, I don’t throw them out, I mean, do I?” Beale said. “I say.” He frowned. “Are you not going to…?” He waved at Shapiro’s plate.
    â€œNo, no,” Shapiro said. “Go ahead. Please.”
    â€œThank you.” Beale switched off the tape recorder and placed Shapiro’s full plate on top of his own empty one. “We’ll go on in a minute. And I think we’ll get something nice, don’t you? Most people like doing radio. It’s a lovely medium, lovely. Do you know what I especially like about it?” He interrupted himself to eat, then continued. “One meets people. Oh, I know one does in any profession—it can hardly be avoided. But I mean one goes out to meet people, on an equal basis. The voice—it’s freeing, wouldn’t you agree? Yet intimate. There one is, a great glob of…oh…pork pie!” His eyes gleamed briefly with lust. “But I mean all one’s qualities and circumstances just…globbed together, if you see what I mean. The good, the bad, the…pointless…” He paused again, and rapidly forked food into his mouth. “But with radio, you see, there’s a way to separate out the real bit. And all the rest of it—I mean one’s body, one’s face, one’s age…even, even”—he glanced around as though bewildered—“even the place where one is sitting! Well, one is free of it, isn’t one? One sees how