Why Me?

36

When May came home from her job at the supermarket, two sacks of groceries in her arms, the phone was ringing. She didn't particularly like events to pile up like that, so she squinted with some alarm and dislike at the ringing monster through the cigarette smoke rising up past her left eye as she dumped the groceries on the sofa. Plucking the final smoldering ember of cigarette from the corner of her mouth and flicking it into a handy ashtray, she picked up the phone and said, with mistrust, "Yes?"

A voice whispered, "May."

"No," she said.

"May?" The voice was still a whisper.

"No obscene calls," May said. "No breathers, none of that. I've got three brothers, they're all big, mean men, they're ex-Marines, they—"

"May!" the voice whispered, shrill and harsh. "It's me! You know!"

"And they'll come beat you up," May finished. She hung up, with some sense of satisfaction, and lit a new cigarette.

She was carrying the groceries on into the kitchen when the phone rang again. "Bother," she said, put the sacks on the kitchen table, went back to the living room, picked up the phone, and said, "I warned you once."

"May, it's me!" whispered the same voice, loud and desperate. "Don't you recognize me?"

May frowned: "John?"

"Sssssshhhhh!"

"Juh—what happened?"

"Something went wrong. I can't come home."

"Are you at An—"

"Sssssshhhhhhh!"

"Are you at, uh, that place?"

"No. He can't go home either."

"Oh, dear," May said. She had hoped against hope, but she had known this was a possibility.

"We're hiding out," the now-familiar voice whispered.

"Until it blows over?"

"This isn't gonna blow over, May," the voice whispered. "We can't wait that long. This thing's got the staying power of the pyramids."

"What are you going to do?"

"Something," whispered the voice, with a kind of dogged hopelessness.

"Juh—I brought home steak." She moved the phone to her other hand and the cigarette to the other corner of her mouth. "Can I get in touch with you somewhere?"

"No, we're—This phone doesn't have a number."

"Call the operator, she'll tell you."

"No, I don't mean there isn't a number on it, I mean it doesn't have a number. We plugged into a line. We can dial out, but nobody can call in."

"Does An—Uh. Does he still have that access?"

"Not any more. We took a lot of stuff and left. Listen, May, somebody may come around. Maybe you oughta go visit your sister."

"I don't really like Cleveland." In truth, May didn't really like her sister.

"Still," the voice whispered.

"We'll see what happens," May promised.

"Still," the voice insisted.

"I'll think about it. You'll call again?"

"Sure."

The doorbell rang.

"There's somebody at the door," May said. "I better get off now."

"Don't answer!"

"They don't want me, Juh—I'll just tell them the truth."

"Okay," the voice whispered, but sounded very dubious.

"Be well," May told him, and hung up and went to open the door. Four big burly men—rather similar to May's mental image of her nonexistent ex-Marine brothers—shouldered their way in, saying, "Where is he?"

May shut the door after them. "I don't know any of you people," she said.

"We know you," they said. "Where is he?"

"If you were him," May said, "would you be here?"

"Where is he?" they demanded.

"If you were him," May said, "would you tell me where you were?"

They looked at each other, stymied by the truth, and the doorbell rang. "Don't answer it!" they said.

"I answered for you," she pointed out. "This is open house."

The new arrivals were plainclothes detectives, three of them. "Police," they said, showing unnecessary identification.

"Come on in," May said.

The three detectives and the four tough guys looked at each other in the living room. "Well well well," said the detectives. "We're waiting for a friend," said the tough guys. "I've got to unpack my groceries," said May, leaving them to work it out among themselves.