“You don’t need some fancy college degree, or even a regular old high school diploma, to know people,” she’d say.

Lately, there’d been almost nothing to know about anyone, and Vivian had just about fallen asleep at the console a few times. The townspeople of Wooster were talking about the dullest things you could imagine. Take this week. On Monday, Mrs. Butler complained to Mrs. Young that her daughter, Maxine, never called anymore, and even after she’d sent Maxine that beautiful windmill star quilt she’d worked so hard on. On Tuesday, Earl Archer called his wife, Dora, from the ticket office at the railroad depot because he’d left his wallet on their kitchen counter again, and wanted her to please get on the bus and bring it to him. On Wednesday, Clyde Walsh called Ginny Frazier to ask if she’d go to the A&W with him that afternoon after he finished shoveling the sidewalk in front of his mother’s house, and Ginny Frazier (for the umpteenth time) said no.

Vivian had connected all these calls, and, although they were dull, she’d listened in and made up her mind about them. She thought Mrs. Butler should drive herself down to Columbus, break into Maxine’s house, and take that quilt back. She thought Earl should hustle his wrinkled old ass back to the house, rather than making Dora take the bus in this cold weather just because he was a careless, absentminded idiot. And she thought Ginny Frazier might want to think long and hard about her chances of doing better than Clyde Walsh. If he could overlook that frying pan face of hers, he was worth a hamburger and root beer float at the A&W. How many boys his age still shoveled the walk for their mothers? And she’d overheard enough of Clyde’s calls to Ginny to know he meant business. Vivian felt that sort of romantic devotion should be rewarded. But Mrs. Butler, Earl, and Ginny would never hear Vivian’s advice, and they’d be all the poorer for it.

Vivian didn’t always recognize the voices of the callers, or the telephone numbers they gave her. Wooster was small, but it wasn’t that small. If the voice or number was unfamiliar, it was impossible to know who was there on the other end of the line, but Vivian could still come up with solutions for their problems. There were days when she thought maybe the callers should know she could hear them, and maybe instead of just listening she could chime in and give them that good advice she knew they needed. They’d be all the better for it, that was for certain. But she couldn’t do that. The telephone operators weren’t supposed to listen in on the calls. Vivian couldn’t tell you if that was a specific rule or just something that was frowned upon; it’d been so long since she’d read the rules. If confronted, she would’ve scoffed and said there wasn’t anything worth listening to anyhow. Quilts and forgotten wallets and the A&W. Christ.