Free Call If You Need Me by Raymond Carver Page A

and stepfather, who’d just come back from two weeks in Rome. Their luggage had been lost for three days—that was the first thing that’d happened. Then, the second night in Rome, walking down the Via Veneto to a restaurant not far from their hotel—the street patrolled by men in uniform, carrying machine guns—his mother had her purse snatched by a thief on a bicycle. Two days later, when they drove a rental car about thirty miles from Rome, somebody slashed a tire and stole the hood off the car while they were ina museum. ‘They didn’t take the battery or anything, you understand,” Robert said. “They wanted the hood. Can you beat it?”
    “What’d they want with the hood?” Joanne asked.
    “Who knows?” Robert said. “But in any case, it’s getting worse for people over there—for tourists—since we bombed. What do you guys think about the bombing? I think it’s just going to make things worse for Americans. Everybody’s a target now.” Nick stirred his coffee and sipped it before saying, “I don’t know any longer. I really don’t. In my mind I keep seeing all those bodies lying in pools of blood in the airports. I just don’t know.” He stirred his coffee some more. “The guys I’ve talked to over here think that we should have dropped a few more bombs, maybe, while we were at it. I heard somebody say they should have turned the place into a parking lot, while they were at it. I don’t know
what
we should or shouldn’t do over there. But we had to do something, I think.”
    “Well, that’s a little severe, isn’t it?” Robert said. “A parking lot? Like,
nuke
the place—you know?”
    “I said I don’t know what they should have done. But some kind of response was necessary.”
    “Diplomacy,” Robert said. “Economic sanctions. Let them feel it in their pocketbooks. Then they’ll straighten up and fly right.”
    “Should I make more coffee?” Joanne said. “It won’t take a minute. Who wants some cantaloupe?” She moved her chair back and got up from the table.
    “I can’t eat another bite,” Carol said.
    “Me neither,” Robert said. “I’m fine.” He seemed to want to go on with what they were talking about, and then he stopped. “Nick, sometime I’ll come down here and go fishing with you. When’s the best time to go?”
    “Do it,” Nick said. “You’re welcome to come anytime. Come over and stay as long as you’d like. July is the best month. But August is good too. Even the first week or two of September.” He started to say something about how swell it was fishing in the evenings, when most of the boats had gone in. He startedto say something about the time he’d hooked a big one in the moonlight.
    Robert seemed to consider this for a minute. He drank some of his coffee. “I’ll do it. I’ll come this summer—in July, if that’s all right.”
    “It’s fine,” Nick said.
    “What will I need in the way of equipment?” Robert said, interested.
    “Just bring yourself,” Nick said. “I have plenty of gear.”
    “You can use my pole,” Joanne said.
    “But then you couldn’t fish,” Robert said. And suddenly that was the end of the talk about fishing. Somehow, Nick could see, the prospect of sitting together in a boat for hours on end made Robert and him both feel uneasy. No, frankly he couldn’t see any more for their relationship than sitting here in this nice kitchen twice a year, eating breakfast and lingering over coffee. It was pleasant enough, and it was just enough time spent together. More than this was just not in the cards. Lately he’d even passed up an occasional trip to Seattle with Joanne, because he knew she’d want to stop at the end of the day at Carol and Robert’s for coffee. Nick would make an excuse and stay home. He’d say he was too busy at the lumberyard that he managed. On one occasion, Joanne had spent the night with Carol and Robert, and when she came home, she seemed to Nick to be remote and thoughtful for