Telephone

  “May I help you?” the woman behind the counter asked me.

  “Our friend needs some medical attention,” I said.

  The woman burned a look right through me. “What is wrong with her?”

  “She’s been shot,” I said.

  The woman looked at Rosalita and then at the other women. She fidgeted with her pencil and looked back into the office. “We generally are required to report all gunshot treatments.”

  “Her arm is bleeding,” I said. “I believe she has lost a lot of blood.”

  “Carlos!” she called back. “What is her name?”

  “Maribel,” Rosalita and I said together.

  “Occupation?”

  “Slave,” I said.

  The clerk stared at me. I looked away, out the window, at the parking lot, at the moving cars. It was raining again.

  PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of nearly thirty books, including I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Erasure, and So Much Blue.

  The text of Telephone is set in Dante MT Pro.

  Book design by Rachel Holscher.

  Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.