“Then done.” Hangs up. Now begin worrying about it. Not just what she’ll tell Helene, but why I said it. Why did I? Not just this call but the last. Not just all of what I said to the phone and before her to the loan woman but most of what I said and did tonight starting with the party or an hour into it and how with Helene I just about ruined it. Did I? Worry about it. Useless to, since what can I do about it now and so on? High, that’s why I acted the way I did I can say, first time in my life or in a year I got anywhere near to being so inebriated, which is a lie, but no reason I can’t use it to try to swing things around a little my way. “You see, Helene, for some reason — no, that’s not the truth. Yes it is, only I’m almost too ashamed at my behavior that night to recount and explain it, but I will because what more, since it’s also in my self-interest, can I tell you but the excuse, I mean the truth, which is the reason I called, or one of them. For you see, Helene, I didn’t think you left Diana’s for a wedding but because I’d chased you from it with my slobbering attention from afar and series of unsuccessful passes close up, which is the reason I thought you’d be home the first time I called. As for my second call, if your answering service told you of it, and if it didn’t then I don’t remember making any second call, I’ve no excuse except that I was still high and had begun to act like a fool and was also trying to undo the damage of my first call, if you were told of it, and if you weren’t then I only made one call — the second one — to leave an innocuous message that I’d called and would try to get back to you soon, but because of my highness I got carried away. Anyway, now I feel lousy about it and want to apologize for any discomfort I might have caused you by chasing you away from Diana’s if I did, and also through you to your answering service for my foolish and perhaps disturbing calls to it via your number, and also to you again for my having misrepresented myself to your answering service and possibly embarrassing you because of it by intimating I was your friend or knew you better than I did. No, that’s confusing and tumescent, just as that phrase was when I could have more accurately and less clumsily said ‘affected and bombastic,’ though I’m still being vocally showy, and even still with that last adverbial phrase, and even still by saying I know what form of speech it is, when I could have more briefly and plainspeakingly said ‘flip, windy, labored and imprecise,’ or to be even more plainspeaking, ‘not precise,’ but all of it said, including the last two revisions, in what I’ll truthfully say was a laughable and ludicrous endeavor to impress you, and for that, and also for that last flashy phrase, I humbly apologize. Not humbly. Nor so dumbly. No humility, stupidity, apologies, amphibologies, metatheses, paronomasias, lapsus linguae and anglicized or any foreign or lexiphanic or high-falutin words and phrases. Everything I’ve said to you so far has been out-and-out dishonesty if not downright lies, not that I can particularize that difference. I’m sorry. There it is. That’s all I had to say. Sorry for lots of things: my phone calls to your service, my antics and aggressiveness at the party while you were there and after you left, and most of all for what I said to you on the phone tonight, or today if it’s not tonight. Listen. Let me begin again if I can and may. May I? Because lean. Not too late? No reply? I should take that as an okay? Okay. I was quite simply — not ‘quite’ but just simply and maybe simperingly and simplemindedly — no, just simply. Plain and simply. I was simply high that night, though it actually does sound much better saying ‘quite simply high that night,’ for otherwise I do sound simpleminded, and that’s my excuse. Not simplemindedness but highness — now that’s the truth. Which is truly the truth but no real excuse because I have to be responsible for myself and my actions, sober or soused, unless I were a certified lush, which I’m most certainly not, so…no. Where was I? Got confused again in this endless excuse. You see, Helene…” Won’t work. Yes it could. What else I got? “Drunk, stupid, pretentious, insensitive, insouciant, translucent, unseemly, unsociable and other — ent’s and — ant’s and trans’- and in’s- and un’s- like — conscious and — questionably — conscionable, because first time anywhere near to being pickled in a year, so sorries all around: service, operator, you, Diana, guests I spoke to about you at the party, because really, all I usually like is a glass of white or two every night, and not a big glass but a regular red or white wineglass, three and a half ounces and not filled to spilling level at the top, so it must have been all that seemingly innocent enough social drinking and that hundred-proof Russian rotgut.” That’s what it’ll be. Knew I’d eventually find my excuse. “The ice-cold Russian vodka. Not because it was ice-cold, though that could have contributed to my cyclopean high, but because it was vodka and a hundred proof and also Russian and straight and I wasn’t used to that hooch any old way and surely not when they filled my double- or triple-shot glass or cup all the way up. I drank it like water but without water, ice, juice or even a peel. Then before I knew it I was rude to everyone in what was left of my sight and made my dumb phone calls the same night, even though that does show an underlying social problem and perhaps at first view an overriding congenital mental disease, but please don’t believe that or make more out of things than they already are. Maybe when someone’s only used to the softer spiritous stuff, a certain quantity of hard liquor, particularly when it’s distilled so differently and to this person is alien to his physical system in almost any amount or form, would do that to just about anyone including a European with a history of hard drinking or even a Russian who’s lived and drank most of his life in the same freezing regions where that liquor is made, not that I’m trying to exonerate myself for my actions and so forth. So you see, Helene, that’s my excuse. I’m sorry, apologize, you, Diana, answering service, party guests, phone calls, so forth, and hope you’ll forgive me, could kick myself for what I did, pray you don’t think that night or even this phone call is anything but faintly related to my normal behavior, and would like to try to make up for all I aberrantly did by inviting you for a drink somewhere, maybe that nice new, so it won’t be too inconvenient for you, wine bar I heard opened up last month on some second floor above a Lebanese deli around your way, though I’d understand if you refused. You won’t? You will? Meet me for just a brief drink and snack? And there is such a place? Armenian, not Lebanese? On the east side of Broadway between One-hundred-eleventh and — twelfth? See you there tonight at eight? Great. You remember what I look like? Forgivably stewed as I was or whatever the word or expression in Russian—‘Vodt a dumpkin!’—I remember you.”
