Silent Retreats Read Free Page B

desperate phone calls they'd make to her in the night, the kind that brought up the heartbeat and made sleep impossible; because she was nearly forty-seven and alone, she felt she was about to slip into the hole.
    Today Martin knew how she felt, as he watched the October waves on the lake. The sun dropped just behind the tall bank of apartment buildings west of Lake Shore Drive, and a chill sat him up. He'd met her, this woman, in a strange town. In a Mexican restaurant they talked with their heads close so even now he could remember the glitter in her makeup, the slightly caked mascara in her eyelashes when she'd cried a couple of times, the warning she gave him about being unfaithful, voice of experience: "I'm not married anymore because of something like this," she said to him. "I found out he was seeing someone else and I left him inside the hour. I took the kids." She was staring right at him. She knew what she was saying to him, the sign she was giving. "If you love a person and the person isn't faithful, there's no hurt like it."
    There was a phone booth in the lobby of the Drake Hotel, not far from Belmont Harbor.
    "South Ridge Legal Services," a voice said at the other end of the line.
    "I'm calling a guy named Skidmore."
    "I'm sorry," the voice said, "we're closed. Can I take a message?"
    "Closed?"
    "Yessir," said the voice, flat, bored, unapologetic.
    "I just wanted to tell this guy Skidmore . . . I wanted to tell him what to do with a red hot poker."
    "I see. That doesn't sound too nice, sir. May I say who called?" The man on the other end spoke in a monotone.
    "Tell him this is your old pal and worst enemy from when you were twelve."
    "I see. That's nice. That sounds very nice, I would say." Skidmore would not sound surprised nor break character. "What shall I tell him you are up to these days?"
    "Tell him it's none of his business."
    "I see," Skidmore said. "That doesn't sound very nice. Where shall I tell him you are calling from?"
    "Las Vegas, on the strip."
    "Nice. That's nice. Say hello to Wayne Newton for him." They both laughed. "Shall I tell him you were drunk when you called, like you usually are?"
    "I don't recognize the accent," Martin told him. "It isn't quite British."
    "Kind of a mix, I'd say," Skidmore said. "Sophisticated, don't you think?"
    "Not really."
    "You were in a religious thing last time you called. Drunk and very religious. We talked about baseball and the absence of an afterlife."
    "I don't remember," Martin said.
    "Drunk." Skidmore mumbled it away from the phone.
    "Your letters," Martin said, "are meaner than usual lately."
    "Don't start it. I'm not mean."
    "I'm not the only one who thinks it."
    "I know. So what else is happening?"
    "How's legal services for the poor in Nebraska?"
    "Terrible. I'm not such a great lawyer, I'm afraid. McFarland says I hate Indians and won't admit it."
    "I expect he's right."
    "Cut the crap. You don't know me anymore. Every cell's turned over since way back the hell whenever it was."
    "Some things don't turn over with the cells," Martin said.
    He heard a resolute sigh on the other end.
    Skidmore changed the subject. "I'm living in this trailer—in my office, you know? And I've got this Indian woman around here somewhere. Fifty years old. I just saw her go by the window here a minute ago, chasing a blue jay with a god damned tomahawk." The low familiar mean laugh.
    "Fifty," Martin said.
    "Nothing like it. We like to rassle," Skidmore said in his best boys-will-be-boys central Illinois idiom, but with the subsequent affectations of Australia crowding in.
    Martin laughed in spite of himself. The wires buzzed. Maybe this would be the last time they would ever talk. Letters were easier than phone calls. Nowhere in this world could Martin quite find the Skidmore he knew a long time ago, but the handwriting, it had never changed. Always, on the brink of making a call to Skidmore, he noticed his motivation. It was always a wave of feeling alone, wanting to be