He had a roll of quarters.
Before the days of mobile phones and cellular towers there were phone booths and kiosks...places where you would dial a rotary phone and talk to an operator and determine a distance...and coins would be added one by one and they would tinkle in the system and then you would hear a ringing and then you'd be connected...if somebody picked up.
No caller ID. No preview.
Somebody was calling. Perhaps it's important.
He only knew that if he were to try to call her he needed to ensure he had enough coin. Enough time to tell her. He didn't want to run out of quarters to convey.
He had no other money, he had made some mistakes and he was running out of lines. He had a few items and some prayers.
She was one of the latter.
He knew she might not pick up...knew that she might not acknowledge.
But simply he wanted her to know that in his mind he was already connected to her and that the call was simply perfunctory... mechanical.
He looked in his hand and the stack of quarters was a neat roll. Each represented close to five minutes apiece...he figured this was worth an hour of discussion.
She would never talk that long.
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