never stopped ringing. It’s Claire, he thought. Only Claire knew he was alone in the house, how long it took him to get to a phone. Then he thought, No, that’s not true, plenty of people know, Claire’s driver, even the dispatcher at the taxicab company, the agents at the airlines, the woman at the bank, friends to whom he’d spilled the beans, Harry in Portland, Bill at S.O.S. Even, when it came right down, Information. God, he hoped it wasn’t Information. Then he realized he was wrong about that one too. He hoped it was Information. They could be checking up on him to see if he was still crippled. He wanted Information on his side and decided not to pick up. The phone stopped ringing. Though, actually, Schiff thought once it had stopped, it could have been anyone. Thieves checking to see if the house was empty so they could come out and strip it, take what they wanted. If it was thieves, Schiff thought, it was probably a good thing he hadn’t yet had time to do anything about his wish list—— that second walker, the dozen or so extra cordless telephones he’d thought he might buy. And suddenly scratched the cordless telephones and had another, less expensive, even better item for the wish list—— an answering machine. They didn’t have an answering machine—Schiff felt clumsy speaking to them and didn’t like to impose on others what he hated to do himself— but he had to admit, in his new circumstances, under his novel, new dispensation, an answering machine could be just the ticket. It might just fill the bill. The problem with an answering machine as Schiff saw it was the message one left on it to tell callers you couldn’t come to the phone. If the device caught important calls you didn’t want to miss, it was also an open invitation to the very vandals and thieves he was concerned to scare off. “I can’t come to the phone just now, but if you’ll just…” was too ambiguous. It wouldn’t keep the tiger from your gates. A good thief would see right through the jesuiticals of a message like that and interpret it any way he wanted. Schiff wouldn’t take it off the wish list but he’d first have to compose an airtight message for the machine before he ever actually purchased one. An idle mind is too the devil’s workshop, Schiff thought, and rose from the chair, plowed—he often thought of his walker as a plow, of his floors and carpets as fields in which he cut stiff furrows— his way to the tchtchk and, quite to his astonishment, found almost at once statements from the banks with their account numbers on them. These he put into his mouth, but he couldn’t go up just yet, couldn’t yet face the struggle with the walker on the Stair-Glide; he had to rest, build strength, and decided to go into the living room for a while and sit down.
Where he collected his strength and doodled messages in his head for the answering machine.
Hi, he thought, this is Jack Schiff. Sorry to have missed your call, but I’ve stepped out for five minutes to run out to the store for some milk for my coffee. Just leave your et cetera, et cetera, and I’ll get right back to you.
That wasn’t bad, Schiff thought, but what would people who knew him make of it, of his “stepped out” and “run out” locutions? Of the swiftness and fluency of movement—so unlike him—he implied in that “get right back to you” trope? Unless they read it as the code that it was, they would think they’d reached some other Jack Schiff. Also, what if the thieves waited five minutes and called back? Or ten? Or fifteen? Or a whole hour and then heard the same damn message? After they robbed him they’d probably trash the place, maybe even torch it.
Hi, et cetera, et cetera, he revised, but—— WOULD YOU CUT THAT OUT, PLEASE ? DOWN, DAMN IT DOWN ! Sorry, my pit bull’s acting up again. Look, just leave your name at the sound of the——oh, my God, BEEEEP !
Well, Schiff thought, pleased with the new composition and his