Sarah S. called me just now, perhaps having inadvertently triggered the auto-dial by sitting on the phone or walking from couch to kitchen with the unlocked keyboard pressed in a confining pocket of too-tight jeans – I say this because I answered and there was no one there. I said Hey, hello, are you there? I heard static and silence intermittently. And then distant, crackling voices. It sounded like an old movie or sitcom. A woman talking to a man about mundane things in that snappy, witty, old-time way. They were discussing having breakfast, lunch or dinner. The woman had a snarky, adenoidal voice I half-recognized. Almost Bette Davis but not really. Lauren Bacall or some shit. Shelley Winters, who knows. Stockard Channing. That honking, tinny American woman’s screen voice, ever calling manhood into question.

Their repartee was punctuated by canned laughs and static, sometimes silence. I imagined how terrified I’d be if, a couple of minutes into this dreamy scene, Sarah’s living voice cut through at me. But it never did. I hung up after awhile.