A feminine voice said, “Your three minutes are up.”
I jerked the receiver away from my ear, and slammed it on the pronged cradle, but just before the receiver hit, I could hear the unmistakable click coming over the line that announced Elsie Brand had beat me to it. Bertha Cool would never have stood for overtime on a long-distance call. “It took me less than three minutes to tell my husband where he got off,” she used to declare, “and nothing that’s been said since has been half as important. So if you can’t say what you want to get off your chest within three minutes, you’ve got to learn.”
I walked out of the telephone office into a restaurant, had a pot of coffee, an order of ham and eggs, and then went over to the Cactus Patch. The attendant told me Louie Hazen wouldn’t come on duty until five o’clock that night, but just as I was walking out, another man called to me to wait a minute. Louie, it seemed, was down in the basement, making repairs on some of the machines.
I stood around waiting while they sent for him.
Louie Hazen came up, looked at me dubiously for a moment, then as recognition showed in his eyes, his face broke into a grin. “Hello, buddy,” he said, coming forward with his hand pushed out in front of him.
I reached for his hand, but his hand wasn’t there. ‘Louie wasn’t there. He’d worked that fast shift, pushed my right hand over to one side, and when my eyes finally found his grinning countenance, it was within a few inches of my own, his right fist held gently but firmly against the pit of my stomach.
“You got to watch for it, buddy,” he said. “You got to watch for it all the time.”
I looked into his filmed eyes, saw the battered nose at close range, the broad grin that disclosed the two missing teeth over on the left side.
“You weren’t watchin’ for it, were you, buddy?”
I shook my head.