The Phone Call

The Phone Call

Laurinda dropped her keys on the front entry table, grabbed up the mail scattered across the floor, and bumped the door closed with her hip. She pulled the velvet scrunchie band from her pony tail, freeing her curly, dark blonde hair to tumble down her back. She shook her head to loosen neck muscles and tresses alike. A sigh escaped her lips.

“It’s good to be home.” Laurinda flopped down on the hunter green, overstuffed sofa that dominated her small living room. A bright flash raced across the floor and leapt into her lap. “Hey Sandy-Boy!” she greeted the seventeen pound, orange tabby who shared her little house. She wrapped her arms around his ample body and snuggled her face against his soft fur. “I missed you too, buddy,” she laughed, delighting in his rumbling purr.

Sandy settled in her lap, she reached for notepad and pen, and cradled the phone as she dialed up her message service.

“Hi Honey,” her mom’s voice rang out clear across the miles. “I was just thinking about you, and wanted to say hi. Give me a call when you have a few minutes to chat. It’s time we caught up on the news. Love you!” Laurinda hit the delete command. She’d call her mom as soon as she listened to all the messages.

The second message was from Cormer's Dry Cleaning letting her know her jackets were ready for pick up. She scribbled a note to herself to collect them on the way home from the office tomorrow.

She was only half listening when the third message began. Laurinda froze. A voice from her distant past echoed in her mind. “Lauri? Are you there? It’s me. I need you! Lauri, please pick up. I’m at the bus station down town. It’s horrible here. Can you come get me? Please . . . Are you there?” A crash and a gasp, and the line went dead. The dial tone droned in Laurinda’s ear.

“Oh Lord! Is it possible?” Laurinda whispered. She smacked the save command, and punched replay to listen again. The panicked plea was haunting, scary. “Sherry, please let it really be you,” she whispered.

She called up the stats on the message. Two and a half hours ago. It would take her at least forty-five minutes to get back downtown.

“If only I’d listened to my messages from the office,” she berated herself, scrambling up from the couch, dumping a surprised Sandy-Boy in a heap onto the carpet.

She snatched her purse off the floor in the entryway, slammed the door behind her, and thumbed the car open before she hit the walkway below her tiny porch. Tires squealed as she backed out of the driveway in a swirl of dust, and squirreled halfway down her short street before gaining complete control of the car.

“Dear God, please don’t let it be too late,” she prayed as she slipped into the flow of traffic. The third message replayed in her mind, over and over in rhythm with the thump of her tires on the cement seams of the seemingly endless freeway.

She remembered that voice so well from far happier times. Playing in the shade under the cherry trees on hot summer afternoons, Barbie dolls and wardrobes spread across a faded quilt. Worlds visited, loves gained and lost all in childhood’s imagination. Cold winter Saturdays filled with grey skies and pristine white snow. Snow men built. Snowball wars fought, screams and laugher echoing between the houses. Steaming hot chocolate sipped carefully, warming chilled girls from top to tummy after long afternoons outside. Secrets whispered late at night under piles of bedcovers to the dim glow of a purloined flashlight with weak batteries. Bright blond and gleaming dark heads side by side secure in their safety. Hearts breaking when best friends were wrenched apart by three states and a father’s new job. A thousand letters crisscrossed the western United States trying to hold tight the fraying edges of sundered closeness. All, a patchwork making up early youth’s dearest friendship.

A single tear welled up and poured down Laurinda’s face. She dashed it away and glared at the slow traffic blocking her way, willing it all to the ninth hell and beyond. After a crawling eternity, she reached the off ramp for the old downtown section. Mechanically she touched the all-lock on her car doors.

Tumbled and patched buildings plastered with overlapping layers of garish graffiti slumped against each other. Gangs of sullen teens loitered on street corners. “Drat, I should have grabbed a hat!” Laurinda mumbled, her pale hair marking her as an obvious outsider even more than the newness of her vehicle. Staring straight ahead, afraid to catch the curious and scheming eyes that stalked on her from the grungy sidewalks, she threaded her way through the weary neighborhoods toward the bus depot.

Laurinda wedged the car halfway into a too small parking spot just under the jaundiced eye of an overworked security guard, who looked far too feeble to give an adequate alarm let alone protect anyone. A dead mouse lay belly up against the side of a planter once lush with greenery, now filled with litter and the thorny skeletons of half a dozen deceased rose bushes.

“You can do this!” Laurinda coached herself, tucking her wallet inside her waist band and clutching the panic button on her keyless entry controller. She slipped out of the door and beeped it locked. She nodded at the security guard. “Keep an eye on it, would’ja?” she asked. He nodded, slowly.

She raced to the creeping, rotating door and pushed herself through. Stepping away from the tarnished brass and cracked glass from a time gone by, she stepped into the main lobby of the bus depot. A wave of odor assaulted her, stale sweat from bodies too long without a bath, ripe urine from abandoned diapers, old food almost gone bad, but still harbored by homeless ancients crowded in a corner, musty dust clinging to cobwebs drifting from lazy fans droning overhead. She gasped and covered her face for a moment, then straightened and looked around.

Not one pair of eyes met hers.

A weary young mother tried to comfort a fussy child. A sleazy-dressed, brazen, teen-age prostitute swung her hips as she strutted her stuff across the lobby in a vain attempt to stir up a little business. An ancient man, withered as an old gnome, stared off into space in a half doze. A harried ticket agent cowered behind an inadequate brass cage arguing with a half-inebriated, over-dressed matron about the price of a ticket to Cleveland. Laurinda waited fidgeting with impatience as the woman purchased her ticket before she stepped to the window.

“Where to lady?” the agent demanded.

“No where actually,” she replied, “but can I ask you a question?”

“Ask away. Won’t guarantee an answer though.”

“Did you see a lady here about three and a half hours ago? My age. Dark hair. Brown Eyes. Probably really nervous or upset.”

“See lots like that, only I wouldn’t call them ladies.”

“She’s not like that. She called me from here but I wasn’t home.”

“Oh, that one. She was here. Asked to use the phone in the office. Couldn’t let her though. I’d lose my job.” He started to turn away.

“Wait,” Laurinda pleaded. “Did you see where she went?”

“No, but I think old Max, the security guard, gave her a quarter to call. Then the fracas broke out. Next time I noticed she was gone.”

Laurinda’s heart plummeted. “Okay, thanks anyway.” She walked away muttering. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Tears were creeping down her face.

“Hey Lady!” the old guard called as she stepped to her car. “Are you all right?”

“Oh. Yeah! I didn’t find my friend and I think she really needed me.”

“You must be the gal, that Sherry was trying to call,” he said. “Sad, skittish, little thing, she was. Said if you came to tell you she was coming home.” He stepped forward and opened the car door after Laurinda beeped it open.

“Don’t you mean going home?” she asked.

“Nope, she said it twice. ‘Tell her I’m coming home.’ Like she though it was really important.”

Laurinda slipped into the car and handed the old guy a five dollar bill. “Thanks for watching my car.”

She drove off, headed for the freeway home.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” she said again, and started to cry. “After all this time, so close, and then miss her, just because I wanted out of the office in a hurry. Damn!”

She drove in a daze remembering the first panic call she’d gotten from Sherry twelve years ago. “I hate this!” She smacked her fist against the steering wheel making the little car shimmy across the lane. “Twelve years! It happened again and I wasn’t there to help her. Again!

“Sherry! Sherry! How will I ever find you?” She gazed at the endless city spread around her. “Where you are? Should I call the police? Will they think I’m crazy? I’m not even sure it’s really you.”

Laurinda slowed as she neared an off ramp. Sobbing, tears were running in free-flowing rivulets down her face. She almost couldn't see to drive. She pulled off the freeway and meandered through residential areas, slipped through a warehouse district and ending up in a restored downtown area that looked as if it fell through time from the early 1940’s. She noticed a quaint coffee house and pulled into the closest open parking spot.

White bistro tables and chairs lined the sidewalk in front of the shop, many occupied by young couples and groups of chattering students with open lap top computers, flashing endless streams of information and entertainment.

Laurinda grabbed a tissue and swabbed her face before she got out. Snippets of conversation floated on the late evening air. She walked through the door and was enveloped in a warm aroma of coffee and cologne. She ordered an extra-large cappuccino and slipped into a corner chair. Depression flooded her soul.

Hours ticked by.

“Miss?” A gentle voice pulled Laurinda from her dark musings. “I’m sorry, but we're closing now. I have to ask you to leave.” The young waitress’s face reflected her genuine sorrow at interrupting.

“That’s okay. I should get home anyway.” Laurinda gathered up her purse and pulled a five dollar bill out. “For you,” she said. “Thanks for letting me vege out.”

“You don’t need to do that,” the girl started to refuse.

“Please take it,” Laurinda smiled. “I need to do something positive after the day I had.”

“Okay. Thanks. I can use it.”

“Night,” Laurinda called over her shoulder as she left the little shop. The night was cool but comfortable. Not quite ready to return to an empty house, she wandered down the walk. Window displays lit with a star-soft glow in the closed storefronts were somehow comforting. After a few minutes she pulled out her cell phone.

“Mom?” she asked with a catch in her voice.

“Sweetie, are you all right?” Love and concern flowed across the miles, as Laurinda poured out the afternoon’s escapade.

“Go home and get a good night’s sleep,” her mother suggested. “I don’t know what you can do now, but things always look better in the morning. We’ll think of something.”

“Thanks, Mom. Love you.”

When she got home, Laurinda didn’t notice the form slumped in the shadowed corner of her porch. She slipped her car into the little garage on the back half of her property and went in through the porch.

Sandy-Boy met her at the door demanding dinner, with a hurt tone that said he wasn’t happy about being abandoned all evening. He watched with avid interest as she pulled out a can of tuna and dumped the whole thing in his kitty bowl.

“Sorry Boy,” she apologized, “Eat up and enjoy.”

She ambled into the bedroom, shedding clothes as she went. Exhausted, she flopped across her spacious king-size bed, and dropped into an instant sleep. Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning Sandy-Boy crawled up and appropriated her pillow. She never saw the dark, disheveled head that peered with longing through the bedroom window as she slept.

The next morning she woke groggy and headache-y. She dialed her office from the bed.

“Caroline,” she mumbled. “I had a horrid night. I need a little more time this morning to get my act together. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it when I get in.

“I’m taking the morning off. Tell everyone I’ll be there a little after one.” She hung the phone up and rolled over with a small groan, burying her head under a pillow.

The birds sang a soft serenade outside her window. The early morning sun danced intricate patterns across the floor and up one wall. Car doors slamming announced the early departure of neighbors to school and work. Childish laughter spun a happy counter point. With a gentle sigh she drifted off to sleep again.

THUMP!

She jerked straight up in bed.

CRASH!

Groggy, it took a minute before she remembered where she was.

MEOOOWWW!

She bounded from the bed, grabbed a robe, and dashed down the hall. “Sandy-Boy Cat!” she hollered racing toward the front door.

The cat door was still swinging and she saw a flash of orange disappear into the kitchen. “What did you do, Cat?” she demanded as she yanked the front door open and plunged onto the porch. She collided with a solid body just rising from the floor.

Dark eyes met blue.

Recognition.

“Sherry?” Laurinda stared at the rumpled figure standing in front of her. “Sherry, is that you?”

The dark headed nodded, mute.

“Oh my lord girl! I thought we’d lost you forever."

Tears were flowing down both faces now.

“Is it okay?” a quiet voice whispered. “That I came I mean?”

“Yes! Yes!  Of course! I’ve been dreaming about this for twelve years!

Laurinda threw her arms around her childhood’s best friend and pulled her into a huge hug. Bright blond and dark heads side by side, an echo of childhood and a long held dream come true at last.