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"  He&amp;#039;d stopped expecting her call. Days had passed, but the memory still had him keyed up. He couldn&amp;#039;t sleep. He stood in his backyard, watching stars, listening to cicadas. Then his cell started vibrating. The number was blocked. The woman said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s me.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Me who?&amp;quot; he said, though, of course, he knew. &amp;quot;Gracie. From The Esquire Pub.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Gracie. Gracie. Doesn&amp;#039;t ring a bell.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You wrote your number on my napkin. How do you not rememb -- &amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m kidding, Gracie. You were amazing,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I was easy. I was slutty.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Both of which are pretty amazing,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;d call.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Great minds\u2026&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I hoped you would. I can&amp;#039;t stop think -- &amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m calling for two reasons,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;First, what&amp;#039;s the name of that bet you were explaining to me while we played pool?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;A Calcutta,&amp;quot; he said. He liked knowing about Calcuttas. The knowledge made him feel bigger than himself. He was 44, divorced, his backyard overrun with crabgrass. &amp;quot;Right, Calcutta,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;I kept thinking Bengali.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You were close.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I still don&amp;#039;t understand the bet, but it&amp;#039;s a pretty word. Calcutta, Calcutta. Have you ever been?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Not quite,&amp;quot; he said. He&amp;#039;d never left Texas. &amp;quot;Me either I&amp;#039;ve been to Mexico and New Orleans. I&amp;#039;ve been to driveable destinations.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Like The Esquire,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the second reason I&amp;#039;m calling,&amp;quot; Gracie said. A window unit hummed in the background. The whirring sound surprised him; he had her pegged for a woman with central air. Maybe she&amp;#039;d left town, maybe she&amp;#039;d driven to a motel somewhere. At The Esquire, she&amp;#039;d locked the door to the bathroom, then pinned him against it. He&amp;#039;d been nervous as a deer. She&amp;#039;d said something right before kissing him, something like, &amp;#039;Fill me up,&amp;#039; or maybe &amp;#039;Tear me up.&amp;#039; He said, &amp;quot;A Calcutta is an under the table auction -- &amp;quot; &amp;quot;That woman you were with, that woman who did all those things, that wasn&amp;#039;t me.&amp;quot; A briny wind blew, rustled the trees. The cicadas quieted. He said, &amp;quot;That wasn&amp;#039;t you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I had a son,&amp;quot; Gracie said. &amp;quot;And a husband.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Had?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Had.&amp;quot; The line was very clear now. He wanted to ask her what had happened, but knew better. She said, &amp;quot;That night I couldn&amp;#039;t get them out of my head. It was too much. Just too, too much. I needed to feel something else. Anything else.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;And that&amp;#039;s where I came in.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Great minds\u2026&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Why are you telling me this?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Because I wanted you to know. Because we&amp;#039;ll never talk again.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll never talk again?&amp;quot; No response. He said, &amp;quot;I want to see you.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I know.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Where are you? Don&amp;#039;t you think we should -- &amp;quot; &amp;quot;Should? Honey, &amp;#039;should&amp;#039; died a long time ago for me.&amp;quot; A few ragged clouds overhead, a gauze of stars, his heart pumping, pumping. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know what to say,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Say, &amp;#039;Goodnight, Gracie.&amp;#039; That&amp;#039;s what my husband would say.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Like George Burns.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Like George Burns,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Now you say it.&amp;quot; He didn&amp;#039;t want to say it, but he knew he was losing her and he suddenly felt that he&amp;#039;d gotten away with something -- not just in The Esquire, but something more, something that had to do with his whole meager life -- and all he wanted was to repay the world&amp;#039;s kindness, to make everyone happy, especially this woman he&amp;#039;d never talk to again. He wanted to send her off into her hideous dreams with a goodnight kiss. &amp;quot;Goodnight, Gracie,&amp;quot; he said. Only the cicadas answered, their songs of distress and longing rising up, more beautiful than ever.  Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the internationally acclaimed Corpus Christi, named a Best Book of the Year by The Independent of London and The Irish Times. His next book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, was recently released by Random House. His work appears in magazines such as The Paris Review, Oxford American, and Tin House, and in anthologies such as New Stories from the South: The Year&amp;#039;s Best 2003, 2004, and 2005, Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards. Currently, he is the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University. His website is BretAnthonyJohnston.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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