DESI
“What are you doing?”Randy asked me the next evening. He was swinging by to get some weed and caught me going through the phonebook.
“I’m looking for a number, duh.”
“The pizza places are on the fridge.”
I ignored him and continued searching through pages and pages of phone numbers and addresses. I found the R’s and put my finger on the page to start scrolling.
Ramirez
Reed
Reyes
Reynolds
Rhodes
Roberts
Rodrigues
Rogers
Russell
Ruiz
There it was! I let out a small groan as there were a half dozen Ruizes. But only one with an S. I went to my kitchen.
“If you’re ordering pizza, get me a sausage and pepperoni!” Randy shouted from the couch.
“I ain’t ordering you shit. Especially if you’re gonna smoke and not pay me ’til next week.”
He flipped me off. “I just took your sorry ass out to dinner last night. You know how much that fucking cost me? Along with that fat tip you made us give that bitchy waitress.”
“What are you talking about? She was fine.”
“Fine for you. You were drooling every time she came by. ‘Cherry Pie is on me,’” he mocked, raising his voice. “If it wasn’t your birthday, I would have told you to fuck off and left your ass there. I don’t know why you wanted to stay so long just to stare at the girl.”
I didn’t know either why I wanted to see her so badly. She was a total stranger who didn’t seem all that interested in me.
“Happy birthday, Desi.”
Her smile, albeit tired and a little forced looking, was still stuck in my head. I dreamed about her last night, for Christ’s sake. I had to call her. I reached for my phone and took it off the hook, tugging on the spiral cord. With a deep breath, I typed in the seven-digit number and waited. My heart pounded as the phone rang and then chimed.
“Please dial the area code before making your call.” I listened to the monotone woman’s voice three times as my heart settled, and I cradled the phone.
“Are we gonna burn or what?” Randy asked.
“Just smoke without me.” I stared hard at the number. “I’m doing something.”
“Jerking off?”
Round two. Ignoring him, I dialed the area code and the phone number from the phone book. It rang once, and my heart felt like it was going to explode, waiting for that second ring, and then it did. And then a third time. Finally, there was a click, and a gruff male voice came through the line.
“Hello?”
