“In the afternoon?”
I start to say, “Of course in the afternoon,” when he cuts back in, “Oh, sorry, yes, you’d hardly be able to go out at half past twelve at night and pick up a dozen eggs,” and I say, “Well I could, of course, if I went to a 7-Eleven,” and he falls silent.
I think about what we’ve just told each other and realize there is something majorly fishy afoot. I mean, he is saying he didn’t know if he’d called someone in the day or night but the lack of lag in our conversation means he has to be within a few thousand kays of me. None of it adds up.
“My father will be getting home pretty soon,” I say, a trifle nervously. “I have to start getting lunch ready, so I think—”
His scream nearly deafens me. “No, please, please, DON’T HANG UP! You’ll kick yourself if you do. No you won’t, because you’ll never know what you missed. But if you did know you’d kick yourself. My God, you’d go out and find a thick length of rope and hang yourself.”
He’s starting to sound like the sort of sexual weirdo thrill seeker they warn us about in social-ethics classes, and I’d get absolutely crazy frenzied mad at him except that something in his tone sounds desperate but not warped desperate, if you know what I mean. Like a third grade boy I knew in Balmain before we shifted down here to Melbourne, where the weather’s boiling hot one minute and drenching wet the next. This kid’s father used to beat him with an old-fashioned leather shaving strap or strop or whatever it’s called, a thing they used to sharpen their blades on in the days before electric razors and disposable Schicks, anyway this kid used to cop it whenever his old man was in a bad mood which seemed to be most of the time, and he really hated having to go home. The teachers had to shove him out the school gate. That’s not such a hot example now that I think about it, but the point is I am starting to feel sympathetic towards this crackpot on the other end of the phone.
“I’ll give you five minutes,” I say. “Make it good. Any sleaze and I hang up fast, and then I dial the cops.”
“What? You think I’m—” He laughs rather nicely. “No, if that was my game I’d find a less expensive way than this to go about it. Let me tell you something that might give you an appreciation of what’s at stake here. How much do you suppose this call is costing me?”
“Assuming it’s a local call, which I will for reasons too boring to go through,” I say instantly, “thirty cents. Or less if you’re ringing from a private phone. Or nothing if you’re using one in an office.”
“...Cents?” he says.
“It’s more?” I’m skeptical.
“That’s Australian cents, is it?”
“Look, what’s wrong with you?” I yell, getting annoyed. “Do you think we use drachmas in Melbourne? Pesos? Rubles? Telstra was an Australian company last time I looked. Strangely enough, they ask you pay them in Australian cents.”
It’s just as well Poppa didn’t hear this. He hates me talking back to grown-ups in that smart-aleck way, and he’d ground me for the night, which would break my heart because Davy has invited me over to his place to babysit his kid brother and, more to point, watch a video while his folks go to some dinner party.
“Thirty cents,” he says as if he can hardly believe his ears. “That’s inflation for you. All right, hold on to your hat, nameless teenager. And don’t, please don’t for the love of Harry, don’t drop the phone in your amazement and cut me off.”
“I never wear hats. I’m holding on with both hands.”
“Fifteen thousand pounds a minute this call is costing. Um, that’s about thirty thousand dollars.”
“Not at today’s exchange rate,” I say nastily. Show-off. “So you’re calling from England, are you? Why isn’t there an orbital delay?”
“A what?”
“Come on, nameless Englishman, you know perfectly well that an international call has to go to the local exchange and then get bounced up to a satellite in fixed orbit forty thousand kays up and then down again the same distance plus the extra distance around the curve of the Earth, it all adds up. Unless it goes by co-ax cable or optical fiber.”
There is a long pause. Then he says, “Is this a boy or a girl I’m talking to?”
That really makes my day.
“Sheesh! Didn’t anyone ever tell you the difference? What do you think?”
“I’m just going to have to keep apologizing, I can tell that much. The difficulty is, I can’t see what you look like through this fairly opaque earpiece. Now don’t get angry and hang up the phone, but I thought...I think...you’re a girl.”
“Brilliant. I’ll make it easier for you in future. There’s a rule to apply to these cases, see? The girls have high voices and the boys have deep voices.”
He laughs. “It doesn’t always work that way. My voice didn’t break until I was sixteen. I’m just surprised that a girl would know all that stuff about orbits.”
This is insane. The man is trying to win the Blundering Sexist Jackass Award.
Very curtly, I say, “Mister, you still haven’t said who you’re trying to reach.”
“I’m trying to reach the number in your house, which thank heavens I’ve done.” He seems to be breathing rather heavily. “Listen, you said ‘satellite,’ didn’t you? Are there people up there?”
“How should I know? Hang on, there are some Russians in the Mir space station, they seem to like long orbital missions, and that American guy they took up with them.”
“Russians and Americans in the same space station!” he says incredulously. “What about the American space program?”
“I don’t think there’s been a shuttle mission for a few weeks. But they’re all working on docking, so they can get Space Station Alpha started. Look, why ask me this? Can’t you read the paper?”
“The Moon,” he says urgently. “What about the Moon?”
“I think your five minutes must be up.” My feet are getting numb because of the angle I’m leaning against the table that the phone sits on. “What do you mean, what about the Moon?”
“Are there people up there? A lunar settlement?”
“Are you nuts or something? There’s nothing up there since they killed off Apollo before I was even born.”
“They killed Apollo? Wait a minute, this is getting too much for me to take in. Apollo the Greek god?”
I hear Poppa’s key in the door.
“Look, I don’t find your line of repartee particularly amusing, nameless nerd, and your five minutes ran out at the third beep.” Poppa hates me hanging off the phone, as he calls it. “So long, Charlie,” I say, and put down the receiver. I think I hear a thin drawn-out scream of anguish and wonder what kind of loony creep the nameless nerd really is.
Poppa catches
