Zan looks at the phone in his hand. “Excuse me?” he says.
“How may I assist you today?” she says.
“That isn’t what you said.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry?”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“That is what I said.”
“You said something else,” Zan insists.
“That is what I said, sir. How may I assist you today?”
Zan chews over the moment and clears his throat. “I’m calling to find out the status of our most recent application for a modification of our home loan. This is the fifth we’ve submitted.” He thinks. “Or maybe the sixth.”
“Let me review that,” she answers, and there’s a pause. Then, “The application is still being processed, motherfucker.”
Now Zan doesn’t feel the need to examine his telephone. “What?”
“The application is still being processed.”
“That isn’t what you said. You said something else.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You said something else. What did you call me?”
Another pause. “Sir, I’m not sure what you think I said, but the application is still being processed and a modification officer will be getting back to you. Cocksucker.” Lying in bed at night, Zan concludes that maybe the new president isn’t going to save their house. He gets up and turns on the light because otherwise he becomes insufferable even to himself, in his sense of persecution and guilt over how his children now find themselves in this predicament. He wonders about the terms of his life insurance policy and how it might take care of his family if he could somehow will himself into an aneurysm; he reflects on the perversity of karma and how it could be that the family’s luck could go so bad on the occasion of adopting an African orphan. Aren’t you supposed to get points for that on the karmic scoreboard? He muses (if that possibly can be the word) on how his time is nearly over and yet his moment, whenever or whatever that ever was supposed to be, still hasn’t come. He thinks about his father-in-law who died six years ago and his last words: “That went fast.”