Fall and Rise by Stephen Dixon

I said starting from the beginning of this call. Beginning before even then. Don’t even say I called this time or the last. Don’t even recall I called. Put my name and namelessness and existence out of your mind. I never called either time, okay? If you wrote the message or started to, tear it up. It was dumb of me—child’s play—my acting the way I did. I’ll probably see her later tonight anyway, so I’ll tell her myself, but don’t even tell her that. I mean phone her tonight, I probably will, or one day soon, though nothing of that’s to go past us too, not even an allusion to my musing about it. No, it’s hopeless. Got myself into a nice hole with this one. You’ll no doubt give her the message and my musings no matter what I say, since that’s your job. And maybe after a couple of years of your becoming overprotective and communicationally involved with your clients, you think she should know even more so that I called, whether you wrote it down yet or not.”
    â€œBelieve me, Danny, it’s easier for me to rip up a message than slot and give it, so that’s what I’ll do if you want.”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œThen done.” Hangs up. Now begin worrying about it. Not just what she’ll tell Helene, but why I said it. Why did I? Not just this call but the last. Not just all of what I said to the phone and before her to the loan woman but most of what I said and did tonight starting with the party or an hour into it and how with Helene I just about ruined it. Did I? Worry about it. Useless to, since what can I do about it now and so on? High, that’s why I acted the way I did I can say, first time in my life or in a year I got anywhere near to being so inebriated, which is a lie, but no reason I can’t use it to try to swing things around a little my way. “You see, Helene, for some reason—no, that’s not the truth. Yes it is, only I’m almost too ashamed at my behavior that night to recount and explain it, but I will because what more, since it’s also in my self-interest, can I tell you but the excuse, I mean the truth, which is the reason I called, or one of them. For you see, Helene, I didn’t think you left Diana’s for a wedding but because I’d chased you from it with my slobbering attention from afar and series of unsuccessful passes close up, which is the reason I thought you’d be home the first time I called. As for my second call, if your answering service told you of it, and if it didn’t then I don’t remember making any second call, I’ve no excuse except that I was still high and had begun to act like a fool and was also trying to undo the damage of my first call, if you were told of it, and if you weren’t then I only made one call—the second one—to leave an innocuous message that I’d called and would try to get back to you soon, but because of my highness I got carried away. Anyway, now I feel lousy about it and want to apologize for any discomfort I might have caused you by chasing you away from Diana’s if I did, and also through you to your answering service for my foolish and perhaps disturbing calls to it via your number, and also to you again for my having misrepresented myself to your answering service and possibly embarrassing you because of it by intimating I was your friend or knew you better than I did. No, that’s confusing and tumescent, just as that phrase was when I could have more accurately and less clumsily said ‘affected and bombastic,’ though I’m still being vocally showy, and even still with that last adverbial phrase, and even still by saying I know what form of speech it is, when I could have more briefly and plainspeakingly said ‘flip, windy, labored and imprecise,’ or to be even more plainspeaking, ‘not precise,’ but all of it said, including the last two revisions, in what I’ll