Cautiously Erring

He had been masturbating as the ringing began, but he could not be dissuaded from finishing first. His senses were simultaneously deadening yet climbing, a fire was pooling in his lower belly, and it after he came into his hand and was cleaning the white, hot liquid from his skin that the ringing stopped at last. Fine. And yet, it began again almost immediately again.

It was not his house, and he avoided answering the door or the phone while his aunt and uncle were away, but the ringing was relentless. He wondered if it could be them calling to direct him in some new assignment, or someone trying to reach them in an emergency, and with that thought, he frowned, licked the dry surface of his lips, and moved to answer the phone.

“Hello?”

His voice was as dry as his lips. He waited for a reply, then for a dial tone, but neither came forward. Without thinking, he picked up the telephone cord in his hands and followed it down the desk leg into the wall to ensure it had not somehow become disconnected, and it appeared to be intact however the result remained that the phone seemed suddenly not to be working. He continued to hold the receiver in his hand for several moments.

What was this feeling? It was just after midday and outside the sun was beating down the sides of the house. He had drawn the curtains to protect against the brightness of the day, but every now and then the breeze would shift the fabric aside and an arm of sunlight would reach into the room and spill onto the carpet like water. The wind blew steadily for a time, swelling and deflating the curtains in rhythm and as they moved, the fabric would drag along the floor and heave a faint rasping sound that illusioned as if the windows were breathing.

He stood motionless and upright, listening carefully to the wind, the curtains, the sounds of welding and agitated chickens in the distance, the neighbour’s car engine resurrected and the tires reversing out the driveway, pulling out and further away from there.

It occurred to him that he had been standing like this for several minutes. He thought to place the receiver back down, clear his lunch dishes away, and return to his work of replacing the wire screens in the windows of the chicken coup, but he kept still. Whatever the feeling was sent prickles across the surface of his skin. He wanted to reflexively turn his head and have a look around the room, but he simply could not move.

More sounds: the sound of papers fluttering, leaves accosting each other, two inquisitive barks from the neighbour’s dog, something wooden- a broom, perhaps- falling to the floor outside. Was he afraid, he wondered. No, he did not think so. He had just become frozen for a time in a train of thought that he could not draw an ending to. He left it alone, did a half-pant, half-sigh, and placed the phone down at last.

The next afternoon, his aunt and uncle had gone out again and he was left alone once more. He called her over, she came. She asked if he remembered what she had said.

“Oh, what?”

“You want to come inside me?”

“Oh.”

He beamed then burst out into disconcerted laughter. She laughed along with him.

Then, they were naked and he was on top of her.

It was her first time at the house and she said she was not used to the country air. It was the summer, and the dried grass was aggravating her allergies so, despite the heat, he had shut the windows so she could breathe, but her eyes had already become red and watery with irritation. It’s fine, he thought, he did not like to look into her eyes anyway. He pulled her sweater off and lifted her arms above her head so that the view of her breasts was unobstructed. Desire had taken him already, made him hard, clumsy, and impatient. She seemed to genuinely not care about foreplay and that was why he kept coming back to her although when they were not at the stage of having sex, she insisted on behaving too coquettishly to be his type.

He adjusted his position by moving down her body, preparing to enter her. A tear fell from the corner of her eye, down her temple, but he pretended not to see it until she asked him casually for a tissue. He gave an exhale, then reached down the side of the bed without dismounting her. He fumbled around for his t-shirt, then pulled himself back upright and handed it to her. As she wiped her eyes and sniffed the smell of his sweat on the shirt, he entered her. She whimpered and leaned her head back in chorus.

He was climbing again, fire pooling again, but this time he could feel something pulling at his attention. He couldn’t place it and, looking down into her screwed-up face, she definitely did not seem to sense anything beyond the boundaries of her own sensation. He frowned and looked down at her face without breaking his motion; her eyes were closed and she was gripping his forearms while moaning, her mouth open in a perfect circle, her eyebrows rising and falling continuously. She looks ridiculous, he thought, as if she were performing. He searched around the room for the source of his discomfort and saw the curtains rising and deflating in rhythm as if they were breathing.

His chest tightened. The phone was ringing.

…

When his uncle and aunt returned that night, they asked him if someone had been over while they were away.

“No. Why?”

Because someone had left cigarette butts on the ground around the side of the house, they said. He knew his aunt and uncle hated smoking and wouldn’t stand for littering around the property, so he never smoked while he was at the house, and although he had lied about having her over, he knew that she had never smoked in her life.

“Just never smoke inside the house and try not to litter on the property.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes. Well, don’t do it again.”

“I really didn’t-” but they had already moved on.
            He did not repeat himself but left it alone and went to the guestroom. The construction crew coming to demolish the barn was arriving excruciatingly early the next morning, and since he would need to be there to oversee it, his aunt and uncle had invited him to spend the night at the house. He closed the door behind him and sat down at the edge of the bed.

She had left quickly after he jumped off her to the catch the phone while it was still ringing. He yelled “hello? Hello? HELLO? Who is it?” several times but no sound had come back and the line had gone dead once again.

“What’s with you?” she mumbled as she lifted herself onto her forearms.

He had called her a slut and told her to leave.

Getting up from the bed, he picked up the receiver one more time and heard the dial tone awaiting his input. He felt confused and exhausted. His muscles were aching after several days of continuous manual labour and he longed for sleep, but he felt guilty about his exchange with her, and troubled that his aunt and uncle thought he had deliberately ignored the few rules they had set for him. Still, he wondered then who had been smoking outside since he had believed himself to be right about her aversion to smoking. He had helped her out of her car, led her inside, attempted to fuck her, then watched her leave, angry with him. When would she have done it? Had she come back later then? But why would she subject herself to that and yet who else had been there? He had not seen anyone nor knew of anyone who was supposed to be around during the day. It could have been a neighbour, and yet as he held that rationalisation in his hands, he felt its weightlessness, its inability to ground or comfort, but still he pulled it closer to himself and felt weaker in his constitution but more determined in his resolve. He climbed naked into the bed and fell asleep after a series of intentionally deep breaths.

When he heard the phone ringing in the middle of the night, he awoke immediately with a shock. He could not tell if he had been listening to the sound through his sleep, or if he had been dreaming of the ringing in presentiment. Despite the darkness and aftermath of cavernous sleep, he did not need to struggle to get a grasp on his condition- he had woken with that prickling sensation across his skin as well as the obscure sense of dread that had been growing heavier since the afternoon. He looked around the room and saw the curtains he had surely closed before sleeping had been moved aside entirely so that the wind blowing from the open windows did not need to pass through them as it entered the room, and the light from the moon outside was spilling in continuously like from a broken faucet.

He felt cold. The ringing was too loud in the quiet night, it would wake up his aunt and uncle if he did not answer, but he was sure that there would be no one there regardless.

Still, “hello?” he asked and waited, for he could hear, finally, the grainy sound of time and space soldering upon the other end of the line.

“Hello,” said the cheerful voice of a man.

He inhaled sharply and looked around the room for something that might indicate what time it was.

“What are you looking for?” the man asked.

He froze, the air calcified in his chest.

“Who are you?” 

The man’s good nature was impervious. “I’m just a guy, you know. I’m looking out for you.”

He felt rooted to the spot once more. He could not turn around to look out the window into the night.

“You’re looking out for me?”

“Mmhmm.”

“What does that mean?”

The man blew out from his mouth and searched for the correct words.

“Oh, you know, like, I just look out for you, keep you out of trouble, you know what I mean.”

Still frozen, “are you the one who’s been calling?”
“Yeah, I call, now and then.”

“I see.”
“Well, I’m glad we could talk, finally. I’ll let you get back to sleep. Good night!”

He paused; he had not breathed in over a minute. Somehow, he felt too vulnerable at breathing while he was still on the phone.

“Good night,” he said, and then set the receiver back onto the stand.