The Payphone at Sal's

It began with a trill, sharp and mechanical, cutting through the low hum of the refrigerator motors. A payphone. An honest-to-god rotary payphone, mounted on the wood-panelled wall near the lavatories, encased in a plastic shell that had yellowed to the colour of nicotine-stained teeth. It rang once. Twice. Then it continued, a relentless, rhythmic drilling into the silence of the dining room.

I looked around. The restaurant, Sal’s, was empty save for us. It smelled of wet wool, burning garlic, and that specific, heavy dust that accumulates in places where the carpet hasn't been changed since the Nixon administration. Rain lashed against the blackened windows, blurring the street outside into grey smears.

Jeffrey did not flinch. He sat opposite me, rigid in his tweed jacket, dissecting his veal parmesan with the precision of a surgeon who secretly loathes the patient. He was pretending not to hear it. It was a marvellous bit of acting, really; the brow slightly furrowed in concentration on the meat, the hand steady, the total exclusion of the auditory environment.

"The sauce," Jeffrey announced, his voice projecting as if he were addressing the back row of the Old Vic rather than a table of one, "is pedestrian. It lacks the requisite acidity. One requires a certain… violence in the tomato to counteract the fat, don’t you agree, Steven?"

The phone rang again. *Brrr-ing. Brrr-ing.*

"It’s ringing, Jeffrey," I said. I felt the vibration of it in my molars. My knee, aching from the damp weather, throbbed in time with the sound.

Jeffrey paused, knife hovering. He looked at me with pity, the sort of look one gives a child who has interrupted a sermon to ask for the toilet. "We are discussing the veal, Steven. Let us not be distracted by the ambient noise of the lower classes. Now, as I was saying, the acidity is the narrative arc of the dish. Without it, the palate is left unfulfilled. It is a tragedy in three bites."

He resumed cutting. I watched a fleck of red sauce land on his silk tie. He didn't notice. Twenty years ago, he would have had a wardrobe assistant fired for less. Now, he just chewed, his jaw working with a wet, clicking sound that I tried desperately to ignore.

A Performance of Lunch

The ringing persisted. It was maddening. It wasn't just a background noise; it was an intrusion, a demand. Who calls a payphone in a derelict Italian restaurant on a Tuesday afternoon in October? It felt ominous, like a scene from one of those noir films we used to make, back when the budget allowed for rain machines and moral ambiguity.

"Are you going to get that?" I asked, nodding towards the waiter. The man, who must have been seventy if he was a day, was leaning against the bar, staring at a horse race on a mute television. He was cleaning his fingernails with a matchbook.

"It is not for me," Jeffrey said, dabbing his mouth with a linen napkin that had seen whiter days. "And it is certainly not for you, my dear friend. Who would call you? The Guild? I believe you haven't paid your dues since the turn of the century."

"I paid them," I lied. I took a sip of water. It tasted of chlorine and old pipes. "I’m just saying, it’s annoying. It’s ruining the atmosphere."

Jeffrey laughed, a rich, baritone sound that seemed too large for his shrunken chest. "The atmosphere? Steven, look around you. The atmosphere is 'Terminal Decline'. The ringing provides a necessary tension. It is the inciting incident that never arrives. It is Beckettian."

He leaned forward, his eyes suddenly bright, manic. The whites were yellowing, swimming in moisture. "Speaking of tension, I have news. Tremendous news."

I sighed, pushing my plate away. The pasta was overcooked, a gluey mass of starch. "You have an audition."

"Better. An offer. A direct offer."

"For a commercial? incontinence pads? Reverse mortgages?"

"Do not be crass," he snapped, a flash of the old anger flaring in his nostrils. "A feature. An independent feature. A young director. Very avant-garde. He wants me for the lead. The patriarch. A King Lear figure, but set in a dystopian underground bunker."

The phone continued to shriek. It was screaming now. I rubbed my temples. "Jeffrey, the phone."

"He says I have the face of a ruined civilization," Jeffrey whispered, ignoring me, touching his cheek with a trembling hand. The skin there was papery, translucent, mapped with broken capillaries. "Is that not poetic? A ruined civilization."

I looked at him. Really looked at him. He was wearing rouge. It was poorly applied, a streak of rusty pink sitting high on his cheekbones, clashing with the grey pallor of his skin. He had dyed his hair again, too; a harsh, shoe-polish black that ended abruptly at the white roots. He looked like a corpse prepared by a trainee mortician.

"It sounds... heavy," I said, trying to be kind. We were old. We were supposed to be done with this. We were supposed to be sitting on porches, complaining about the cold, not painting our faces and waiting for the phone to ring.

"It is weighty," Jeffrey agreed, nodding solemnly. "But I have the stamina. I have the instrument."

He coughed then, a wet, rattling hack that shook his entire frame. He grabbed the table edge, his knuckles turning white. The coughing fit went on for a long time. I watched him, feeling a mixture of revulsion and terrifying empathy. That cough was waiting for me, too. It was waiting for all of us.

When he recovered, wiping a string of saliva from his lip, he composed himself instantly. "The air quality in here is appalling. Asbestos, likely."

The Call

The phone stopped. The silence that followed was heavy, sudden, and violent. It pressed against my ears.

"Thank God," I muttered.

Then, it started again. Louder this time. More urgent.

Jeffrey slammed his fork down. The cutlery clattered against the china, a harsh, discordant note. "Fine!" he bellowed at the empty room. "Fine! If the staff is too incompetent to manage their own telecommunications, I shall intercede!"

He stood up. It was a slow process. He had to brace his hands on the table and push, his knees popping audibly. He straightened his jacket, buttoning it with fumbling fingers. He took a breath, expanding his chest, assuming the posture of a man about to deliver a verdict.

"I shall return," he declared. "Do not let them clear my plate. I have not finished critiquing the breading."

I watched him walk towards the back of the restaurant. He had a limp he tried to hide, a hitch in his step that made him sway like a ship in a swell. He passed the bar, passed the sleeping waiter, and approached the yellow plastic shell.

He stood there for a moment, his hand hovering over the receiver. The ringing was deafening now, echoing off the tile floor of the lavatory entrance.

He picked it up.

I couldn't hear what he said. I saw his back stiffen. I saw him nod, once, twice. He held the receiver with both hands, pressing it hard against his ear, as if trying to block out the world. He stood there for a long time. Minutes passed. I ate a piece of cold bread. It was stale, hard as a stone.

I watched the rain streak the window. I thought about the "King Lear in a bunker" movie. It didn't exist. I knew it didn't exist. There were no calls. There were no offers. We were just two old men eating bad veal in a dying restaurant, playing pretend because the alternative was staring at the wall.

Jeffrey hung up the phone. He placed the receiver back in the cradle with infinite care, as if it were made of glass.

He turned around. The lighting in the hallway was dim, a flickering fluorescent strip that cast a greenish pallor. He walked back to the table. The limp was gone. Or maybe I just imagined it was gone. He moved with a strange, fluid grace, gliding over the sticky carpet.

He sat down. He didn't look at me. He picked up his napkin and placed it back on his lap.

"Who was it?" I asked. The question felt heavy in my mouth.

Jeffrey picked up his knife and fork. He cut a small piece of veal. He inspected it, turning it over in the dim light.

"Wrong number," he said softly. His voice was different. The theatrical projection was gone. It was smaller, flatter. Human.

"All that ringing for a wrong number?" I scoffed, trying to break the tension. "Who were they asking for?"

Jeffrey looked up. His eyes were clear. The manic brightness had vanished, replaced by something duller, harder. A shutter had come down.

"They weren't asking for anyone, Steven," he said. He put the meat in his mouth and chewed slowly. "They were just checking to see if anyone was still here."

"Here? In the restaurant?"

"In the world," he said. He took a sip of his wine. A red stain remained on the rim of the glass.

I stared at him. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell him he was being melodramatic again, that he was turning a wrong number into a third-act monologue. But the words stuck in my throat. Because I saw his hand. The hand holding the wine glass.

It wasn't shaking anymore.

He looked at the empty seat beside me, then back at his food. The restaurant was silent now, save for the rain. The phone was dead.

"The acidity," Jeffrey said, his voice barely a whisper, "is actually quite profound, once you get past the initial disappointment. It lingers."