Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

cushions. He stopped and listened and then switched off the vacuum. He went to answer the telephone.
    “Hello,” he said. “Myers here.”
    “Myers,” she said. “How are you? What are you doing?”
    “Nothing,” he said. “Hello, Paula.”
    “There’s an office party this afternoon,” she said. “You’re invited. Dick invited you.”
    “I don’t think I can come,” Myers said.
    “Dick just this minute said get that old man of yours on the phone. Get him down here for a drink. Get him out of his ivory tower and back into the real world for a while. Dick’s funny when he’s drinking.
    Myers?”
    “I heard you,” Myers said.
    Myers used to work for Dick. Dick always talked of going to Paris to write a novel, and when Myers had quit to write a novel, Dick had said he would watch for Myers’ name on the best-seller list.
    “I can’t come now,” Myers said.
    “We found out some horrible news this morning,” Paula continued, as if she had not heard him. “You remember Larry Gudinas. He was still here when you came to work. He helped out on science books for a while, and then they put him in the field, and then they canned him? We heard this morning he committed suicide. He shot himself in the mouth. Can you imagine? Myers?”
    “I heard you,” Myers said. He tried to remember Larry Gudinas and recalled a tall, stooped man with wire-frame glasses, bright ties, and a receding hairline. He could imagine the jolt, the head snapping back. “Jesus,” Myers said. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Come down to the office, honey, all right?” Paula said. “Everybody is just talking and having some drinks and listening to Christmas music. Come down,” she said.
    Myers could hear it all at the other end of the line. “I don’t want to come down,” he said. “Paula?” A few snowflakes drifted past the window as he watched. He rubbed his fingers across the glass and then began to write his name on the glass as he waited.
    “What? I heard,” she said. “All right,” Paula said. “Well, then, why don’t we meet at Voyles for a drink?
    Myers?”
    “Okay,” he said. “Voyles. All right.”
    “Everybody here will be disappointed you didn’t come,” she said. “Dick especially. Dick admires you, you know. He does. He’s told me so. He admires your nerve. He said if he had your nerve he would have quit years ago. Dick said it takes nerve to do what you did. Myers?”
    “I’m right here,” Myers said. “I think I can get my car started. If I can’t start it, I’ll call you back.”
    “All right,” she said. “I’ll see you at Voyles. I’ll leave here in five minutes if I don’t hear from you.”
    “Say hello to Dick for me,” Myers said.
    “I will,” Paula said. “He’s talking about you.”
    Myers put the vacuum cleaner away. He walked down the two flights and went to his car, which was in the last stall and covered with snow. He got in, worked the pedal a number of times, and tried the starter.
    It turned over. He kept the pedal down.
    As he drove, he looked at the people who hurried along the sidewalks with shopping bags. He glanced at the gray sky, filled with flakes, and at the tall buildings with snow in the crevices and on the window ledges. He tried to see everything, save it for later. He was between stories, and he felt despicable. He found Voyles, a small bar on a corner next to a men’s clothing store. He parked in back and went inside. He sat at the bar for a time and then carried a drink over to a little table near the door.
    When Paula came in she said, “Merry Christmas,” and he got up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He held a chair for her.
    He said, “Scotch?”
    “Scotch,” she said, then “Scotch over ice” to the girl who came for her order.
    Paula picked up his drink and drained the glass.
    “I’ll have another one, too,” Myers said to the girl. “I don’t like this place,” he said after the girl had moved away.
    “What’s wrong