The call comes in the middle of the night, three in the morning, and it nearly scares us to death.
"Answer it, answer it!" my wife cries. "My God, who is it? Answer it!"
I can't find the light, but I get to the other room, where the phone is, and pick it up after the fourth ring.
"Is Bud there?" this woman says, very drunk.
"Jesus, you have the wrong number," I say, and hang up.
I turn the light on, and go into the bathroom, and that's when I hear the phone start again.
"Answer that!" my wife screams from the bedroom. "What in God's name do they want, Jack? I can't take any more."
I hurry out of the bathroom and pick up the phone.
"Bud?" the woman says. "What are you doing, Bud?"
I say, "Look here. You have a wrong number. Don't ever call this number again."
"I have to talk to Bud," she says.
I hang up, wait until it rings again, and then I take the receiver and lay it on the table beside the phone. But I hear the woman's voice say, "Bud, talk to me, please." I leave the receiver on its side on the table, turn off the light, and close the door to the room.
In the bedroom I find the lamp on and my wife, Iris, sitting against the headboard with her knees drawn up under the covers. She has a pillow behind her back, and she's more on my side than her own side. The covers are up around her shoulders. The blankets and the sheet have been pulled out from the foot of the bed. If we want to go back to sleep — I want to go back to sleep, anyway — we may have to start from scratch and do this bed over again.
"What the hell was that all about?" Iris says. "We should have unptugged the phone. I guess we forgot. Try forgetting one night to unplug the phone and see what happens. I don't believe it."
After Iris and I started living together, my former wife, or else one of my kids, used to call up when we were asleep and want to harangue us. They kept doing it even after Iris and I were married. So we started unplugging our phone before we went to bed. We unplugged the phone every night of the year, just about. It was a habit. This time I slipped up, that's all.