Lindsay Walker - All the Best Restaurants

Lindsay Walker

All the Best Restaurants

The phone has stopped answering me. It’s taken up with the Swedish woman who lives in the apartment above the used instrument shop. I can just picture them -- the receiver cradling a jowl, her hair involved with the cord in some way.

The afternoon passes downhill and I still peel carrots as if nothing were amiss. Then, evenings stacked ominous as dominoes, I make calls at all hours from the fridge.

The phone doesn’t pick up. Wires cross and I’m trapped in a long-winded discussion with a secondhand clarinet. It fancies itself an amateur philosopher, “If there were no one to play me, would I still be a clarinet?”

“I really don’t care,” I say, hanging up.

The fridge has been very good about sticking my messages to itself with its magnets. Very reliable. But callers have to speak slowly, otherwise it gets confused. Meanwhile, I’ve heard my phone and the Swede have been spotted sharing meatballs at all the best restaurants in town.

Lindsay Walker is a graduate of Tulane University and a second-year master’s student in poetry at the Center for Writers. Currently, she serves as Poetry Editor for the literary journal, Juked. Her work has most recently been published in The Bare Root Review, Voix du Vieux, and The Jabberwock Review.