dynamic raze she keeps calling me. every other night, a little after nine, the phone rings. i don't recognize the numbers at first. there are two of them. the second one only shows up on the caller_id once. something bites at the back of my brain. it's angela. the numbers are hers. her parents' place and her cell phone. we haven't talked in thirteen years. it's after eight now. i'm getting hungry. i make up my mind to call her back. i dial her digits and ask to speak to her, thinking i've got her father on the line. all i hear is some quiet music. her voice shows up after a while. we say hello. i tell her i'm sorry i keep missing her. my sleep is all out of whack again. i exaggerate a stretch and a yawn to make myself sound more worn-out than i am. it feels like i'm lying and telling the truth at the same time. if that's a thing you can do. i ask how she's doing. "pretty good," she says. "when i picked up, i thought you were calling to tell me you were moving away." "i wish," i say. "i just got an album by h to the he to the k to the y. have you heard of them?" "i think i remember reading about them. but i never got around to checking them out." "you want to listen with me over the phone?" "sure." she stops talking and lets the album play. it sounds like a strange cousin to kraftwerk. major keys and analog drum machines and bright synthetic melodies. my dad calls out to me. i step into the hallway and yell back. there's more light leaking in from the windows than there should be this late in the day. he tells me about the movie he's watching. half his words get lost on their way up the stairs. "i can't hear what you're saying," i say. "i'll tell you later," he says. i return to my bed. halfway through the second song, the music recedes into the background. i ask when this was recorded. "it presaged 1990s french house music," angela says. "it was recorded in 1981." "talk about being ahead of your time," i say. we agree that if someone did this sort of thing today, they'd just get a computer to do all the heavy lifting for them. i improvise an exchange between a nonexistent artist and their imaginary_friend. the friend says, "i bet a lot of work was involved in putting this together." "nah," the artist says. "i just got my ai to program it for me. it's artificially inseminated." that gets a laugh out of her. it's the only time i hear anything other than indifference in her voice. "did the brazil thing knock you over?" she asks. i think she's talking about an earthquake. but the brazil thing is something that happened the last time i saw her. i get a hazy picture of her taking me to a painful place and realizing too late that she'd overstepped. "my memory is pretty shot these days," i say. "i do vaguely remember hanging out with you and your cat. how is rodney doing anyway?" "rodney had to be put down last year," she says. i wake_up before i can tell her how sorry i am. 241104 what's it to you? who go blather from