TROUBLE AT HOME

She stayed on the phone while her husband stood there, beckoning her to go to bed. She wasn’t ready so she used the hand that wasn’t holding the vodka tonight to point at the receiver cradled under her chin. The phone was a Bakelite relic she had bought at a yard sale and converted expensively to a cell-phone cradle and charger. Her husband rolled his eyes a little. “I’m going,” he said. She nodded, and then began to talk, slowly at first, then more quickly, about the crisis at work, about how Anne had put the wrong file in the wrong folder, and then Gary had, upon opening the right folder and finding it empty, come bounding out of his office with his tone already at the top of the arch, leading Anne to push back twice as hard, as Anne did, and that in turn led Frances to sigh, stand, and intervene, palms out like an incompleted prayer. Her husband was gone now. She sighed. If she had been more drunk she might have told him that there was no one on the other end of the line, that she was faking the call. But she was only two drinks in and so she started up again. “Frances,” she said. “What a major problem.”

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas