Clive answers the phone. He’s dialed in. He dials them up, they call him back, he answers the phone. Did you dial me? they say. She says, Did you dial me?
Clive answered the phone and it was Ferdy and Ferdy told him about the affair, and Clive thought he was so dialed in. How had he missed this? He got angry with Fredy and Ferdy told him Dial it back, man, dial it back. Clive said, Screw you, and hung up, and dialed right back. She said, Did you dial me? and Clive said, Yes, I did, I dialed you because Ferdy dialed me up; and she said, Oh shit.
He hung up on her and she dialed him back a second time. He answered with a snarky, Did you dial me? and she said, Don’t be a smart ass, and Clive said, Don’t fuck my friends and I won’t. And don’t dial me any more today. I need time. She asked him, Time to do what? and he said, Things. Things to make me forget what a cheating whore you are, and she said, I deserve that; and he said, Yes, you do, and don’t dial me anymore today; take me off your speed-dial so you won’t be tempted, because he knew her. She asked him what he was going to do and he repeated, Things, because he didn’t know yet, he wasn’t sure; but he knew he had to do a lot of them to wash certain images from his mind. He figured he would need a fire hose inserted in his ear. He considered dialing up the fire department, but rightly figured they wouldn’t understand. So:
He started with the radio. Clive switched it on and heard classical. Not being in the mood for classical, he turned the dial through pop and more pop, Irish folk-ballads, American country music (what was that doing there?) and more pop, and some rap he couldn’t understand but thought it had a decent beat, two ska stations, four hip-hop, one punk/Celtic punk, two alternative, one post-Brit-pop, and a shitty folk station no one he knew ever listened to. More pop. Clive spun the dial past the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties, but old times weren’t happening. So he spun the dial just to see where it would land and it landed on static so he left it there. He turned it up.
With the loud static burning in his mind like Sally’s face hovering over Antoine’s cock, telling him all the things she had told Clive while hovering over his, Clive got out the vacuum. He vacuumed two feet of the polyester-blend “oriental” rug in his sparse living room—and stopped. He bent over, then got down on his knees. Dirt. Pieces of leaves. Blades of grass. This vacuum is set wrong, he decided. He reached for the dial, and dialed it down to Short. Short nap, close-cropped. He could see Sally’s groomed lady parts so he punched the vacuum bag and dust flew. He sneezed. Clive’s only option at this point was to readjust the nap control back up, which he did. Dial up. No, that won’t get this damn carpet clean, he was thinking. Dial down. Sally’s pussy. Fuckit, I’ll suck it up and throw it out in the bin with the rest of the dust and the leaves and the grass and the small rocks and the, What’s this?
Clive got on elbows and knees, putting his face closer to the red, blue, green (just a little) and black-lined delineated carpet (which created the illusion of Asian order in the fake Persian rug). That something shiny: Could it be? Clive had to move a small, thin piece of what appeared to be tree bark to find the solitaire earring. Ha!
He threw that dial down as far as it would go and vacuumed and vacuumed and vacuumed and vacuumed and that spot and that spot and that spot and the rattling-rattling in the brush-head and the rattling in the hose and the clatter in the intake and then the silence of the thing, captured. Hahahahahahaha. It was more of grumble than a giggle, but the meanest joy he had ever felt about destroying something he had loved but not purchased himself consumed him with consequence and purpose.
He dialed his mum. You dialed me? she said and he wondered why the fuck everyone says that when of course he dialed them, he just dialed them didn’t he? Sally’s cheating on me, Clive told his mum. She said, You dialed me to tell me that? Yes, he said, he did. She said, What’s that noise? He told her, It’s the radio and she said, It doesn’t sound like music. He said, It isn’t and she said, What is it? Static, he said. I find it relaxing. She wanted to know why. Clive shouted at his mother, Because Sally is fucking Antoine Gilderberry!
Clive set the phone down and went to the radio. He grasped the round dial and turned it until classical music came back on because his mother liked classical music. He returned to the phone and told her, There. She said that was better and asked, Why Antoine? He has such a large nose. Clive told her he had to dial up Ferdy and he had to go and he was happy he called her because she was so understanding and she said, Why do you listen to static? Do you need to see someone, and he said, Yes. Sally and the undertaker in one room, preferably a cold one in the basement, and his mother said, My.
Clive dialed up Ferdy. Clive dialed up his best friend and said, Why. Why did you dial me up to tell me that? Why would you do that? Why would you dial me up to tell me my almost-wife, my bride-to-be, my fiancé, the love of my life, my Sally, my Sally-Mae is having an affair before it’s even properly an affair?
Before Ferdy could answer, Clive hung up and dialed his mother again. Did you dial me? Yes! Yes, I dialed you! I dialed you up! Yes! His mum pointed out that he sounded In a Tizzy. Yes! Yes, I’m in a tizzy! I dialed you up because I’m in a tizzy because Ferdy dialed me up to tell me that Sally had dialed him up to tell him that Antoine had dialed her up to tell her that he was going to dial me up to tell me that he was fucking my fiancé—her, Sally—and Clive’s mother said, Must we use such coarse language, Clivey? Clive said, Yes! Yes, for fuck’s sake, Mum, we have to use coarse language when referring to acts of wanton harlotry, yes we do! His mother said, You didn’t know?
Clive hung up and spun the radio dial at random; gratefully it landed on static again. He turned it up.
Clive dialed up his best friend Ferdy and said before Ferdy could say anything first, If you ask me if I dialed you up, I will come over and kill you. And may I remind you that you live one block away, so I could be there before you even decide to walk to your door, so stay put on your stupid couch and listen to me. Ferdy said, How did you know I was on my couch and what’s that noise? Are you vacuuming? Clive said, No I’ve already vacuumed, that’s the radio, and I know you’re on your couch because I can see you on your couch; and no, I’m not outside, you can stop looking out your window. I know because I can see it in my head, because you are never any-goddam-where-else. Now, how is it that my mum knew about Sally and Antoine? Does anybody else know? Ferdy said, Yes. It sounds like vacuum. It’s not, Clive told him, it’s the radio. It doesn’t sound like the radio, Ferdy said, and Clive said, That’s because it’s not on a station, and Ferdy asked him why it wasn’t, and Clive said, Because you dialed me up to tell me that my fiancé was fucking my neighbor and I found it a tad unsettling. I’m in an absolute tizzy, h added flatly. You don’t sound like you’re in a tizzy, Ferdy told him. Well, I am, Clive said. Does anyone else know? Ferdy said, Yes. Does everyone know, Clive asked him. Ferdy said, Yes, without pause. Did you dial them all up to tell them? Clive asked his now-former best friend. When Ferdy didn’t answer, Clive hung up the phone, went to the radio and turned the volume dial up as far as it would go. The roar of the static made Clive feel like he was dashing through space at the speed of light. He grabbed the large, aluminum kitchen trash can, emptied the vacuum into the bin, and started for the back door.
In the alley, Clive could still hear the static blaring out his open windows. It was comforting, even out here. A neighbor, kindly old Ms. Mapleton, from Cockfordshire—that was their neighborhood joke; a few years earlier, a decade or so, Ms. Mapleton had invited Ferdy in for tea then dropped to her knees. Ferdy didn’t object, but he still feels dirty. She was in her mid-fifties and was lonely; they all laughed for a decade, and still do—really of Dockshire, asked Clive if he was having problems with his plumbing. At first he thought she was asking about his male equipment (because of the whole Ferdy Cockfordshire thing) but then realized she meant the sound blaring out the windows and couldn’t figure any way that she could possibly make the leap to plumbing. So he said, No, it’s the furnace, which seemed to satisfy her as she mumbled something about her furnace which Clive didn’t hear because now he had seen Antoine walking towards him.
Antoine said, Clive we need to talk, and Clive said, Sure, right before he upended the trash bin on Antoine and began beating him about his head and shoulders and upper body with the aluminum weapon. Ms. Mapleton said, Oh!, and went in to dial up the bobbies. She was the only one anyone knew anywhere who still called them that. Ferdy called them the fuckin’ coppers. This was more common.
Though Antoine kept besieging Clive to, Stop! Stop! Please stop! Clive! Stop! Please stop! Clive! Stop! Please stop! Clive, please! Please stop! Oh, please stop! Clive did not until he was done. When he was done—he felt that he was done—he turned away, walked back inside and dialed up Ferdy. If the fuckin’ coppers come I’m telling them you did it and sending them to your house. Ferdy said, Did what? Clive could still see him on that damned ugly orange and yellow floral couch Ferdy’s aunt gave him just before she died of consumption. Clive hung up, tried to turn the dial up on the stereo, but it was at its maximum; so Clive turned on the vacuum as accompaniment and went back outside.
Antoine was still trying to regain his senses and put his hands up to protect himself from another bin attack by his neighbor Clive who was clearly in an absolute tizzy over this sexual matter involving Sally, Clive’s now-former fiancé. I didn’t mean anything by it, Antoine was foolish enough to say. So Clive said, One of her earrings is in there, in that mess; the one that was now all over Antoine, Clive’s now-former neighbor, because one of them was moving for sure and it wasn’t Clive, is what he was thinking. But he hadn’t fully eliminated that possibility. Antoine wanted to know what Clive was talking about and Clive told him, Fuck off, and went back inside, wondering if the solitaire earrings which had shown up in the now dead-to-him Sarah-Mae Wupperton-Ashleigh’s ears one day a few months ago came from Antoine because when Clive asked Sally about them she said, Oh these? I picked them up for a song at Tesco, and Clive knew she was lying because he said, Next to the bananas? and the semen-slurping strumpet didn’t deny it.
Clive dialed up his mother and while she was asking him if he had dialed her up, Clive just aimed the receiver of his phone handset toward the radio and the vacuum, and then he hung up. He dialed Ferdy and asked him, Are the fuckin’ coppers there, yet? and then he hung up.
Clive dials up Sally.
