Phone Call From Phoenix

Have you ever had trouble sleeping? It's one of the most frustrating things in the world. You're completely exhausted, but when you close your eyes you're assaulted by a barrage of random images from the past. You can be lying there, in the dark, and suddenly a song that you heard earlier that day on the radio will begin to play in your head, like a pop-rock lullaby that you never really could stand. 3 a.m. becomes your worst enemy.

It is 3:14 a.m. when the phone starts ringing. I can be entirely sure about the time because up until now I've been passing the time by staring at the red glow of the digital clock, willing myself to nod off. The sudden loud noise makes me jump under the hot, heavy bedclothes. I reach over to the bedside table and pick up the phone. The voice that greets me is Angela's.

"Harry," she whispers. "Thank God. I wasn't sure if you'd pick up, I know it's late where you are." Before I can respond, she's talking again: "Anyway, I need your help with a little something."

"You're dead, Angela," I say, and I put the phone down.

---

I visit the grave. In the tortuous hours of early morning, after putting the phone down on my late wife, I was unable to get her voice out of my head. So first thing today, I get in my car and drive for half an hour to the cemetery where Angela's ashes were interred six months ago. The tulips I left there at the end of my last visit are now almost unrecognisable - dead, black, rotting things. The faintest irritation stirs in me; I was assured that the yard was perfectly kept. I'd abhorred the thought of Angela being laid to rest in one of the overgrown dingy fields that pass for churchyards these days.

Why on Earth am I here? The phone call lastnight shook me up far more than I had first realised - the obvious explanation is that some twisted soul got a hold of my number and decided to play a cruel joke. But that voice... the moment I heard her say my name, I couldn't imagine anybody else but Angela at the other end of the line. Call me crazy, but a part of me genuinely believes it was her. The part of me that has been deprived of sleep on and off ever since her death.

---

The next time she calls, it's just gone midnight. I don't hang up on her straight away. She asks me how I am, and then asks me for help, and I just close my eyes and lose myself in her voice for a short while, before reluctantly turning the phone off. Because as much as I might want to listen to Angela talk, there seems something incredibly wrong about talking to your dead wife in the middle of the night via telephone.

The third time, I've been lying awake, staring at the ceiling for what feels like an eternity. Part of me wonders if this insomnia has a purpose - keeping me awake so that I can answer the phone and hear her voice.

"Hello, Ange," I say as calmly as I can.

"Harry," she replies. "You're not going to hang up on me again, are you?"

"I don't think so," I try and stop shaking. "You must admit, it's a tad... off-putting."

"Off-putting? I'd call it a bloody mindfuck, love, but I know how aloof you like to be in difficult situations. Cool as a cucumber, and much better at getting me off if I recall correctly. Both reasons why I love you."

I laugh in spite of myself. Angela had the face of her namesake, but she swore like a trooper. People had always expressed surprise that Harry Olsen's pretty and demure-looking wife could out-drink and out-curse most men. I've missed her foul mouth so much, I almost forget the circumstances under which I'm hearing it again.

"Angela... what's going on?"

"Well like I said before, I have a bit of a problem and I need your help."

"So you just picked up the phone in Heaven and dialled for the Greater Manchester area."

"Oh, no. I'm in Arizona."

"Arizona? Arizona in America?"

"That's where Arizona is, yes. Phoenix to be exact."

"You've lost me."

"How d'you mean?"

"You shouldn't be in Arizona. You died."

"I went away, yes, but -"

"No, Angela, you died. What the fuck are you doing in America?" What I really want to ask is why, if anywhere, aren't you here with me?

"If you let me get a word in edgeways, I'll tell you. Are you going to play nice?"

"Play nice? God, you're speaking Yankie already."

"Harry..."

"Fine, I'll behave. But this had better be bloody good."

"Did you just say bloody good? You know that's the closest I've ever heard you come to hardcore swearing in the whole time I've known you."

"Don't change the subject. You're always doing that."

"Okay, okay. Well it turns out that being, you know, not alive, is different to what I thought it would be. You don't go up and live on a cloud, you just get sort of relocated."

"Relocated?"

"Yep. I don't know, maybe they ran out of clouds, I'm not sure how the system works exactly. But the gist is, I'm a waitress in a Taco Bell of all places. And I'm breaking a shitload of major rules by ringing you."

"And why are you ringing me again?" At some point in the conversation I've suspended my titanic disbelief, in favour of the simple pleasure that comes with talking to my wife again.

"Oh bugger, my boss is on at me. Have to go!" The line goes dead. I try and think what time it would be in Arizona, but my sleep-deprived mind can't even locate the state on a map. I place the phone back in its cradle and fall back on the pillow. When I next glance at the digital clock, the red glowing numbers seem to be trying to tell me something.

---

Of course I'm making her up, I keep thinking. Grief does strange things to people, especially when they've been lying awake at night for six months. But I never quite convince myself of that. And I never find out what it is that she needs help with. Every time she calls, I get so excited by her dulcet tones and coarse language that we end up reminiscing about old times; the horny honeymoon and the night that we nearly divorced because I ordered Chinese when she wanted Indian.

I still can't sleep. Well, not the whole night through anyway. I'm getting more and more shuteye during the day I suppose, but I'm always awake when the rest of my street is asleep, on the phone to a waitress seven time zones behind me.