The phone rang for the fourth time, and I grew irritable because I had to rush to the second-nearest phone of five in the house. I grew more irritable after answering the phone. Someone tried to sell me The Toronto Star in words and sentences bunched so tightly I couldn't get a word - even a syllable - in edgewise. "Wouldn't you like to try it just for weekends?" the woman asked after I finally was able to say I already had a daily paper and that I was fine, thanks. "No, I'm still fine," I said, but I really wasn't because I knew that after I hung up I would have to look for the missing phone. It might be in the workshop, I thought, because I'd been in my outside shop yesterday and recalled taking the kitchen phone, the missing phone, with me. I could still see it in my mind's eye on the bench beside the shop door. I slipped into my cut-offs, old rubber boots I'd shortened ten years ago with a box cutter, grabbed keys for the outside door and went outside, dodging drops of cold rain from the eaves as I went. I was ready to blame drops, that fell down the back of my neck, on my wife because she wanted a house with eaves. But I stopped myself. She had found my all-purpose metal scrapper last night after I couldn't find it.
The house detective always wins, I thought, and walked into the house, but I felt certain she must have misplaced the phone and it was my turn to win. After checking several rooms I did find the phone, lined up neatly beside two remotes in the TV room.
And who was the last person to watch TV last night? Me. I'd left the nearest phone to my office the farthest away when I really needed it. I returned it to its cradle and stopped prowling.
[Photos by G.Harrison]
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