I had already finished one book that day, and was eating leftover chicken n' dumplings. My tongue is at the point in my life where I have to heat food up a little in the microwave, but not so thoroughly that it has a uniform heat. Funny thing is, I usually put salt on the colder bits. Anyway, it was my fourth bowl, because I had eaten some bowls about three hours before when I got home from the gym. The day before when I got home from the gym I had done the same thing, but it had been much later in the day. That's why I was surprised to see that it was only 12:30 when the phone rang. I had already, like I said, finished reading one book, as well as having eaten some bowls of chicken n' dumplings, taken a shower, and checked for e-mail on America Online.

I had two pieces: one from my cousin who always forwards things to me and never actually writes anything, and one from a list server to which I have subscribed. It is about dogs but I rarely read the contents anymore. I suppose I should unsubscribe, but I am usually so overcome with ennui when I'm at the computer that I can't be bothered.

Actually, it's usually ennui that makes me sit in front of the computer and dial up AOL in the first place. You can see how this can make for a big heap of dirty laundry. Content to wear the same pair of shorts day after day because, really, who's going to see them, who's going to care, and why would I care if they cared, anyway? I mean, metaphorically.

So I answered the phone, and it may have been because I was reading Richard Brautigan's latest novel. This is not to say the man writes a dull novel. On the contrary. With some authors it is difficult to follow what the hell is supposed to be going on. But not with Brautigan. He is not only easy to follow, he is easy to recall. Often when I was bored in college I would find myself wandering around the fifth and a half floor of the library, were the contemporary fiction is kept. and I would inevitable pull up one of Richard's books and I would flip to a random page and read for a bit, leaning against the shelves, making a little dent in the books with my shoulder. Sometimes I wonder if those dents are still there, now years after I've left, or if some other bored young man has found those books and made new dents of his own.

What I'm saying is it's easy to put down a Richard Brautigan novel because it's easy to pick one up, too. You can usually read one in an hour or so. An Australian fellow I met in a psychology class recommended the author to me. We had somehow mentioned to one another that we like reading, no big deal in a college, certainly, but I suppose the man saw in my slipshod conversational methods and overall meaningful meaninglessness that I might enjoy Richard's writing. Am I identifying with Richard Brautigan? Possibly. He's been dead for a while like I said, a suicide in San Francisco which is worlds closer to Santa Clara than where I went to school, and in today's market of Grisham and Chrichton and Clancy and Koontz, I think I might like to write a book or two in the style of Brautigan. To see how they'd fair.

Suffice it to say, the way I am putting things now is not the way he writes. I said, "Hello," in an even voice, neither questioning or threatening. It's rare that I get phone calls for myself, They're usually for my aunt or uncle, with whom I live, or their daughter, a twelve year old girl who talks on the phone more than many people watch television. That is, it is a form of entertainment for her, not communication. Maybe it was one of her more cautious friend's who was calling, or more likely, some boy who was impressed with her flowering puberty and her walnut-sized breasts. In any case, on hearing my voice, the caller hung up.

This has angered me more often than I like to admit. It seems to me that the only thing sillier than feeling whatever self-conscious feelings one feels when hanging up on a call receiver without so much as uttering an "I'm sorry" is to feel irate that this has been done. My day had been shortened by, what? Ten seconds? Almost anything can distract me for ten seconds. Given favorable conditions, the rhythm of traffic as I'm driving to the gym can eat up as much as and usually more than ten seconds at a light behind someone slow to respond to its change to green. Nevertheless, I got a bit mad. I myself have made phone calls to a wrong number, and my habit is to either hang-up once I've realized my error, before the call is answered by whatever nameless, faceless stranger is at the other end, or, more often, to ask the person at the other end if what I dialed was the number I meant to dial, and therefore I had the wrong number before me on a scrap of paper or business card back, or had I merely fumbled the digits in my dialing. At the very least if I hear another human voice I apologize.

I suppose that's why I got angry. It was not something I would have done, this hanging up without uttering a sound. I judged, then, by own actions, or more to the point, I judged by the way I perceived myself to act. A fine distinction, I'm sure you can see. What I needed, I supposed, was to witness someone become angry at having someone hang up on them, and then when I ridiculed them for their wasted anger, I would realize my own, previous wasted angers and would either cease to get angry when this sort of thing occurred or I would see that it was okay to be angry. In either case it would eradicate the conflict caused by answering a phone, saying hello, hearing that distinctive click, become angry, and then becoming ashamed at the anger.

I hung up the phone and went back to Richard, who quickly made me forget what had happened just ten seconds earlier.

Going back over this I realize I have made an error. I said I was eating a bowl of leftover chicken and dumplings when, in fact, I was heating one up in the microwave at that precise moment. It's a funny, thing, recollection. If I said I went to a restaurant and ate chicken, it's implied that of course I also spoke to a server, ate some salad, drank some wine, ate some potatoes, paid a bill, tipped as I saw fit, and left. But years from the event I may or may not recall all of those details. In fact, chicken eating was the most important detail, but I may vividly recall the glass that my water was served in and only vaguely realize that there was chicken involved in there somewhere. So too with my lunch. Chicken n' dumplings was the important detail, but what I recall most vividly was the microwave. That's why I mention it now. When I received the phantom phone call that particular bowl was heating up.

Of course, now that I force myself to, there are several details that become more clear. For example, the chicken n' dumplings was cooked by my uncle but not by the one with whom I lived. I have right now about one hundred different aunts and uncles, what with all the divorces, remarriages, and the fact that my grandmother can't quite manage menopause and my grandfather refuses to take up hobbies. I have at least three aunts and and two uncles who are younger than I am. And one thing is for sure. It was not one of my relatives on the phone that day. These are loud and affectionate people, every one of them. And they attract more of the same. I have one aunt who was married to an uncle who had divorced an aunt who herself had divorced an uncle that was an actual blood relative of mine. I'm not talking about a lot of mate-swapping, I'm talking about the fly trap that is my family. Once you're in you're in for good, and that aunt I mentioned thinks of every one of us kids as her own. By kids, obviously, I mean anyone single and younger than herself.

And these people in my family, all the aunts and half-uncles and cousins-in-law and legal nephews love to mingle in groups of ten or more and share food. The chicken n' dumplings was brought over by an uncle on the occasion of his visiting for a football game. He and his wife and my live-in aunt and uncle and myself and my cousin sat and watched the game and ate chips and made lots of noise together. The detail, though, is that the chicken n' dumplings was not brought over to eat together, he just brought it like you might loan someone a book or give them a souvenir postcard. That's how this family works. As a result I am often found in the kitchen with a microwaved bowl or plate or platter of something some has made, usually reading a book.

And as a result of that I'm not as thin as I once was, in college when all my relatives were distant.. Hence the gym. I joined up at the request of my cousin because she wasn't old enough to go alone and her parents weren't willing to go. They're the sort of people who believe exercise is for the idle and that so long as they have employment they will protected from outright obesity and all the ills it brings. I never argued with them about it because they kindly provided me with bed and board and also because frankly I did not care. I was quiet satisfied with their contentment. But the truth was that most of the people who died in our family died from heart attack and died on the job. Since I didn't have a job, one would think I was safe. But I still didn't want to be fat. I agreed to join with my cousin, and after about two weeks she never went again. This never took a long time to establish. It wasn't that one day she decided she would not return. She just didn't get around to returning, as is the case with anything a twelve-year-old takes up. But I persisted.

I discovered the the gym is not a place one goes to work off the calories of eating. Instead, it is a place one goes to keep from eating. More than once I would wake from a nap in the middle of the afternoon and stare at the clock on the vcr and realize I was bored, and then realize that there was a tuna casserole in the refrigerator. After I joined the gym I was able to realize, too, that there was a gym to go to with exercise bicycles and nautilus equipment, a jacuzzi and the occasional aerobics class. If I was merely bored, I chose the gym. If I was actually hungry, I chose the tuna. My weight stopped climbing and reached a plateau. A mesa of too great an elevation for my tastes, but at least it was manageable.

It was on one particularly fruitless occasion at the gym that the pay phone there suddenly rang. I don't know why for sure but I answered it. This was some days after the first phone call that I mentioned. The phone at the gym is across a hallway from the aerobics room, and at the moment the phone rang there was a class in there going full out, listening to some sort of wizarded techno-modern beat song which no one would ever listen to unless on a dance floor or in an aerobics class. That's why it amazed me that these albums are advertised on late-night television, as if there are enough people out there who buy these records that they can't possibly listen to unless they live in a dance club or in an exercise gym. It served, at any rate, as a background when I picked up the phone. I was going to say "House of Fitness" but at last minute I just said nothing.

The other end was quiet, too, and just when I was going to speak, a voice said my name and hung up. I was so amazed that I tried to place the voice- but to no avail. It was entirely nondescript, without inflection, almost genderless, even. I mean, it could have been a low woman's voice. I just stared at the phone for a while. Then I got really really mad.

I slammed the phone down, and then quickly looked around me, to see who was watching. I looked for cameras- maybe someone was having a joke. But I saw nothing. I had been finished, I thought, with my workout, but I was so pissed I decided to go do bench press for a while. The gym has three bench presses: a regular bench with a barbell that you set weights on, a nautilus machine that you sit at, and an electronic machine that uses pneumatics and changes the weight for you as you go, ramping you up and down according to your past performance. I went to that one because I didn't want to screw around with a lot of adjusting.

So I sat there and I pressed, and pressed, and pressed. Why was I so mad? The madder I got, the madder I got at being mad. Then I got mad at being mad at being mad. And I know its sounds crazy, but I even got mad at that. I don't think I have ever experienced such acute irrationality before. I mean, it's a good thing no one was waiting to use the machine, because I would have bitten his head off. Which is really messed up, because I'm almost bashfully polite. One time a lady cut in front of me with her basket full of more than fifteen items in the nine items or less line, and I just glared at the back of her neck. Finally when it was her turn she sort of looked back at me and acted surprised I was there, and saw that all I had was a tube of toothpaste and a running magazine. She offered to let me go ahead, but I was completely nice, and said it was no problem, I wasn't in a hurry anyway, which was true, since I'd just come from the gym and had a long night of TV with the aunt and uncle in front of me. But sitting there in that electric bench press machine, I think I might have told that lady to quite cutting and to go to a regular line, wait her turn like everyone else.

Finally the machine told me that I was past healthy levels, that I should move on to another machine. I just about punched out the display when it said that, then calmed down. Getting mad at a machine, that made sense. I'm no bodybuilder- I usually bench about 145. But I'd done 30 reps at 175. And I was sore.

The next day, I could barely move, and when the phone rang at 9:00 there was no way I was going to answer it. I mean, it felt like there was a four-hundred pound woman standing on my chest, digging her heels in everytime I took a step. I managed to stumble over to the answering machine, to listen in case it was the aunt or uncle needing me to pull something out of the freezer for dinner or a visit to somebody's house for bridge. If it was, I'd have to do it with my teeth. God god god.

The answering machine kicked in, went to the beep. and nothing. I thought I could hear breathing- maybe- or that may have been the bruises in my chest slowly finding the last few living nerves to squeeze the life out of them. I just stood there wincing. Then a voice said my name, said it again, and said the word stop.

I need to point out some things here. First is that I said a voice, not the voice. While I cannot say for certain that it was a different voice, I certainly can't say it was the same. I mean, it was so plain. Like what space aliens would create with some kind of super alien computer if they wanted to make a generic English speaking voice. Also, I need to point out that it said the word stop, not that it said to stop. One almost gets the idea that the voice just said a word at random, or read it out of a book, or was answering a question. It sure as hell didn't feel like it was telling me what to do.

And just like that, the pain disappeared, and I could lift my arms higher than my waste, which I did, fists clenched, body shaking. This was worse, so much more worse than someone just not saying anything at all, and hanging up. I could feel the pain trying to leak back into my chest, and I liked it. I made my fists tighter, and flexed my chest muscles which made the pain leap back in with full force suddenly, hot, and I swear to God, knocked me to the floor. I just lay there on my side, breathing hard, giggling at how absurd sore muscles were. Eventually I managed to get up, hit the speaker phone, and dial up the phone company. I gave them my credit card number, asked them a few questions, and got us signed up for star 69.

My uncle loved it. He got on the phone once when my cousin was talking to someone, and whoever it was hung up, but fast. He didn't think much of it at the time, but when he asked her who it was later, she wouldn't tell him. She kept saying "just a friend from school, dad, gosh." And when asked why the friend had hung up, she just shrugged, unconvincingly, and said she didn't know. So after he heard we got star 69, he'd break into her phone calls "accidentally" a lot, but nobody ever hung up.

Nor did we get anybody calling and hanging up before they spoke, either. After about a week, I even got a little sore at that, but then I figured the whole point of getting star 69 was to find out who was doing this and to make them stop, so if they stopped anyway, fine.