Voicemails and Vinyl

My name is Tulani Brighton, I am twenty-eight years old, and I am speaking into my phone in a lodge hall kitchen in upstate New Lansing. That is not the interesting part. The interesting part is what I did at the regional fair on Saturday, which is win a blue ribbon for pottery, and which is why the voicemail I left Jerry Goldberg sounded like this.

"Jerry, it's me. Pick up, you never pick up. Fine. I won. First place, the big blue ribbon, functional stoneware, judge said my glaze work showed unusual patience. Unusual patience, Jerry. From a woman you once described as fidgety. I'm framing the ribbon. I'm maybe framing the judge. Call me back and say congratulations like you mean it."

He did not call back, because he never calls back. Jerry answers everything in writing. He is a lawyer, thirty years old, and he composes an email or a letter the way other people breathe. I met him at the climbing gym two years ago, right after my divorce, when I was bad at climbing and worse at being single. He spotted me on a wall I had no business being on and said, "You should downclimb before you die on purpose." We have been friends ever since. Real friends. The kind where nothing has ever happened, which I want stated plainly because it becomes relevant.

A week after the ribbon, a letter arrived at the lodge, forwarded to the resident potter, care of the foundation that pays my salary. Jerry writes actual letters on actual paper. His handwriting is small and neat, like someone who bills by the word.

Dear Tulani, it began. Congratulations are deserved and I am giving them without reservation. First place is not luck. I have watched you throw pots since we met, with the same stubbornness you bring to a route you have no business attempting, and I knew the ribbon would come. I have told you this before on the phone and you changed the subject, so I am telling you in writing, where you cannot interrupt me.

Then came the part I read four times. You should know that I have kept the photos from our gym days. All of them. The ones where you are chalked to the elbows and grinning at the top of the 5.9 you fell off twice. I keep them in a folder at my desk. When work is bad, which is often, I look at them. That is all I will say about that this time.

That is all he would say. All I will say, in a letter, this time. Jerry Goldberg, who once billed a client forty minutes for drafting a birthday card, had written a sentence with a door in it and then stood in front of the door.

I put the letter in my apron pocket and carried it around the lodge for two days like a talisman. Then the merger announcement was scheduled, which is where things got loud.

Here is the situation, for those of you following at home. The climbing gym I belonged to, and Jerry with me, got bought by a bigger gym chain. There was an announcement party, held at the lodge where I live and work, because the new owners own the lodge too, apparently, along with everything else in a fifty mile radius including my sanity. Everyone flew in. Jerry flew in. He stood in the kitchen doorway in a suit, which was wrong for a kitchen and right for my evening, and said, "They gave us lanyards. I feel like a hostage with a laminated face."

I recorded my next voicemail that same night, standing at the big steel counter, kneading a lump of stoneware clay while the party roared in the hall behind me. The industrial dishwasher was running and someone was arguing about parking near the walk-in, so I had to hunch over the phone.

"Jerry. It's Tulani, obviously, who else leaves you forty-second updates from a war zone. The merger party is happening around me right now. There are maybe eighty people out there wearing matching lanyards and eating shrimp with forks. The new owners have the emotional warmth of a lease agreement. I am hiding in the kitchen doing my actual job because no one in this building knows how to portion a cheese board.

Here is my plan, and I need you to approve it as my lawyer, which is a joke, sort of. I am going to walk out there in my clay apron, covered in slip like someone who lost a fight with a mud pit would be, and I am going to be visibly thriving. That is the entire strategy. Thriving, on display. Because you wrote me a letter, Jerry, a paper letter, that said you keep my climbing photos at your desk, and I have been thinking about that sentence for two days straight and I can't decide what it means and it's ruining my concentration.

Anyway. Say something back. In writing, if you must. The clay needs me."

I hung up and went back to kneading. The clay was good that night, which felt like a personal insult given my mental state. Firm, clean, no air bubbles. My hands knew what they were doing even when the rest of me didn't.

His second letter came four days later. It was thinner than the first one, which meant he had either been busy or careful, and with Jerry those look the same.

Tulani. You asked what the sentence means. Here is what it means: I look at those photos because I like looking at you. I have liked looking at you for two years, which I have not said because you were newly divorced and I was your friend and friends do not complicate a person's recovery. If I have now complicated it, tell me to stop and I will stop, and we will remain exactly who we have been, which is a thing I value more than you probably realize.

Meanwhile, business. The merger party was last weekend at your lodge, and I was there, and on Saturday there is a staff dinner at the same lodge, and I will be there, wearing the lanyard, enduring. Which brings me to the dare. The rec room at that lodge has a stack of vinyl records on the shelf by the jukebox. Nobody has touched them since the days of the Kumar administration, and the new owners are going to throw them in a dumpster during the renovation. I dare you to steal them. All of them. Consider it a souvenir from a building we are losing. If you do it, I will buy you a day pass at the climbing gym of your choice. That is the whole prize, and it has nothing to do with what I wrote above.

That is twice now he has written a sentence with a door in it. If I have complicated it, tell me to stop. I read that line at the breakfast table and