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B.F. and Me | Narrative Magazine

by Lucia Berlin

7-8 minutos

I liked him right away, just talking to him on the phone.

Raspy, easygoing voice with a smile and sex in it, you
know what I mean. How is it that we read people by their
voices anyway? The phone company information lady is
officious and patronizing and she isn’t even a real
person. And the guy at the cable company who says our
business means a lot to them and they want to please
us, you can hear the sneer in his tone.

I used to be a switchboard operator in a hospital, spent

all day talking to different doctors that I never saw. We
all had favorites and ones that we couldn’t stand. None
of us had ever seen Dr. Wright but his voice was so
smooth and cool we were in love with him. If we had to
page him we’d each put a dollar down on the board,
would race to answer calls and be the one to get his,
win the money, and say, “Hell-oh there, Dr. Wright. ICU
is paging you, sir.” Never did see Dr. Wright in real life
but when I got a job working in Emergency I got to know
all the other doctors I had talked to on the phone. I soon
learned that they were just as we imagined them. The
best physicians were the ones who were prompt to
answer, clear and polite, the worst were those who used
to yell at us and say things like, “Do they hire the
handicapped at the switchboard?” They were the ones
who let the ER see their patients, who had the Medicaid
patients sent to County. Amazing how the ones with
sexy voices were just as sexy in real life. But no, I can’t
describe how people get the quality into their voice of
just waking up or of wanting to go to bed. Check out
Tom Hanks’s voice. Forget it. Okay, now Harvey Keitel’s.
And if you don’t think Harvey is sexy just close your
eyes.

Now I have a really nice voice. I’m a strong woman,

mean even, but everyone thinks I’m really gentle
because of my voice. I sound young even though I’m
seventy years old. Guys at the Pottery Barn flirt with me.
“Hey, I’ll bet you’re really gonna enjoy lying on this rug.”
Stuff like that.

I’ve been trying to get somebody to lay tiles in my

bathroom. People who put ads in the paper for odd jobs,
painting, etc., they don’t really want to work. They are all
pretty booked up right now or a machine answers with
Metallica in the background and they don’t return your
call. After six tries B.F. was the only one who said he’d
come over. He answered the phone, Yeah, this is B.F.,
so I said, Hey, this is L.B. And he laughed, real slow. I
told him I had a floor job and he said he was my man.
He could come anytime. I figured he was a smart-aleck
in his twenties, good-looking, with tattoos and spiky hair,
a pickup truck and a dog.

He didn’t show on the day he said he would but he

called the next day, said something had come up, could
he make it that afternoon. Sure. Later that day I saw the
pickup, heard him banging on my door, but it took me a
while to get there. I’ve got bad arthritis and also I get
tangled up in my oxygen hose. Hold your horses! I
yelled.

B.F. was holding on to the wall and to the banister,

gasping and coughing after he climbed the three steps.
He was an enormous man, tall, very fat and very old.
Even when he was still outside, catching his breath, I
could smell him. Tobacco and dirty wool, rank alcoholic
sweat. He had bloodshot baby-blue eyes that smiled. I
liked him right away.

He said he could probably use some of that air of mine.

I told him he should get him a tank but he said he was
afraid he’d blow himself up smoking. He came on in and
headed for the bathroom. It’s not like I needed to show
him where it was. I live in a trailer and there aren’t too
many places it could be. But he just stomped off shaking
the place as he walked. I watched him measure for a
while then went to sit in the kitchen. I could still smell
him. The pong of him was madeleine-like for me,
bringing back Grandpa and Uncle John, for starters.

Bad smells can be nice. A faint odor of skunk in the

woods. Horse manure at the races. One of the best
parts about the tigers in zoos is the feral stench. At
bullfights I always liked to sit high up, in order to see it
all, like at the opera, but if you sit next to the barrera you
can smell the bull.

B.F. was exotic to me simply because he was so dirty. I

live in Boulder, where there is no dirt. No dirty people.
Even all the runners look like they just got out of the
shower. I wondered where he drank, because I have
also never seen a dirty bar in Boulder. He seemed the
kind of man who liked to talk when he drank.

He was talking to himself in the bathroom, groaning and

panting as he got down on the floor to measure the linen
closet. When he heaved himself back up, with a God
DAMN, I swear the whole house swayed back and forth.
He came out, told me I needed forty-four square feet.
Can you believe it? I said. I bought forty-six! Well, you
got a good eye. Two good eyes. He grinned with brown
false teeth.

“You can’t walk on it for seventy-two hours,” he said.

“That’s crazy. I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well, it’s a fact. The tiles need to set.”

“My whole life I never heard anybody say, ‘We went to a

motel while the tile set.’ Or, ‘Can I stay at your place
until my tile sets?’ Never once heard this mentioned.”

“That’s because most people who have tile laid have

two bathrooms.”

“So what do people do who have one?”

“Keep the carpet.”

The carpet was in when I bought the trailer. Orange

shag, stained.

“I can’t stand that carpet.”

“Don’t blame you. All I’m saying is you have to stay off
the tiles for seventy-two hours.”

“I can’t do that. I take Lasix for my heart. I’m in there

twenty times a day.”

“Well then you just go ahead on in there. But if the tiles

shift don’t you be saying it was my fault, because I lay a
good tile.”

We settled on a price for the job and he said he’d come

on Friday morning. He was obviously sore after bending
down. Gasping for air, he limped out of the house,
stopping to lean on the kitchen counter and then on the
stove in the living room. I followed him to the door,
making the same rest stops. At the foot of the stairs he
lit up a cigarette and smiled up at me. Glad to meet you.
His dog waited patiently in the truck.

He never came on Friday. He didn’t call, so I tried his

number on Sunday. No answer. I found the newspaper
page with all the other numbers. None of them
answered either. I imagined a western barroom filled
with tile-setters, all holding bottles or cards or glasses,
their heads lying asleep on the table.

He called yesterday. I said hello and he said, “How you

been, L.B.?”

“Swell, B.F. Wondering if I’d ever see you again.”

“How about I stop by tomorrow?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Around ten?”

“Sure,” I said. “Anytime.”

“B.F. and Me” from A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected

Stories by Lucia Berlin, selected by Stephen Emerson.
Copyright © 2015 by the Literary Estate of Lucia Berlin LP.
Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.