Court Order

[Brad Rose]

I phone you, but you don’t answer. You are at work, and there is something you want, something on your mind that you want to forget. As the phone rings, you look down at your papers, as if these were important, as if they required your attention, but you are thinking of the unanswered me. I am your husband, but you don’t answer. You are afraid that if you answer, I will know where you are. The court order said “absolutely no contact,” but as long as you don’t answer, I am a free man.

[Sandra Davies]

Thanks Brad - I got all what you intended in the first reading and then tried too hard/thought too much (because so often I speed-read and miss a point that everyone else comments on)
Tricky business this writing isn't it?

[Brad Rose]

Sandra, Thanks for your reading. In the second sentence I wanted to intimate that this guy is so familiar with his wife and her patterns of behavior--he's a stalker, with her routines, that he can envision what she is doing, although this is not literally true. He is confident that she is pretending to work, she is feigning concentration, but he just "knows" that her mind is elsewhere...on him. Mayeb he has called before, or tried to contact her at work?? He knows that she is thinking about him in the moment that he calls her

As for how she knows it's him: I envisioned this as a kind of "I-can-tell-by-the-wring" intuition. In fact it is ambiguous. It may also be the case that her phone, as do most these days, has caller identification, and she can see that it is her husband calling, but is loathe to pick up. As Gita mentioned, I think these relationships are filled with ambivalence and dread. She may want to pick up, but she reviles the thought of doing so, too.

[Sandra Davies]

Brad I've come back to this a couple of times and re-read with mixed reactions and since you mention the second sentence I'll say that this is the one that catches me out each time, because I don't understand it (and probably am not meant to?)
I'm also, nitpickingly I know (and apologise), wondering how she knows it's him ringing, and if the answer is that it is her mobile number, then I'd suggest 'the' phone, at work ought to be 'her' phone (and the real creepiness for me comes in the suggestion that he can actually see her looking at papers
The last three sentences are perfect!!

[Brad Rose]

Gita I agree. This IS creepy. It is fiction, but like much darker fiction, can be found, sadly, all to frequently in "reality." I think you are correct in raising the point about ambivalence. Ambivalence is one of the strongest human emotions. I think Jung said something to this effect. I wanted to insinuate some ambivalence with the second line, but can see that it might appear more like a feeling of threat than ambivalent desire or longing. I also wanted to capture the tone of menace, and the implicit paradox that as long as the woman character doesn't "connect" with her husband, he is unlikely to be prosecuted for a violation of the court order.

[Paul de Denus]

I like the simplicity of this- fewer words always do the trick for me (or so I try)