1-800-LISTEN

Andre had just calmed the storm in his head when the chime in his headset came. Another person to listen to complain about their lives before he can tell them what they need to hear and go, and, God willing, his headache will go along with them.

“Thank you for calling LISTEN, my name is Andre, and I want to listen to you today. How can I help?” Andre spoke the call-center scripting as his head throbbed on.

Helping people is how to quiet it, Bear, Andre always recalls the memory of his grandmother whenever the pain becomes too much. She, also, could hear the song, as she called it. Granddad could hear a bit of the song himself, at least that’s what Andre was told. He was too young when his first grandfather passed. Granddad number two, an alcoholic and philandering pastor, said it was “that backward African-voodoo shit,” and they were witches and warlocks. Granddad number three, who couldn’t hear the song himself, attested to its power, and he called them something different, to him they were earthbound angels, flawed and all, sent to do God’s work. Andre believed that they fit somewhere in the middle. His grandmother must have too because she called them Songbirds instead of witches or angels. Ignore the song, and the pain increases, she had said.

“I don’t know,” the voice on the phone said. The caller’s voice told Andre he was a man, and the optional profile the caller decided to fill out before reaching a representative told Andre that the caller was in his mid-twenties and from Ohio. Come on, damn it, Andre thought. I need more so I can do my thing. Hurry up, prick, my head is about to pop.

“I just need to speak with someone,” Andre began to hear the song within the caller’s words, forming images in his mind. “I’m not having the best day.” The word day lingered for what seemed like minutes, and Andre’s mind filled with images.

Two bodies, youthful and warm, fought for dominance under bedsheets. A woman, coffee-brown skin, untamed hair laughed in a mix of pleasure and joy, and the scent of vanilla filled the air around her. Voices, barely audible, spoke from lips practically touching. “Forever,” they said. Then the image snapped, the woman, with her suitcase, slowly walked away toward the terminal.

Andre came back with an intense feeling of guilt that weighed on his stomach, threatening to make him vomit.

“I guess what started my day off bad was—”

“Go get her.”

“What?” the caller asked?

Andre leaned in, whispering, “I said, get off your ass

and go get her. Forever, right?”

The phone went quiet, and if Andre hadn’t known better,

he would have thought the caller hung up.

Fearfully, the caller said, “Thank you.” Then the line clicked, and the pain Andre had once felt was no more. He felt it leave him; flew away from him like a bird.