Exclusive Excerpt: "Fugue"
A New Novel by Paul A.Toth

Chapter Eight Continued: The Phone

     The phone was still ringing the next morning. I couldn't unplug it because the jack was protected by a dresser bolted to the wall. There was no ringer control. I tried taking it off the hook, but the megaphoned orders of the operator -- "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again" -- rang louder than the ringing. Between the ringing and the pillows over my head, I could hardly hear my neighbor shouting, "You're gonna ring when I shove that phone up your ass." Later: "Turn that goddamn phone off. Turn it off, turn it, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off."
     I dressed without taking a shower. In the bathroom, I splashed water on my face, then turned off the light and left. The phone was still ringing when I closed the door.
     "Why the hell," the manager said, "was that phone ringing all night long?"
     His lumberjack-plaid shoulders wider than a linebacker's, I half-expected him to go outside, return with an axe the size of a redwood, raise it over my head and split me in two.
     "It was my mother," I said, telling the truth only because it was less bother than inventing a lie he'd never believe.
     "Your mother?" he said. "Your mother is a very tenacious woman."
     "That's not the word I'd use."
     "What word would you use?"
     "Better not to say."
     He looked at me: wrong answer. I dropped the room key on the counter.
     "You could have left it in the room," he said. "I would have preferred it."
     He was still standing there confused when I took off; he couldn't possibly imagine a mother like mine. Most sons might have been more forgiving than me, at least from a distance, but they couldn't measure my distance, nor could I explain to them why Mother's Day sentiments eluded me. There was a gulf between me and that world, a crevice, a faultline, and it was growing wider. I couldn't know that by demarcating its boundaries, I would cause an earthquake, preceded by seven minor shakers. They came at night, just before sleep, when I least expected my walls to bend.

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