There are a lot of good reasons to live, I tell her, and hope she won't ask for a list. I ask, isn't there someone who shares her grief over her brother? Maybe an old friend of her brother's who can help support her in this tragedy?
"Not really."
I ask, nobody else goes to her brother's grave?
"Nope."
I ask, not one person? Nobody else puts flowers on the grave? Not a single old friend? "Nope."
It's clear I made a big impression.
"No," she says. "Wait. There is this one pretty weird guy." Great. I'm weird.
I ask, how does she mean, weird?
"You remember those cult people who all killed themselves?" she says. "It was about seven or eight years ago. Their whole town they started, they all went to church and drank poison, and the FBI found them all holding hands on the floor, dead. This guy reminded me of that. It wasn't so much his dorky clothes, but his hair was cut like he did it himself with his eyes closed."
It was ten years ago, and all I want to do is hang up.
II Chronicles, Chapter Twenty-one, Verse Nineteen:" ... his bowels fell out ... "
"Hello," she says. "Anybody still here?"
Yeah, I say. What else?
"Nothing else," she says. "He was just at my brother's crypt with a big bunch of flowers."
You see, I say. That's just the kind of loving person she needs to run to in this crisis.
"I don't think so," she says.
Is she married, I ask.
"No."
Is she seeing anybody?
"No."
Then get to know this guy, I tell her. Let your mutual loss bring the two of you together. This could be a big breakthrough in romance for her.
"I don't think so," she says. "First of all, you didn't see this guy. I mean, I always wondered if my brother might be a homosexual, and this weird guy with all the flowers just confirms all my suspicions. Besides, he wasn't that attractive."
Lamentations, Chapter Two, Verse Eleven:" ... my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth ... "
I say, Maybe if he got a better haircut. You could help him out. Give him a makeover.
"I don't think so," she says. "This guy is pretty intensively ugly. He has his terrible haircut with these long sideburns that come down almost to his mouth. It's not like when guys use a little topiary facial hair the way women use makeup, you know, to hide the fact they have a double chin or they don't have any cheekbones. This guy just doesn't have any good features to work with. That and he's queer."
I Corinthians, Chapter Eleven, Verse Fourteen:"Doth not even nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him?"
I say, she has no proof he's a sodomite.
"What kind of proof do you need?"
I say, ask him. Isn't she supposed to see him again?
"Well," she says, "I told him I'd meet him at the crypt next week, but I don't know. I didn't mean it. I pretty much just said that just to get away from him. He was just so needy and pathetic. He followed me all over the mausoleum for an hour."
But she still has to meet him, I say. She promised. Think of poor dead Trevor, her brother. What would Trevor think of her ditching his one remaining friend?
She asks, "How did you know his name?"
Whose name?
"My brother, Trevor. You said his name."
She must've said it first, I say. Just a minute ago she said it. Trevor. Twenty-four. Killed himself last week. Homosexual. Maybe. Had a secret lover who desperately needs her shoulder to cry on.
'You caught all that? You're a good listener," she says. "I'm impressed. What do you look like?"
Ugly, I say. Hideous. Ugly hair. Ugly past. She wouldn't like the looks of me at all.
I ask about her brother's friend, maybe lover, widower, is she going to meet him next week like she promised?
"I don't know," she says. "Maybe. I'll meet the dork next week if you'll do something for me right now."
Just remember, I tell her. You have the chance to make a big difference in someone's loneliness. Here's a perfect chance to bring love and supportive nurturing support to a man who needs your love desperately.
"Fuck love," she says, her voice dropping lower to meet mine. "Say something to get me off."
I don't know what she means.
"You know what I mean," she says.
Genesis, Chapter Three, Verse Twelve:" ... The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
Listen, I say. I'm not alone here. All around me are caring nurturing volunteers giving their time.
"Do it," she says. "Lick my tits."
I say she's taking advantage of my naturally caring nurturing nature. I tell her I'll have to hang up now.
She says, "Put your mouth all over me."
I say, I'm hanging up now.
"Harder," she says. "Do it harder. Oh, harder, do me harder," she laughs and says. "Lick me. Lick me. Lick me. Lick. Me."
I say, I'm hanging up now. But I don't.
Fertility's saying, "You know you want me. Tell me what you want me to do. You know you want to. Make me do something terrible."
And before I can even take myself out, Fertility Hollis screams a ragged howling porn goddess orgasm scream.
And I hang up.
I Timothy, Chapter Five, Verse Fifteen:"For some are already turned aside after Satan."
How I feel is cheap and used, dirty and humiliated. Dirty and tricked and thrown away.
Then the phone rings. It's her. This has to be her so I don't pick up-All night long the phone rings, and I sit here feeling cheated and don't dare answer.
About ten years ago I had my first one-on-one session with my caseworker, who's a real person with a name and an office but I don't want to get her in trouble. She has her own set of problems. She has a degree in social work. She's thirty-five years old and can't keep a boyfriend. Ten years ago she was twenty-five and just out of college and she was swamped with collecting the clients assigned to her as part of the federal government's brand-new Survivor Retention Program.
What happened was a policeman came to the front door of the house where I worked back then. Ten years ago, I was twenty-three years old, and this was still my first posting because I still worked really hard. I didn't know any better. The yards around the house were always wet dark green and clipped so smooth they rolled out soft and perfect as a green mink coat. Nothing inside the house ever looked depreciated. When you're twenty-three, you think you can keep up this level of performance forever.
A ways back from the policeman at the front door were two more police and the caseworker standing in the driveway by a police car.
You can't understand how good my work felt up to the moment I opened that door. My whole life growing up, I'd been working toward this, toward baptism and getting placed in a job cleaning houses in the wicked outside world.
When the people I worked for had sent the church a donation for my first month's work, I was beaming. I really believed I was helping create Heaven on Earth.
No matter how people stared at me, I wore the mandatory church costume everywhere, the hat, the baggy trousers with no pockets. The long-sleeved white shirt. No matter how hot it got, I wore the brown coat if I went out in public, no matter what silly things people said to me.
"How come you can wear shirts with buttons?" somebody at the hardware store would want to know.
Because I'm not Amish.
"Do you have to wear special secret undergarments?"
I think they were talking about Mormons.
"Isn't it against your religion to live outside your colony?"
That sounds more like the Mennonites.
"I've never met a Hutterite before."
You still haven't.
It felt good to stand out from the world, just mysterious and pious. You weren't a lantern under any basket. You stood out righteous as a sore thumb. You were the one holy man to keep God from crushing all of the Sodom and Gomorrah seething around you in the Valley Plaza Shopping Center.