Interference & Other Stories Read Free Page A

slept.
    Â 
    Usually, upon waking, he needed two strong cups of Maxwell House before he would attempt anything like conversation, but as soon as he opened his eyes he knew what he needed to do.
    Just as her answering machine picked up, Didi answered.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œHi. It’s Larry.” Hello. You have reached the home of Didi Magruder…
    â€œOh for godsakes, this damn thing. Wait. Let me turn it off. How do you turn the damn thing off?” I can’t answer your call right now, but if you’ll please leave a message… “I’m not sure how to do it without cutting you off. You want me to call you back? It’ll be done in a minute.” …after the long beep, including your number, even if you think I already have it, I’ll return your call just as soon as I can. Thank you. “Larry? Larry, I am so sorry for what I said. I had no right. I was up all night just sick with shame. I never meant to hurt you, Darlin’. I am such an idiot sometimes. I had no right to get sarcastic.”
    Powell cut in. “Didi, stop. Stop. I was the one. I was way out of line.”
    BEEEEEP.
    â€œSo you forgive me for being so insensitive?”
    â€œDone. I guess you hit a nerve.”
    â€œLarry, I want to tell you something. But now I’m a little afraid I’ll say the wrong thing. Listen, I want to tell you something Franklin said to me one time, when he’d come to see me.”
    Powell moved the hat from the chair next to the bed and sat down. He wasn’t sure he trusted her now. Did he want to hear this?
    â€œYou said you didn’t want to talk about that. And you know what? I can respect that.”
    â€œLarry, listen. Oh, what is it with this connection. You sound so far away. Listen. I’d asked about his parents. I didn’t know you yet. And he told me he loved the both of you. And when I asked about his dad—and this is what I believe you need to hear now, Darlin’, or I wouldn’t tell it—he told me that he was not afraid of you. And I believed him, not like with some of the other boys, pumping themselves up so you know the truth is just the opposite; no, I believed him.”
    â€œDidi, you don’t have to say this stuff. It’s okay. Thanks, but it’s okay.”
    â€œNow see here, Darlin’, I’m not finished yet. He said to me, ‘My dad gets really mad at me sometimes’—as I recall he said pissed off and then apologized and changed it to mad—‘but one thing I know for sure; no matter what I do wrong, no matter what kind of stupid stuff I pull, he’ll always forgive me.’ That’s what he said, and I know he was telling me the truth the way he saw it, at least at the time.”
    There was a short beep after which the phone connection was sharper.
    â€œOh for godsakes, this stupid thing was on the whole time. Are you still there, Darlin’?”
    Powell felt like he’d swallowed an ice cube that was melting, painfully, in his chest, and he could barely breathe.
    â€œLarry? Darlin’?”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m here.”

GUY GOES INTO A BAR
    â€œWhat’ll it be?” asks the bartender.
    Guy looks over the bartender’s shoulder in the mirror and sees the clock behind him ticking backwards. He scans the bottles. “I’ll have the two broken marriages, three fucked-up kids, esophageal bleeding, bankruptcy, white railroad scar from knee to groin from the car crash, the disbarment, three long nights in jail and several hundred hangovers.”
    â€œRight-o,” says the bartender.
    Twenty years later, Guy stands up and stumbles out the door. “No joke,” he says when anyone asks him. “I feel like Rip Van Fucking Winkle.”

GENTLEMEN
    W alter Crosby glanced at the dock above the row of fan belts—five after ten—and shook his head. He was already behind in his work thanks mostly to some