Noir Car, Episode 5

...knowing that the princess phone white like princess bones could only hold news, good or bad, which would shake her from her showered absolution. She knows the noise, the sound of the phone, the ring that tells tales, the ring that always calls forth unsavory adventures, the ring that lets the night in. Let the machine get it.

She's drying behind her pale ears, tipping her head and trying to shake the water out, when the machine clicks and picks up the phone. She halts, half-hoping to hear the a salesman's computer coldly cut off her machine's advances, but she hears something instead of the nothing she'd hoped for. The speaker speaks, a whispery mumble rising to one nearly clear word then a clash and clatter, a big bad sound that shakes her teeth.

It's his voice, of course. The one she'd just washed off in the scalding shower like sulfur from rotting roses. It's his goddamned voice. Of course, she can't resisit. What's that word?, she thinks, against her will. What's that word and where is he calling from and why am I even wondering when I wish he was dead?

Against her will to stay alone, she steps, one, two, three, quick to the irresistible machine and rewinds and listens, rewinds and listens, rewinds and listens, until the word gets more or less clear and she can't stand to hear the crashing that cuts it off. It's his voice, it's his, the only one he has and the only one she hears, the one when he's in trouble, because he's always in trouble, at least when he bothers to call at all.

The word is clear, she thinks she hears the word. Looking the smoking gun of a word up in the phone book, it tells her all she needs to know: that the night has just begun and she's along for a ride to the hot dog stand from Hell. She puts on clothes and slams on her makeup, steps inevitably down the stairs, chasing the sound of the door she slammed behind her. Piling her sleepy self into her sand-colored Studebaker, pushing the clutch and revving the engine,

TO BE CONTINUED
episode 5 by Matt Fontaine