Love Tracer
by Ann Bogle
YOU HAVE A NEW READABLE VOICE MAIL FROM (646) ...
(1:27 a.m.): "Hi honey it's about code (?) at 230 or so. I don't know what what time it is but it's it's it's snowing like crazy where I am in center (?). I would I would I would really hope that if you wake up. You would call me at my cell phone. Just call me and tell me you love me. I love you I'm stuck here. This is a disaster area. Okay."
(1:36 a.m.): "Hi this it's it's Tommy I'm I'm trying to call you but I guess you're asleep or or some place else. I'm trying to call you because I'm trying I wanna talk to you because I love you."
(2:56 a.m.): "Hi it's Charlie it's Pat at 4:00 in the morning my time. I just wanna tell you that I wouldn't mind getting him in bed with you the rest of my life."
What did he say? I know the answer because I listened to all three messages when I awoke. 7, 7, 7 ... 7 is to delete. 7 because he gets mad in thinking that I tape him. I do not tape him, I say: voice mail tapes him. Everyone knows that! Voice mail is a tape. His ex-wife tapes their phone calls in progress, he said she said. Why does she do that? I say. Now I think of her as customer service.
(2:07 p.m.): "And Margaret Kansas."
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Author's Note
Transcription of my voice mail messages from T.S. (late Saturday night into Sunday, Feb. 8). T.S. died without warning of natural causes in the night of early Feb. 11. He routinely talked of love and not only near the end of his life. I love this transcription in a deeper way even than when I assembled it two weeks ago.
The machine made a hodgepodge of his spoken words that were normal in diction in the audio version. I find the automated written rendition to be quite inexact and amusing. Perhaps the reader will find it that way, too.
This is great, great, great, Ann. I love that it's an unclear (yet very clear) to the reader, too, exactly what's being said. Loneliness and longing and that last, great paragraph:" I do not tape him, I say: voice mail tapes him. Everyone knows that! Voice mail is a tape. His ex-wife tapes their phone calls in progress, he said she said. Why does she do that? I say. Now I think of her as customer service."
also...your tag for this
*
(2:07 p.m.): "And Margaret Kansas."
Thanks, Kathy Fish and Chris Okum!
*, Ann. I like how your interesting, always smartly conceived stories challenge me.
This is a bit like a disassembled Tom Waits song, Ann. I'm happy you found it and kept it. The longing survives its destruction. What else needs to be said? *