An unsuccessful attempt to get a book club to pick The Collected Works of Dorothy Parker as their next book reminded me that I once rewrote her short story ‘A Telephone Call’, swapping the genders to see if it still worked. I think it does.
PLEASE, God, let her telephone me now. Dear God, let her call me now. I won’t ask anything else of You, truly I won’t. It isn’t very much to ask. It would be so little to You, God, such a little, little thing. Only let her telephone now. Please, God. Please, please, please.
If I didn’t think about it, maybe the telephone might ring. Sometimes it does that. If I could think of something else. If I could think of something else. Maybe if I counted five hundred by fives, it might ring by that time. I’ll count slowly. I won’t cheat. And if it rings when I get to three hundred, I won’t stop; I won’t answer it until I get to five hundred. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty…. Oh, please ring. Please.
This is the last time I’ll look at the clock. I will not look at it again. It’s ten minutes past seven. She said she would telephone at five o’clock. “I’ll call you at five, darling.” I think that’s where she said “darling.” I’m almost sure she said it there. I know she called me “darling” twice, and the other time was when she said good-by. “Good-by, darling.” She was busy, and she can’t say much in the office, but she called me “darling” twice. She couldn’t have minded my calling her up. I know you shouldn’t keep telephoning them – I know they don’t like that. When you do that they know you are thinking about them and wanting them, and that makes them hate you. But I hadn’t talked to her in three days – not in three days.
I still heartily recommend the Penguin Collected Dorothy Parker. It’s a big book, but made of short stories. You can pick & choose, like sweets. Leave some of the poetry if you like. There will always be hard-centred, unloved ones left ignored, but you will also find some praline-filled iced gems, with a bittersweet aftertaste.
You see, I still read it in a woman’s voice tho, even with the gender reversed. There’s something about the tone and language that feels so feminine still.