Babylon and Other Stories Read Online Free

right?”
    “Who wants to know?” I said.
    “I understand you're upset,” Dad said. “I understand you're mad. I'm sorry I haven't called. I've had some things to work out, do you know what I mean?”
    There was silence on the line. I was listening for the game, trying to get the score and the inning, but couldn't hear it anymore. I drank some of my beer, gulping it noisily down my throat.
    “Ag, sometimes adults and kids get the same sorts of feelingsabout their lives—you know, um, powerlessness, feeling trapped and that kind of thing.”
    “Are you speaking hypothetically?” I said.
    He took a deep breath and let it out. I imagined Margaret in the background, giving him big, encouraging nods with her big, wide head.
    “What I mean is, sometimes adults don't know what to do, like kids don't always know what to do. Do you understand what I mean?”
    I looked up. The stars blurred in my vision and I shook my head a little bit to clear it. “Sure I do,” I said. “I just have one question—who's the kid in this scenario, you or me?”
    “You're so sarcastic,” he said in a soft voice. “You sound just like your mother.”
    “It's not my fault,” I said.
    “I know,” he said. “I know. Okay, listen.” Suddenly he was all business. “I hear you had a bad day at work. Do you want to talk about it?”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Your mother called and told me.”
    “Oh,” I said. I didn't even know she knew how to get in touch with him. Tears slid down the receiver and collected in the base of it, cool against my cheek, sliding into the little holes.
    “Ag, your mother knows, and I hope you know too, that I love you more than anything. That's one thing we see eye-to-eye on, and that'll never change, no matter what else happens.”
    I felt like this was the worst thing I'd ever heard. The King of Kohlrabi was in my living room drinking a beer in his socks, and I had to talk to my dad on the phone with a lesbian who wasn't a lesbian listening in the background. Somewhere in the desert, green slime was oozing toward families as they slept. What elsewas happening all around me, all the time, and I couldn't do anything to stop it or even slow it down.
    “Dad,” I told him, “Mom's inside watching baseball with Mr. Dejun.”
    He said, “Oh? So how's the game?”
    I sighed, and then the sigh turned into a hiccup.
    “You like the Dodgers this year?” he asked.
    “Their bullpen's a disaster,” I said.
    “You've really been following? Aggie, there might be hope for you yet.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Are you coming back?”
    “I don't know,” my dad said. “I just don't know.”
    “Okay.” I stood up and looked at the night sky, the sound of cicadas throbbing around me. “I have to go now,” I said.
    “Listen, Aggie, take down my number, okay? Take it down so you can call me whenever you want. Do you have a pen?”
    “Sure,” I said. I didn't. But I closed my eyes and listened carefully to his voice in my ear, as if I were taking the most urgent message. As he told me the numbers I traced them, small and invisible, in the air in front of me, then let them go out into the night.

Transcription
    This is a preliminary report for a 65-year-old Caucasian man who entered complaining of shortness of breath.
    Walter was coughing again. He sat up in bed, his red face hanging over his chest like a heavy bloom, coughing. He didn't try to speak or even wheeze, instead dedicating himself to the fit with single-minded concentration. Carl watched the oxygen threads quiver across his cheeks. The cough ran down like an engine, slowing to sputters, then ended. Carl handed his uncle a glass of water, and he drank.
    “Thanks,” Walter said. He pressed one of his large hands against his sunken chest, passed the glass back and took a few breaths.
    “How do you feel?”
    “I feel fine.” He grabbed his handkerchief from the bedside table, hacked up some phlegm, looked at it, and then put the cloth back on the