(no subject)
Seymour needs an entire day to work up the courage to call her.
Mushnik is playing poker with his friends; Seymour has the back room to himself. He sits behind Mushnik’s desk, examining a photo of himself and Twoie when it was only two feet tall. He dials Audrey’s number (he got it from her application, Mushnik doesn’t lock his desk with the employee files in it).
She picks up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, Audrey.”
A pause the length of a heartbeat, then a lightly questioning, “Seymour.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s me.” She has millions of friends, of course she wouldn’t recognize his voice.
“Hey. I’m sorry, I was totally thinking of calling, but….Um, I guess they talked to you, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, they keep wanting to talk to me. They still don’t know what’s going on.”
Seymour hesitates. From far away he hears himself asking, “Really? No idea at all?”
Audrey hesitates, too. “They’ve got suspicions. There’s no activity on any of his cards, but apparently there were some people he owed money to, so….I dunno.” She falls silent.
Seymour wracks his brains for some way to fill it. “And, uh, have you got into school?”
“No. I’d have to wait ‘til summer for new courses to start. Orin was going to look after me ‘til then.”
She takes a deep, shaky breath. “Seymour, you don’t think…I mean, I need a job, and - if you don’t mind me there - maybe you could put in a good word with your dad-”
“Of course I don’t mind you here,” Seymour says quickly. “Not at all. The opposite, in fact. I’ll put in a good-”
“Thank you so much.” Her voice is squeaky, tight with tears. “I should get off now.”
Seymour obeys a sudden urge and says, “Audrey.” When she doesn’t hang up, he adds, “Don’t cry, please?”
Another shaky, shuddering breath. “I can’t help it. It’s all I do, lately.”
Seymour’s throat is dry. He tries to swallow. He can feel how tenuous the thread of electricity and telephone signals is between them. Softly, he asks, “Why?”
A loud sniffle. “My boyfriend’s gone,” she says, and her tone adds, How do you not get that?
“Is it-is that such a bad thing?” Before he slammed a gun into Orin’s temple, he never could have said that.
A silence, one so deep it makes him dizzy, like staring over the edge of a cliff.
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” she whispers.
Seymour shakes his head, forgetting she can’t see the motion. “What’s…what’s horrible is what he did.” His memory throws him backwards in time: he’s swinging an axe, Twoie slavers obscenely, the coppery smell of blood is everywhere. “What he did to you.”
“You don’t know anything.” Her words are hissed, but tears dull the edge of her anger.
“I don’t know a lot,” Seymour agrees. “So…tell me. Please? I-Christ, I wanted to ask earlier, maybe if I knew something then I could’ve helped, I could’ve…done something….”
Audrey’s sudden, mocking laugh makes his heart squeeze tight. He wants to drop the receiver, take back what he said, pull his neck from the noose he strung up.
“Of course you want to help me,” she says, disgusted. Seymour writes her next words: But you’re useless, just look at you, people can tell at a glance.
“You’re nice,” is what she actually says, her voice pained…and envious? Is that what he’s hearing? So hard to tell without a face to put to the sounds. “But here’s what you don’t get - I’m not nice. I can’t do nice. Orin knew that and he accepted me. He knows what I am.” She’s more disgusted at herself, Seymour realizes with a thrill of shock, than at him.
He’s completely mystified. “You’re plenty nice. You gave me a Christmas present back before we were even friends, you always ask how my day’s been even when you know I don’t do anything, you gave that nice old couple a discount and paid the different out of your pockets - there’re loads of ways that you’re nice.”
“No, no, no, no - that’s not who I am.” Her words are desperate, a half-sob. “That’s just what I act like.”
He tries to figure out a response to that. “If…if you act something-things come from somewhere.”
“I deserve Orin, you don’t understand, I deserve him, I deserve him….” She’s crying heavily, repeating those words. All Seymour can do is murmur her name, as if that will staunch the bleeding.
This is his fault. He kept her on the phone. Now all he has are words - jagged, slippery, multi-meaning words. If they were face to face this would be going better. He’s sure of it.
“Seymour, shut up!” Audrey shrieks suddenly. “You say Audrey but you don’t mean me, you mean that girl you’ve got in your head, and I’m nothing like her!”
“Tell me.” It’s all he can do to whisper it. He’s grateful he’s sitting down, because he has no strength to stand.
Audrey pants on the other side of the line. “Okay, fine! How ‘bout how I met Orin? It was at my street corner - that’s my other job, you know. Only a shit store would hire a girl whose only reference is a pimp. I couldn’t pay the rent on what your dad was paying me.
“Although - gotta give daddy credit - he did help me keep up my skills.” She falls silent, breathing harshly, angrily on the other side of the line, waiting for his response.
It’s a while before he figures it out. “The night I came home early,” Seymour realizes, voice flat. (Hadn’t he always known? He’d tricked himself into thinking he didn’t.)
“Fucking brilliant, Seymour,” Audrey snaps.
Seymour rubs at his temples. He tries to fit this new Audrey, who swears and screams at him, into the one he knows. It’s not working.
I have to keep trying. It’s Audrey. That’s not as compelling a reason as it usually is. If she’s as bad as she says she is, maybe….
But she isn’t. Seymour examines his memory of the night he walked in on Audrey and Mushnik. She didn’t want me there. She was ashamed. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t be hurting like this. When you’re hurt, you (club people with a gun) lash out.
“Forget what I said about the job,” Audrey is saying, “It was stupid. It was me pretending to be what I’m not. I’ll-”
“Don’t hang up,” Seymour begs her.
She makes a noise that’s half mocking laugh, half shout of rage. “I’m not table scraps! Just stop acting like such a puppy! I should’ve given you a pity fuck, then maybe you’d’ve got over me.”
There’s a swooping feeling in the pit of his stomach. She knows. They both know. Puppy: a small, weak, pathetic, unformed dog that gets under your feet, pisses on your carpets and always looks for scraps….
“You know why I didn’t? You know why? ‘Cuz you’re so disgusting that I couldn’t. I’ve let a lot of men fuck me but I couldn’t let you. I would’ve puked.”
He can’t breathe. This isn’t Audrey. This is a wrong number.
“So fuck off, asshole.” She sounds tired, sullen. She hangs up.
Seymour puts the phone down, hands shaking.
Watch who you’re calling a dog, you bitch. He thinks the word ‘bitch’ over and over, using it to stoke a blaze of anger and hurt. It’s doused by the thought: …Says the murderer? The murderer who is directly responsible for her hurting the way she is? Fuck, I better be enjoying this glass house.
Me being angry is exactly what she wants.
It still takes half an hour of battling with hurt feelings for him to call again. He gets her answering machine.
“It’s Seymour. Please call back.” He wants to say something else, but can’t think of anything. He hangs the phone up.
“Everything all right?” Twoie inquires - the first time they’ve spoken since that night. Its voice is much deeper.
Seymour pops his head out of the back room and stares dully at the plant. “S-stop, stop listening, please,” Seymour murmurs. “This is…it’s private.”
The plant raises its vines in a surrender gesture. “Try to show a little friendly concern,” it complains.
“…Thanks,” Seymour says after a moment, but isn’t in the mood to elaborate. He turns on the radio. Burton Cummings’ “Saved My Soul” plays (how we hurt each other, oh baby it was so wrong / something in the bottom of my heart will keep me holding on / 'cause you saved my soul / you came along and took me out of the night time).
Seymour waits by the phone until Mushnik comes home at one in the morning. Audrey doesn’t call back.