Whenever You Call by Anna King

opposite tact?
    The train pulled into Copley and I stood up automatically, already much happier. I would allow myself to feel pitiful and pathetic, and in so doing, I felt good. The laws of trickery.
    Which reminded me of Mr. Rabbitfish’s strange clues and odd, mysterious behavior. More laws of trickery. I was a straightforward person and I found myself falling into a situation like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. I stopped walking, struck by the connection. I felt like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. Mr. Rabbit was a source of extreme confusion and twistyness, just like the rabbit hole .
    A man behind me trod on my heels and gruffly said, Excuse me. He didn’t really mean it because, obviously, I’d been at fault for stopping so suddenly in the midst of a fast-moving pedestrian flow. I skedaddled to the side and touched the grimy wall with one hand. For the first time in my life, I thought I understood something, something really big and significant. But then it was gone, slipping sideways, knocked into oblivion.
    As I’d predicted, Jen was thrilled to see me. Her large corner office glittered with late-afternoon sunshine. The dazzling light behind her head and upper body made her look like a madonna. I wondered briefly if that was the realization I’d had in the subway station. Then I remembered that madonnas were bullshit.
    “Tell me what you like best about him,” I said.
    Jen backed away from the desk and brought her electric wheelchair around so that we could talk together like friends. “This is going to sound very self-serving,” she began.
    I grinned. “The best kind of love there is.”
    “Well, I’m kind of ashamed to feel this way, but not so ashamed that I can’t admit it to you.” Suddenly, she yawned, taking even herself by surprise. “Apparently, he is really turned on by me. I mean, sexually.” Her eyes squinted at me, daring me to laugh.
    So, of course, I laughed. “He must have a foot fetish,” I said.
    And that was it. We were off. Laughing our fool heads off, or feet, as the case may be. I finally got tissues from a drawer in her desk, and we managed to pull ourselves together enough to blow our noses.
    “Anyway, he’s just an animal,” Jen said. “It’s great. I really don’t care about anything at the moment except getting back into bed with him.”
    “You know this stage will only last about three months,” I lectured in a mock serious voice.
    She smiled, but said, “I doubt that.”
    “What else makes him so wonderful?”
    “He’s funny, smart, interesting—,” she trailed off.
    “Bottom-line, we’re talking fabulous sex, right?”
    She nodded, sucking in her lower lip and grinning at the same time. “Are you okay?”
    I told her about what happened with Mr. Rabbitfish, having forgotten that I’d promised never to contact him again.
    “Hey!” she protested.
    “I couldn’t help it,” I said. “I can’t quite remember why I couldn’t help it, but you’ll have to give me the benefit of the doubt. I had a very good reason to e-mail him again, really.”
    Jen’s head tilted a little to the left, her lawyerly mode coming on. I’d wondered more than once whether she tilted in that direction because she was using the analytical side of her brain. She murmured, “I wonder why you’re so compelled by this guy. It’s unlike you to get turned on by a man you’ve never actually seen. ”
    “I thought I did see him that day at the cafe, but even then it was only the back of his head.” I paused, thinking. I could hear the buzzing of intercoms and voices from the hall outside. “You’re right—I’m usually seduced by the whole package and that definitely includes a man’s physical presence. He doesn’t have to be handsome, or even nominally attractive, but it’s a part of a person I need to experience.”
    As I was talking, I found myself staring at Jen’s lower legs. Except she had no lower legs. I wondered why I’d come to see her. We were