Voicemail
by Kevin Frazier
After the hospice service removed her husband's corpse from the bedroom, Robin poured a glass of wine and sat down at the kitchen table.
She took a slim palm-sized phone from her purse. Then she set the phone on the empty plate in front of her.
Even from here she could smell the shirts in the bedroom closet. They reeked of sweat and decay: the odors his body had given off when his back would arch in agony, when his mouth would exhale that stench like pasta rotting in a drain.
She revolved the phone on the plate. The slim plastic case turned smoothly at the center of the china and came to a stop.
She pictured the shirts behind the closet door. She pictured their white cotton shoulders drooping from the wooden hangers. She pictured the short stretch of carpet between the closet and the empty bed.
Sipping the wine, she took the phone from the plate and pressed the speed dial.
Inside the closet, another phone rang. The phone rested at a diagonal slant in the breast pocket of one of the hanging shirts.
On the third ring Robin's call went to voicemail. Her husband, in a tone of relaxed self-confidence, said: "Please leave a message after the beep."
Robin scratched a mole on the side of her face. Speaking softly, almost whispering, she said: "Give me a call when you get this."
Then she set the phone on the plate again and waited for it to ring.