Despite his best efforts to forget her, the woman’s words plagued him.
He climbed into the excavator and lifted the bucket against a tree, pushing until the tree crashed forward, where Allen started on it with the chainsaw.
After an hour of ruminating, Jake told the guys he was making a coffee run and drove to the gas station on Miller Road. Allison worked as an accountant and wouldn’t be home. He walked to a payphone and fed it a quarter before punching in the numbers of her office.
“Premier Accounting,” a nasally voice told him.
“Hi, Regina, it’s Jake. Is Allison around?”
Regina’s voice dropped. “Sure is, Jake, but she had a scowl on her this morning. I know you didn’t forget your anniversary.”
Jake frowned, tallied up the months in his mind. Had they already been dating for a year? “Shit,” he muttered.
“You have some serious making up to do,” she whispered in her conspiratorial way that made Jake’s ears throb. Whenever he listened to Regina speak, he felt sympathy for her husband of ten years.
“Yeah, I guess I do. Can you put her on the phone, please?”
“Sure thing,” Regina told him. “And P.S., she loves that Italian place downtown with the red awning and the dim little booths all lit with candles. In case you needed some direction.”
“Sure, thanks.”
“Hello?” Allison’s voice sounded more weary than angry when she got on the phone.
“I’m sorry, Al. I didn’t realize…”
She sighed. “You never do.”
“Dinner tonight. Okay? We’ll celebrate.” He said the words, but something else almost slipped out: This isn’t working. I think we should part ways… He hadn’t thought of them before that moment, but there they were, sticky in the back of his throat.
He wanted out. It wasn’t Allison. She was great. Pretty, independent, with a supportive family, and plans to one day open her own accounting business. It was Jake and the way something in him shriveled when she cooed over babies and cried at weddings. To Allison, a one-year anniversary meant there was more to come, a ring and a house and babies. She was an old-fashioned girl, and she expected Jake to step up to the plate.
“Okay. I can’t believe you forgot, Jake. I wrote it on your calendar and circled it with a big heart,” she grumbled.
Jake pictured the calendar hanging next to his cupboards in the kitchen. He looked at it every day, but he hadn’t noticed her not-so-subtle reminder.
“Listen, Allison. Did you, uh…” He tried to think of how to form the question that wouldn’t sound like an accusation. “Do you know a woman named Petra?”
“Petra?” Her tone told him the answer was no. “No. There’s Patricia, the woman who does my hair.”
“What does she look like?” he asked, though he doubted Petra and Patricia were the same woman.
“Short, skinny with big blonde curly hair.” She paused. “Why?” she asked innocently, but he heard the note of suspicion underneath it.
“Nothing, no reason. Barbie had a message from a woman named Petra at the shop this morning. I thought you might know her.”
“Nope. So, dinner tonight. Did you make reservations?”
“Yeah,” he lied. “Six at that little Italian place you like downtown.”
Allison laughed, and he could imagine her smile brightening her entire face and the surrounding office. “I’ll have to go home and change and do my hair. I just threw it into a ponytail this morning. But I could come by your house and we can ride together.”
“Sure, that’s great. Bye, Al.”
“I love you,” she told him.
“Love you too.” He hung up the phone and fished another quarter out of his pocket.
He called Barbie and asked her to set up dinner reservations for that evening.
Halfway back to his truck, he turned on his heel and walked back to the phone, lifting the receiver and hitting 0 for the operator.
“Directory assistance,” a woman answered.
“Hi. I’m trying to reach Petra Collins.”
“Hold, please.”
He listened to sleepy piano music for nearly two minutes.
“Sorry. I don’t have a Petra Collins in the directory.”
Jake worked the rest of the day, but his mind strayed frequently to Petra Collins. It was nearly five when Jake returned to his office. With limited time to rush home and get ready for dinner, he hurried inside.
When he pushed into the office, Barbie rattled off a list of messages he only half-listened to.
“Sure, yeah. Thanks, Barbie. I’m in a pinch for time. We can go over it in the morning.” He ducked into his office and leaned over his desk to flick off the light.
In the center of the bare wood, as if someone had cleared a space for it, sat a black business card with silver writing. He read the name Petra Collins, and beneath that he saw a phone number and an email address.
Jake paused, his legs still trying to carry him out the door in a hurry. He snatched up his phone and punched in the number.
It rang four times, and he expected an answering machine, but listened instead to silence.
“Hello?” Jake asked. Someone had picked up. The sound of breath, almost imperceptible, whispered across the line. “Petra? This is Jake Edwards. Hello?”
The person at the other end said nothing, and a chill spilled down Jake’s spine. He held the phone away and stared at it, oddly fearful that the person on the other end might see him. Tempted to drop the phone back into the cradle, he held it above the base for several seconds and then lifted it back to his ear. For six seconds, and then ten, twenty, he listened to the hushed sound of breath.
As he listened, the breath grew deeper, huskier and then seemed to get caught in a whoosh as if the caller had stepped into a windstorm.
Deep in the sound, Jake’s name emerged, but not from Petra’s mouth. A young girl released the sound, a call somewhere between a sob and a scream. “JAAAAAAAAAAAKE!”
The door to his office banged open, and Jake screamed, flinging the phone across the room where it smacked the wall and landed on the brown carpet.
Barbie shrieked and dropped the bundle of pencils she’d been clutching in her hand. Her bosom heaved as she stared at him and then at the phone stretching from his desk to the floor across the room. “Jake! What in the world? I just sharpened those pencils. I could have killed us both.”
Jake swallowed and crouched, gathering Barbie’s pencils before plucking the phone from the floor.
“Why did you throw the phone? Did you and Allison have a fight?”
He shook his head and returned the phone to his desk before handing the pencils back to Barbie.
“Those are for you. I figured the ones in here were probably all dull from your endless scribbling.” She smiled and patted his back. “You okay, honey?”
”Yeah, I’m fine. I… uh, got one of those fax machines. That sound.” He shuddered.
Barbie nodded knowingly. “Like a hot poker to the ear” she agreed. “I don’t understand why people can’t dedicate separate numbers to fax machines. It can’t be good for the brain to get one of those pitches right into the eardrum.”