Zero at the Bone by Michael Cadnum Page B

surge of emotion in me, in all of us.

18
    Dad answered the phone. There was always a hitch in his voice, a hesitation; this might be the call.
    â€œIt’ll be on the ten o’clock news,” he told someone. Not she’ll be on. It . Anita had become a subject, a story.
    He listened to the voice in his ear, nodding as though whoever it was could see the expression on his face. “I talked them into it. I had to push a little, explain that she was an honor student, still only seventeen.” He was bragging about the influence he had with the television station. I didn’t really blame him.
    I didn’t even ask who it was. These were Dad’s telephone friends, people he talked to on the phone. Some days he could sit and talk for three hours to one person after another. He had called all of Anita’s friends, taking his time with each one, checking off names on a list. Sometimes it seemed like he could have a better conversation with people he couldn’t see.
    When the phone rang later, as I was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, it was a surprise. Dad handed me the black portable phone he liked to carry in his pocket. “It’s for you,” he said, with just a trace of annoyance. He was nice about it, but you could tell that social calls to me were something he didn’t consider very important right now.
    â€œCray, I have been here for hours.” People like to say my name, starting sentences with it. I knew who it was and I felt myself go stupid. “I have waited one hundred years,” said Paula.
    â€œChrist, what time is it?”
    â€œAlmost ten,” she said.
    â€œI forgot.” Dish soap all over my hands, dissolved foam running down the phone. I had not given her a thought all day. I didn’t care very much, either. Maybe I wouldn’t see Paula anymore after this. “There was a family emergency.”
    â€œI was experimenting. Deliberately not calling you. Seeing how late you’d be before you picked up the phone.”
    Still, Paula was a friend. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œThis is how you really are, Cray. Wherever you are, that’s all you think about. I almost admire it.” She was ready to shift from impatience to anger. “You don’t think anybody else is alive out here.”
    â€œIt was an emergency,” I said, giving the final word special emphasis. “It still is. I’m sorry.”
    I didn’t want to talk about Anita. Saying her name seemed like it might be bad luck. The sound of her name might break whatever calm we were able to keep.
    I think Paula didn’t take my family especially seriously. She has one cousin who is a surgeon, and another in prison. She never came out and said it, but I think she thought my parents were hard to figure out, even a little amusing, wrapped up in their projects. But my tone stopped her.
    â€œI can’t talk right now,” I said.
    Paula sighed. It was a theatrical sigh, forgiving, dismissing. But I was a little impressed with Paula. She had enough sense to say good night and hang up.
    My mother sat at the table, looking at one of Dad’s lists, or maybe a letter he was going to send to the newspapers. She had a pencil in her hand. When she saw something on the list she didn’t like, she circled it. It was their mailing list, a computer printout they used at Christmas, everyone they knew.
    Dad brought one of the portable televisions from upstairs and set it on the sink next to the bread machine.
    What was Mother doing, I wondered, proceeding in her silent, methodical way? I could guess. Following Dad’s urgings, sending Anita’s image to everyone who lived within two thousand miles. Or even farther, to Dad’s buyers in Eastern Europe, his designer friends in Japan.
    Channel Two’s Award Winning Ten O’clock News went on for an hour, ten to eleven, dragging in news from around the world to add to whatever was happening locally. I