Furnace. Muriel Gray
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big black guy next to him was holding the phone against his ear with his shoulder, passing a rubber ball restlessly from hand to hand as he listened, his eyes glazed like he was hearing bad news.
Josh guessed what he might be hearing. The guy’s dispatcher would have put him on hold, and the profound expression of misery was most likely induced by an age of listening to the theme from Love Story reproduced electronically by a sadistic phone company. He looked at his boots. All he wanted to do was to call Elizabeth and tell her he was less than an hour from home. No filthy talk like you sometimes heard and wished you hadn’t, but he wanted privacy when they spoke, and if he didn’t get a free phone soon he’d miss her. He’d already gone past that delicious time when she would pick up the phone beside the bed and answer in a sexy, sleepy way. Right now she’d have a mouth full of Cheerios and be pulling on a jacket ready to go to the store, pleased to hear from him, but with a tone of urgency in her voice that meant he was making her late. Five more minutes and she’d be gone.
The door of the centre booth opened but infuriatingly the guy hadn’t stopped yakking.
Josh made a move towards him and the guy held up a hand without looking at him.
‘Uh huh? Well it ain’t okay with me.’
A listening pause.
‘No, it ain’t my last word. This is my last word. Okay, two words. Fuck you.’
He slammed the phone down, got up off the small plastic seat and pushed past Josh.
Josh grinned at him, and gesticulated at the phone. ‘It’s a drag always havin’ to call your grandmother, ain’t it?’
The man looked for a moment like he might throw a punch, but something in Josh’s eyes held his clenched fist by his side, and he satisfied himself with a ‘Yeah, funny guy’ muttered beneath his breath.
Josh smiled at the man’s back and entered the booth, his grin deforming into a grimace at the blush of sweat those substantial buttocks had left on the plastic. But he needed to make that call. He decided to stand, and as he punched in the code for the card he shook his head. Seemed like all truck drivers did was drive and then get mad with someone for no other reason than they didn’t like driving.
Choose any truck stop, any row of phones and mostly all you’d hear was a chorus of deeply discontented men. Some of it was just plain moaning, but enough of it was from the heart to make hearing it uncomfortable. Why drive if you hated it so much? Josh liked it fine. Just fine. And he loved Elizabeth. If the seat was clammy with his sweat after he’d talked to her, it wouldn’t be from stress.
The vacant computerized woman on the phone thanked him in a monotone for calling Driveline and informed him in a voice that suggested she was painting her nails that he had seven dollars and fifteen cents left to make his call. He punched in their number.
It rang eleven times and just as he was about to hang up Elizabeth came on, out of breath, and sounding angry.
‘Yeah?’
‘Hey. You should get into telephone sales, honey.’
She tried to change the tone, but there was still something there. Something at the back of her throat.
‘Hey yourself! Where are you?’
‘On the pike. Near enough home to smell next door’s mutt.’
‘Well get back here. I missed you.’
It was familiar small talk. But she said the last bit as though she really meant it.
‘You okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘Big day, huh?’
‘Yeah. Big.’
A melancholy tone reaffirmed that something was wrong. Now, in this tiny booth with two guys already waiting outside, wasn’t the time to find out what it was.
‘Want me to come straight by the store?’
‘How you going to park Jezebel?’
‘Normally I just pull on the brakes and shut her big ass down.’
‘And screw the Pittsburgh morning traffic?’
‘For you I’d leave her standin’ in the middle of the Liberty Tunnel at five-thirty Friday night.’
She laughed, and hearing her was like he’d swallowed something warm and sweet.
Elizabeth sounded more like herself when she spoke next. ‘Then come on by and make a traffic cop’s day.’
‘See how it goes.’
‘Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
He hung up and left the booth. Had he imagined it or had she really sounded uneasy? Understandable. Today, she and Nesta started their new career. A sackload of tasty redundancy pay blown on their crazy business.
Josh would have spent it buying something a man could use, like a decent flat-bed to switch with the trailer he was pulling so he could haul bigger sections of steel when he needed to. But it was Elizabeth’s choice, her money. She didn’t spend much of his, and he certainly didn’t spend any of hers.
Fifteen years as a machinist hadn’t made her rich but facing a new day, every day, sewing nylon umbrella sleeves, cheap bags for storing shoes and suit covers, had given her plenty time to think about her life. She and her buddy were about the only girls not weeping when the scrawny, acne-covered floor supervisor told them they were out. With a little shame, Josh admitted to himself that he didn’t really know if the costume ball hire shop was Nesta’s idea or Elizabeth’s. But he sincerely hoped the name ‘All Dressed Up’ was Nesta’s. It was seriously crap.
Of course Elizabeth would be scared today. The door would be opening in a couple of hours for the first time, and she’d be praying, fruitlessly Josh thought, that there’d be a queue of customers round the block, ready to part with cash to dress up in the ridiculous costumes she and Nesta had been sewing for the last three months.
Costume balls baffled him. To Josh, the idea of standing around at a party with a beer in your hand talking to someone about real estate or kit cars seemed pretty attractive. But not if you were dressed like Pinocchio and the guy you were talking to was trying to make an earnest point in a fun-fur kangaroo suit. But if it made money, then so what?
What bugged him was that Elizabeth’s tone had sounded more than just anxious. Sounded like she was sad.
He wandered out of the phone lobby and through the shop towards the restaurant. Maybe he should buy her something.
Truck stops nearly always boasted carousels full of junk that skulked near the cash desk like muggers, offering a variety of garbage for the guilty driver to take home and pacify his sweetheart. But until now Josh had never really looked at it.
The days when he’d done things he’d have to say sorry for were the days he hadn’t had someone steady like Elizabeth waiting at home. Now he had her, he didn’t do much on the road except drive, eat, sleep and shit.
Pausing for the first time at the cylindrical stand like it was a confession box, Josh let an embarrassed gaze drift over the assortment of tacky merchandise. He found himself looking quizzically at some round balls of fluff with eyes and feet made of felt, sporting cloth ribbons that said everything from ‘I Love You’ and ‘You’re Cute’ to statements of coma-inducing inanity like ‘I’ve been to West Virginia’. A gentle push of his forefinger sent the display turning slowly round to reveal badly-made plastic boxes covered in lace hearts that had been hastily glued to the lids, and some dusty-looking dolls dressed as cowgirls.
Josh glanced around, anxious in case anyone had seen him looking at this stuff, only to discover the woman behind the counter already had. She smiled when he caught her eye. Maybe someone had given her one of those fluffy balls once, with a message on the ribbon that she wanted to hear. He lowered his eyes, and wandered