Who Calls From Ohio?
Finally she tweezed out the worst of them. Eyebrows—why did one side go gray—not even gray; white—before the other, and why were the white hairs twice as long? In her bathroom you had to stand bent with your head tilted even to seem them. But if you bent you saw them all right.
The phone rang. Her ringer sounded like a doctor’s office. Like she was getting called into a doctor’s office. The call was from Ohio. At least her phone showed caller ID before you flipped it open. Otherwise it was like carrying a piece of Chernobyl in your purse. She held the phone upside down, away from her face, and tapped up the volume. She didn’t know anyone in Ohio.
“Is Lynn Smyth available?” It was a woman’s voice, bright, American. She said “Smyth” like “Smith,” with a question.
“Smyth. Like Blythe.” Lynn felt around the top of the dresser for her hands-free set and dug her thumbnail under the plastic cover where it plugged into the phone. Cheap, cheap piece of crap. She heard the call cut out.
“Hello?” she said.
Lynn had an idea. The woman had been the one to break the rules. Lynn thumbed through the phone’s functions. She thought of all the things she could say. That she hoped the caller died screaming. She liked the spit of the ‘p’. She’d gotten the line from a movie. Not a movie anyone else would remember.
A recorded woman’s voice began. “Thank you for calling card services. You may have received a courtesy call. We find that courtesy calls provide our customers with better service.”
Lynn flipped her phone shut. She felt as if she’d failed to move aside from someone’s sneeze.
She went to the computer. Not everyone knew the term reverse lookup. Lynn knew a lot of things that most people didn’t know. She searched under business numbers. As she’d expected—nothing. The number was residential. For ninety-nine cents, she could get a name.
She was already late for work. She drove as fast as she dared, ten miles per hour over the speed limit. It was November. The town was full of branches and windows. Anyone could have been noting her route. That wasn’t something you thought to check. That the stove was off, the door looked—those things, you checked.
Why would someone call from Ohio just to say her name wrong?
At State Street a cement truck pulled up so close in the rearview mirror that she could only see three letters on its grill: ACK.
In the mirror her eyes were darting, off-center. She hadn’t finished her eyebrows. She had a meeting at ten with the regional supervisor. The regional supervisor was going to see her lopsided. The regional supervisor was twenty-six years old. Get an M.B.A. and toss your hair and they think you can run the entire region at twenty-six.
There was a drug store on State. She could buy tweezers and finish in the parking lot and for all she cared people could stare. Lynn hoped someone did. She was going to keep right on with what she was doing.
