I'll Call You First

Lee was not the first undesirable to have snuck through the revolving doors at the front of the reception lobby while Fran was on shift. Her eyes were transfixed on the shifting silver vortex that whirled across her sleeping monitor. Beside her, on a yellow notepad, cheap with faded blue lines, were lists of projects: a herb garden, a recipe book stand, a bottom for the yellow chest that she stored her art supplies in. The list was written in hazardous junctions across the paper, and in the bottom left corner, her pen laboured in its own lazy spirals.

Clyde had not asked for the to-do list, but it was the best way Fran could figure to distract them both; in times like these, she felt it was always best to move forward. Her father-in-law's funeral had been on the previous Friday, and they had only returned on Sunday morning to prepare for the workweek ahead; she had moved her running shoes to the door, taken Clyde to the library after church, and suggested they begin the spring cleaning they had ignored for the last several months. The urgency with which she begged for their lives to settle about them was painfully obvious, even to her, because while the ceremony had been, all things considered, a beautiful event, Fran was a social truant.

Many people had travelled a long way to pay their respects, and even Fran's parents had made the trip, over two hundred and fifty miles. Admittedly, she did have to insist on their presence. She had wanted them there, but when they had asked her about it, she told them that it was important to Clyde. In the end, they had gone. Her phone buzzed softly against her arm, pulling her from the embarrassing memory of crying in her father's arms, and she straightened to check the notification. It was a reminder to drink water. She leaned deep into her chair and, running a hand across the slick head of her hair, she scrawled "biblical eating?" across a small gap in the cluttered space of her notepad.

The man was standing at the desk by the time Fran had noticed him, and he was sloping wet.

"Oh!" Fran yipped. She pushed herself up from her chair and stood to meet the man, "Hi! Good morning."

There was no immediate response, and Fran took the moment to notice the haze filtered across his lidded eyes. As he leaned forward, the air around them turned slightly sour, and Fran leaned back on her heels.

"I need to get off the streets," the man mumbled. Fran looked to the heavy rain assaulting the glass doors outside. Yeah, dude, she thought, I bet. "Can I make a call?"

In the split second that Fran watched the hotel full of businessmen and women, she thought she shouldn't, which was exactly why she did, respond with a smile.

"Yes, of course. Who do you want to call?" She diverted her attention to her cluttered desk and grabbed the pen she had only just recently discarded. She began rifling through the drawers beneath her to find a spare piece of paper. After finding one, she removed it, flipped it over to its blank backside, clicked the pen, and handed them both to the man in front of her.

He paused for a moment, and his head tilted to the side. "Uh, my sister." Fran nodded, "but I don't know if she'll take me in."

"That's okay," she gestured to the paper, "no harm in trying. If you write down her number, I'll give her a call."

It occurred to Fran that it may have been ridiculous to take a phone number from this person, as she scrutinized the upside-down non-numbers. It took her a moment to realize that he had written a name, Lydia, and began printing ten perfectly legible numbers beneath it. Why not? Fran bit back a laugh and filed quick to assume stupidity to her mental list of things she probably ought to fix. Behind her were shelves filled with bottles of water, cans of pop and an assortment of chips. While the man scrawled on the paper, she turned and removed a bottle of water and a bag of Doritos, placing them on the counter. Then, she bent to retrieve some change from her purse.

After paying for the items, Fran looked up to find the man staring down at his own print. Fran dipped her head and, seeing the crease between his brows, was sure she knew what troubled him.

"Is there anyone else you want me to try? In case she doesn't pick up?" The man nodded and began to write another name and ten more perfect numbers. Then, he handed the paper back to her.

"Call him first," he said, pointing to Tom.

"Sure," Fran bent to pick up the phone, and turned the paper so it was facing her properly, "who should I say I'm calling for?"

"Lee."

"Okay Lee."

Tom's voicemail was full, according to the automated voice on the line. Fran had not even realized she had been holding her breath until the call ended and she pressed the phone into the receiver. She took a moment to laugh at herself before calling out to Lee, who had splayed himself across one of the armchairs in the middle of the room.

"Tom didn't answer, so I'm going to call your sister now, okay Lee?" He grunted in response. The phone did not ring for long. Fran smiled into the line.

"Hello! I'm calling on behalf of Lee?" A small sound of recognition puffed on the line, "He was wondering if you'd be interested in meeting up with him?”

"Oh, yes!" The woman snapped into the phone, and Fran had to pull it a small distance from her ear, "Um, I'm just dropping my kid off for school. Yes, can you just call me back in thirty minutes? I just have to," the woman laughed, "he always gets ahold of me at the strangest times."

Fran had the distinct feeling of being electrocuted, not on a large scale, but like when her parents used to goad her into testing the electric fence. It was harmless but shocking nonetheless, and Lydia's quick-fire response to her brother's situation, despite Fran's vagueness, had brought with it the same feeling of mild displacement. She looked down first, gathering herself at the black pushbuttons, and then turned her head to the right, eyeing the golden clock hung on the wall: 9:50 am.

"Not a problem," she assured the woman; in the background, she heard the crying of a child, "I've given him a bottle of water, and he looks comfortable. I'll call you back in thirty minutes."

In her life, Fran had worked many customer service gigs, and she was good at them. She knew this was largely because she had honed the art of talking when she was nervous, and that filling the silence often encouraged people to let their walls down. People found her light-hearted, easy to laugh with, and genuine, and while Fran was proud of these things, they also haunted her. Her sister-in-law had once told Fran that she wanted to try to be like her. Fran, who had been three beers deep into a family game night, had told her that she also tried very hard to be like herself. At the time, it had sounded very profound, but the next day she confided in her husband that it might be better if they took out her tongue. So, while Fran stood at her desk, bare to the guests who wandered the lobby, she tried to remind herself of her husband's reply: If it's who you want to be, then it's who you are. A person who does kind things is a kind person.

Her husband's words were a war-weary knight against the shifting eyes of the hotel guests, who washed over Lee and held themselves against her like accusations. She could feel the tall ceilings, the gold trim, and the glass-like floor turning on her, and in their imaginary gaze, she felt her own reflection, a version with a jutted chin and small, pinprick eyes, delivering a final blow to the version of her that Clyde had offered.

"Excuse me," A tall man with long hair and a suede jacket tapped his fingers on the raised desk platform, and the lobby shrank back into place.

"Yes, hi… Michael! Good morning," the edges of Michael's lips tilted upwards, and Fran smiled back at him. She asked him about his children as she moved through the various screens on her desktop, intermittently reviewing new policies, rate increases, and confirming his Friday noon checkout. Michael nodded along politely. When she passed him the electronic pad for signatures, he simply looked at her.

"You know, I sign your paperwork every week," he leaned across the counter, and a strip of stringy hair plastered his cheek, "it's annoying."

"Tell me about it," Fran laughed, careful to keep the clip out of her tone and averting her gaze. At the same time, she nudged the signing pad closer to Michael's edge of the counter, "but it's either convenience or privacy. If I could change things," she returned to her computer, "I would."

Michael picked up the electronic pen.

"You gonna be okay?" He said, finishing, pushing the items back towards Fran. She saw that he had tilted the tip of the pen over his shoulder towards Lee.

"Yes, of course! Don't worry about it," a small panel popped up across her screen with Michael's illegible scrawl; her mouse hovered over the green button, "besides, I'm stronger than I look." She met Michael's gaze. She brought her left arm up to flex in his direction and winked at him.

"Okay," he laughed, half-returning Fran's wave. As he receded, Fran wheeled back and pretended to bang her head on the edge of the counter.

On the Sunday they returned from the funeral, their pastor had preached about courage. Fran knew she was not courageous so much as intense, and that, unlike what other people seemed to think, intensity was not confidence. Nevertheless, she had liked the Father's message, and after receiving the Father's blessing, she returned to her pew and prayed for the chance to be courageous. That Thursday morning, she watched from behind her receptionist desk as her chance wrestled over his armchair with invisible demons. Fran thumbed the pearl necklace around her neck; I prayed for this, she reminded herself, and she knew that her desperation teetered on the brink of sanctimony.

She tried not to police him, but it was harder than she thought, largely because she couldn't figure out if it was more insulting to watch over him or not. In her own life, she was afraid of being watched by silent viewers and for the most part, if people wanted to get a hold of Fran, they just called Clyde. This included her parents, who, she sometimes joked, appeared to think that Fran's greatest accomplishment was finding such a great husband. This was an exaggeration, she knew, but she could not spur herself out of the endless game of tag where she wound herself tightly around the green answer key, waiting for a call that didn’t come.

Fran did not wait the full thirty minutes before returning Lydia's call, even though Lee had remained relatively easygoing, aside from the occasional bouts of threats with the invisible enemy. Every so often, when his voice pitched a little louder than usual, Fran would look at her hands and flush at the fact that she felt the need to look away at all. She battled with her gaze, treading the line between distrust and self-righteousness, until she couldn't take it anymore. At 10:12 am, she harrumphed her way into the back office, where she asked Gwen to cover the check-ins. Then, she returned to the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hello, I'm calling again on behalf of Lee?"

"Yes, hi. I just dropped my kid off, and I'm just figuring some things out right now,” Fran could hear a second woman chiming in from the background, her muffled words inspiring a bout of giggles from Lydia. "I just need to figure out where to take him. I don't want to leave him hanging, but I can't bring him to my house, you know? If I do that, he'll just keep showing up."

It was so simple, Fran thought, the logic that the sister handed her, clean, tidy, and obvious. "Oh, totally, of course! It's really no –"

"So I just have to get home. If you can give me like another thirty minutes? Can you give me that– I'm sure you're busy, but if you could… do you, work nearby?"

"I work here," Fran answered. "Really it's no prob–"

"You work there? Oh! You are such a sweetheart,–" Lee jumped up suddenly, and began to flail as if someone had taken him by the hair. Lydia's compliment fell flat at Fran's feet, "thank you so much!"

"Of course, don't you worry, he's really very,–"

"Okay," Lydia let out another fit of laughter, muffled away from the phone, "just thirty minutes!" In the pit of her stomach, Fran felt a soft thunk. She looked back at the clock and worried at her lower lip.

“Sure.” Fran hung up first.

Lee let out a startled grunt, startling Fran from her thoughts. Lee was standing, hunched over at the waist, his long black hair hanging between the pale, unmarred flesh of his thighs. His pants pooled at his ankles, and his bottom swayed before her. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at.

Fran sighed, and beside her, her coworker began to laugh.

Gwen was a soft-spoken girl, thin and small, with round eyes. On several occasions, Fran had the impression that speaking with Gwen felt a lot like speaking to a therapist; a lot of paraphrasing and affirmations. Fran watched as the girl brought a hand to her mouth, a curtain of hair sweeping down from her ear, nearly blotting out her face. From between two stands, Fran watched the girl giggle, and after a moment, their eyes met. Fran could just make out the small crows' feet in the corner of Gwen's eye, and she smiled. She let out two tight puffs of laughter and reached for her discarded chair, lowering herself into it slowly. With a loud sigh, she let her head fall with a thunk against the headrest.

"Hey," Fran said after a moment, calling Gwen's attention once she had turned away from the secondary monitor, "whatever happened to pay phones?"

Gwen looked over her shoulder at Lee, who had picked up his pants and laid back into the chair with his arms spread wide, "I don't know."

Fran chewed at the peeling skin on her thumb and looked toward the long hand of the clock as it passed the 6. The time felt unbearable. Her skin felt hot and itchy, and before the long hand could move another inch, Fran stood up.

"I'm going to get a coffee, do you want one?" She straightened the hem of her skirt so that it rested above her knees.

Gwen did not look up from her phone. “No thanks.”

On the counter in the back room was an old coffee maker, with stains of grit and grind on its supposedly stainless-steel finish. Without checking the temperature, Fran grabbed a paper cup and swirled the carafe above her face. She watched while the tiny coffee grinds spun around the bottom. She poured the remaining half-cup of coffee into the paper cup and took a sip. Leaning back against the counter, she looked just past the rim and tried to recall whether she had grabbed the cup from the new pack. She pulled out her phone to check the time, but found herself looking at the most recent text message she had sent her mother: Hey, thinking of you. and the small delivered that rested beneath it. She pressed on her mother's contact and stared at her young self pressing her lips against her mother's grinning cheek twenty-five years earlier. Her thumb hovered over the small telephone icon, and she tried to imagine what her mother would say if she called right that minute:

You always call me at the strangest times!

Is everything okay?

You can call me for anything–

"That guy left." The sound of Gwen's voice startled Fran. She closed her phone and slid it back into her pocket, looking up to find that Gwen had leaned sideways to peek through the doorway.

"What? Just now?"

"Yeah, he called his sister and they made plans to meet at the church on Williams." Gwen began to fiddle with the pink scarf around her neck, smoothing the knot.

"Oh," She tried to imagine the man stumbling back into the dreary, timeless grey outside, the rain soaking his bones, until he found the church he was looking for, until he found his sister. She smiled, "good. Hey, do you mind if I make a call real quick?"