Lost Signals (44 page)

The check is for seventy-six dollars—a week’s work.

If I have the energy, I’ll cash it tomorrow.

I make macaroni and cheese for dinner. I don’t have an oven or a stovetop, like my customers do, just a one-basin sink, a microwave and a hot plate. I eat dinner straight from the pot with ketchup for spice. I can’t stop thinking about Aiko. I wonder if she’s back online, trying to get her baby a bear. I log into SantaCam.com in case she’s there. There are only two other Santas on the clock right now. We don’t get many hits at ten at night. I sit around for a few minutes, and then I get a ping. I click on the button to go live, but instead of a child, the stupid, grinning heads of two teenaged boys fill the screen.

“Check out this one,” the dark-haired one says. “Check out this fat fuck.”

There are five syllables in the phrase,
Check out this fat fuck
.

The other one—a skinny punk with acne so bad the right side of his face looks like a blister—points at me with a laugh so twisted it looks like he’s melting. “What is that, a ski poster
 
? Where’s your tree, Santa
 
?”

I think about that for a moment, but don’t answer. I smile and say, “Ho, ho, ho,” and this only makes them laugh harder. This happens sometimes, especially in the later hours. I complained to the web host, and he or she (I don’t know because everything is done by e-mail) said it happens to all the Santas. I think it only happens to me.

The dark-haired one has full, pink lips, and though he’s got that misshapen look most teenagers have, I bet he does better with the ladies than his pizza-faced friend. He slides his tongue across his lips. “You ass-fuck any elves tonight, Santa
 
?”

That question has ten syllables. It’s perfect, and I let out an easy breath. Our SantaCam training manual says to play it straight. Never break character. “Santa’s married,” I say. “To Mrs. Claus.”

The red-cheeked kid is howling now, and the good-looking one falls to the floor holding his gut. I go with it. “What would you boys like for Christmas
 
?”

They’re laughing so hard they squeak like rodents. The acne kid stands up. He’s got on gray sweatpants. “I know what you want, Santa,”

“Ho, ho, ho,” I say, because tacked on to what the kid just said it adds up to ten.

The kid loosens the drawstrings and lowers his pants. His tiny, uncircumcised cock fills the monitor. He shakes his hips so that it swings back and forth like the clapper of a church bell. Behind him, the other kid starts singing a Christmas carol badly off-key.

“Ho, ho, ho,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”

You might wonder, neighbor, why I put up with this, why I log in to SantaCam at a time when only cruel, shallow people are online. I’ll explain that the same day you can explain why I fantasize about cutting the webbing of my toes with a razorblade.

***

Around eleven-thirty, I turn off the computer and turn on the TV. I lie down and flip through the channels looking for sitcoms and cartoons. I’ll even watch infomercials. My favorites are for food gadgets. If someone’s found a faster way to cook a turkey, I’m glued to the screen, even if I’ve never made a turkey. There is comfort in watching other people chop vegetables, knowing they won’t suddenly start carving up their co-host.

Soon, it’s past midnight, and we’re entering the small hours. The ones, the twos, the threes—we’re a long way from ten. The Lurking Man can show up any time of day, of course. But the small hours—this is where he lives. We’re in his home now, passing through in darkness like the moon crossing the ecliptic plane.

I try to call up a new movie, one set in Aiko’s kitchen. In this film I wake up each day and actually look forward to what’s ahead. I wrap an arm around her narrow waist and don’t even mind her morning breath. I make coffee without fear of throwing it in anyone’s face. I run the blender, and there is only juice inside. No blood, no bones. I hold my left hand in front of my face and wiggle my fingers. They’re all there. They’re all there. My eye catches the glint of the gold band on my ring finger.

And here’s where the movie falls apart. There is no ring. There is no finger. Aiko’s world is illusion, and I can only glimpse it through my webcam. But if I watch the screen just right, my reflection is transposed onto the houses on the other end. This is how I inhabit their lives. On my computer screen. It’s like watching myself in a rerun. I am there in Aiko’s kitchen. In a place she can’t see.

The dog-eared notebook
sits on my bedside table, numbers claustrophobically crowded between blue lines. Placing my finger in the phone dial, I gently scroll to the first number. The dial clicks along as I spin to the remaining six digits. I press the phone to my ear, shivers traveling down my spine like rain drops trailing down a window.

There’s the familiar click as someone answers the phone, followed immediately by a “Hello
 
?” The voice is definitely female, and a bit raspy. Probably belonging to an elder, or maybe just someone who smokes a pack of menthols a day. “Hello
 
?” she repeats. “Harpers’ residence.”

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. The Harpers’ residence. The voice on the phone must be Mrs. Harper. Her hair is probably pulled back in a mousy brown bun, graying wisps framing her face. Crows feet mark the corners of her hazel eyes, and her thin lips are usually pressed together as if she’s trying to forget a bitter taste. She works in a grocery store seven days a week, even though her husband promised he would work enough to support them both. After work she smokes cigarettes, waiting for Mr. Harper to return home from the factory. Some days she smokes two or three cigarettes. Some days she finishes the pack.

“Hell-oooo
 
?” she says again, a hint of annoyance creeping into her voice. There’s a large exhale from across the line, a click, then the beeping of a lost connection. I will most likely never hear the voice of Mrs. Harper again, but I’ve still managed to become a tiny blip on the radio wave of her life. Our paths, for however briefly, have intertwined.

***

When I return home from working the evening shift at St. Anthony’s Senior Care Center, it is usually after ten. My back aches, my feet are sore, and everything smells of disinfectant. With my key in the lock, I often imagine what it would be like to have a family awaiting my return on the other side of the door. I would burst into the room with a “Honey, I’m home
 
!” like a retro sitcom, and my wife would kiss me hello, a sleeping baby in her arms. I twist the key and am greeted by my apartment with its peeling floral wallpaper and wet-sock smell. The lights flicker on, and something with too many legs scuttles for safety beneath the couch.
Honey, I’m home.

With no other company, I turn to my phone. I dial a number, writing it down in my notebook so I can look back on it later like a diary entry, a reminder of a life I’ve touched. Goosebumps spread as the rings reverberate. Who will pick up on the other line
 
? It could be the president of Australia, a whitened-teeth celebrity, or a blue-haired grandmother. The pope, my high school math teacher, or a drug lord. Maybe it’s a single mother balancing three jobs, or maybe it’s a teenager who’s already wrecked their third car. The possibilities are endless. It’s like pushing two quarters into a slot machine, turning the handle, and holding your breath as your prize clinks to the bottom of the chute.

But I never speak. I have nothing to say.

Most people think my call is just a bad connection or spam. There’s a “Hello
 
? . . . Hello
 
? . . . ” a click, and they’re gone. Others stay with me for a bit longer. Some girls listen to the silence for a moment before bidding me farewell with a “fuck off, pervert.” Some people think I’m their ex, still pining over them. “Shelley, look, I know it’s you. You have to stop calling, baby. Move on. I have . . . Shelley
 
?” Some think I’m a ghost. “Joshua, is that you
 
? What’s it like up there
 
? I miss you.” In the silence, people hear what they expect to hear.

My phone is my conduit, my medium, reaching through space to connect with disembodied voices. She is a beautiful mahogany rotary phone with gold detail, smooth to the touch and refreshingly cool as I press her metal handset against my ear. I do have a cellphone that I take to work, some flimsy thing that doesn’t even have real buttons—just a touch-screen. Cellphones take away the intimacy of a phone call. With my rotary phone I feel connected, as if the wire connecting the phone base to the handset also connects me to the ones I call. An umbilical cord nourishing us with the same life force.

***

Growing up at the city’s edge, my mother worked three jobs to support our two-person family. The dark bags under her eyes and callused hands proved she loved me. But with Mother at work all the time, I was a bit lonely. None of the kids at school wanted to be my friend. When I try to talk, my tongue swells up, and the words in my brain trip over each other as they scramble out of my mouth. That’s how I earned the nickname Stuttering Thomas—a clever parody of the biblical Doubting Thomas, or maybe just an unclever insult, since my name is Thomas and I do, in fact, stutter. The name stuck from elementary school to high school graduation. I laughed along with the kids. God, I just wanted a friend. Someone to share stories with, someone to care for, someone to sit in comfortable silence with. Someone to simply exist with.

I was ten when I made my first phone call. My mother had an olive-green rotary phone on the table near the couch, but forbade me from ever using it, except for emergencies. The only numbers I knew were the numbers of the bars and the factory where she worked, and 911. But Mother was working an overnight shift, and I was lonely. I picked up the plastic phone, and dialed a series of random numbers.

My heart pounded against my chest with each ring.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Millers.”

My words stuck in my throat. I was trembling from head to foot in my threadbare superhero pajamas, a hand-me-down from a nice mother at church.

“Hello, is anybody there
 
?” the voice asked. I was thrilled. It sounded like a boy my age
 
! I wanted so desperately to say hello, to ask him how his day was, maybe see if he needed a friend—but my tongue had swelled like an overripe tomato. I knew that if I opened my mouth, he would hear my stutter and laugh. So I only listened as he repeated “hello” a couple more times, and eventually hung up. I made several more phone calls that night, and on other nights when Mother was at work. With voices speaking into my ear, I didn’t feel so lonely.

When Mother got the phone bill at the end of the month, her face whitened and her hands crinkled the corners of the page in her tight grip. “Timmy, have you been using the phone
 
?” When I confessed that I had been calling my friends, she yelled. We couldn’t afford to talk on the phone whenever we pleased. I should’ve known better.

After that, I only made calls from phone booths, when I was lucky enough to find spare change on the ground. Sometimes, I even skipped lunch so I could use the lunch money Mother had given me. Hearing new voices was all the nourishment I needed.

As a nurse, I get to be around people all the time. People depend on me—maybe even look forward to seeing me every day as I administer their pain killers and see to their needs. They might even consider me their friend.

***

I make several more calls that night after calling Mrs. Harper, and each new voice is as sweet and refreshing as the first bite of an apple.

“Hey, what’s up
 
?”

“Dígame.”

“Hello, you have reached Comfy Cups, home of the original knitted potholders . . . ”

“Mm’yellow
 
?”

So many different greetings, different voices, different people.

The watch on my wrist, my grandfather’s old leather-strapped ticker, reads eleven twenty-five. My eyelids have tossed down their anchors, my body aches, and the mattress where I sit calls me to lie down. This will be my last phone call tonight. I twirl my finger along the rotary circle seven times, then wait as the ringing sings into my ear.

The phone clicks as someone answers. I wait with bated breath for them to say some form of “Hello,” to reveal some part of themselves to me.

Silence.

Silent as a January snowfall.

Silent as a film from the early 1900s.

Silent as a spring blossom unfurling its petals.

Silence.

I slowly exhale. Leaning back against the headboard of my bed, I cradle the phone against my ear. I don’t say a word, and neither do they. Why tarnish the silence with our guttural vowels and biting constants
 
? The sweet hush is beautiful. It envelops me, and I surrender to it. I close my eyes, and can see the dark space before the dawn of creation, before sound existed. Just darkness and our presences. We are all there is.

I wake up to rain drumming against my windows, and the steady humming of a lost connection. I gently pick the phone handset off the pillow where it lies next to me, and place it back on its rest. I check my notebook to find the number of the last person I called, and use my pen to carve it into my bedside table.