Telemarketer Loneliness

Trying to sell me siding for a house I don’t own, a telemarketer explains the heating and cooling properties, the energy savings, of wrapping your home in quality stuff, and I listen because I know he’s not allowed to hang up on me, that when he’s done faux marveling at how the strips of layered vinyl will make me the envy of the neighborhood, how the value of my home will soar like King Midas himself had blessed each room, how non-liquid assets are the best investment one can make in this life, I’ll ask him how his day’s going, hoping he’ll do the same, hoping he’ll quit hawking insecurity over the phone then and there, hoping he’ll agree to meet me halfway at a café or a restaurant or anywhere—where we won’t possess any insulating, gilded siding but will have each other.

Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northern Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Cleaver Magazine, The Lumiere Review, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove.