Telephone Call

Telephone Call

by Bernice Holtzman

She lay under his weight after making love, holding him to her and feeling his warmth. “I love you,” she said. He nuzzled his head on her shoulder, not answering. He didn’t have to. She knew how he felt. She understood him so well, was so in tune to him, that she sometimes had an almost eerie sense of being under the same skin with him, he thinking and she instantly reading the thought, he feeling and she instinctively knowing what he felt.

She felt with him excited and at the same time comfortable and familiar. When they met it was as though a door had opened and let her into a room where electricity flowed through them, awakening and amplifying her senses, the current bonding them together. It felt so right being close to him in this way, as though it would have been unnatural to feel any other way.

She caressed his back and lightly kissed his head, inhaling the sweetness of his hair. How often they had been together in this bed and in others, making love, at first gently and then intensely and passionately until they lay quietly embracing. They didn’t speak because it wasn’t necessary.

It was in these moments that she experienced all over again everything between them that had led them to this point—the instant friendship, the laughter that came so easily to them, the private jokes and serious talks, the acceptance of and sensitivity to each other.

She remembered when, not long ago, her sensitivity to his moods made her aware that something was wrong between them, that something on his mind was making him preoccupied and keeping him distant from her. She almost worried about losing him then but knew that was foolish. Without having to be asked, she stepped back, giving him room to get over his confusion and disbelief at having been left by that girl he had known before her, the one he had loved so much. It was just a matter of time. She had shown him kindness and patience then, knowing that he would realize how wrong that girl was for him and how right she would always be, knowing that when his wounds were healed, he would come to her and want her and love her . . .

Now she held him, and he was hers. He would never leave, and she could hold him forever.

The ring of the telephone startled her. She answered it before the second ring was complete. She recognized her friend’s voice.

“How do you feel, honey?”

“I’m better. I’ll be okay.”

“Listen, if he could just stop being your friend like that, he certainly didn’t deserve anything more.”

“I know.”

“Thank God you never slept with him. Imagine how much worse you’d feel now. Why don’t you come over tonight? Joe won’t mind, and we can talk.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.”

She replaced the receiver and held the pillow she had embraced a moment ago, then replaced that, too, on the empty bed.

Bernice Holtzman is an author of poems, short fiction, autobiographical pieces, two (so far) children’s stories, and all manner of clever commentary. Her work has appeared in The National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side. That was 30 years ago, and she’s still talking about it.