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Once, I came back to my cubicle late and found the phone ringing and my supervisor, Adam, sitting in my chair, feet up on the desk. His eyes were closed, and he was wearing a special headset that let him listen to anyone's call without them knowing. He was twenty-two but already going bald.

"I don't know what you did before this," he told me, still not opening his eyes, "but you can't do it here."

"I was only two minutes late," I said.

"Every time you're late, you get docked an hour's pay. It's automatic."

"That's not really fair," I said.

He only opened his eyes when he got out of my chair and stretched. His back made cracking noises, and I could hear distant voices coming from his headset. "It has nothing to do with fair," he said. "It has to do with the system."

NONE OF THE CALLERS knew we could listen to them when we put them on hold. Sometimes I did it just to hear what they would say. Once I heard a man with a dead battery threaten his girlfriend. "When we get out of this," he said, "I am going to fuck you up so bad." I could hear her laugh in the background.

"No," he said, "I mean it." But she kept on laughing.

Another man, this one with a flat tire, seemed to be having sex with someone. As soon as I put him on hold he started moaning. "Mmm," he said, "God!"

I came back on the line. "Everything all right?" I asked.

"Everything except the car," he said, his voice back to normal.

"Just checking," I said and put him on hold once more.

"Don't stop," he groaned.

AND I HAD a regular caller, a man named Jude. The first time he called, he told me he'd run out of gas. The info on the computer said he was from Yellowknife. "How's the weather up there?" I asked him as I filled in the forms on the screen. Hope said to always keep people talking. If they were talking, they weren't wondering what you were doing.

"Oh, it's not so bad," Jude said. "No worse than usual, anyway."

I looked up at the television mounted in one corner of the office. It was always tuned to one of the weather channels, and right now it was showing the entire state covered in a snowstorm.

"How long do you think it'll take to get someone out here?" he asked.

"Depends on how many other people are broken down," I said.

"Because I need to find my girlfriend," he said.

"Maybe you should call her and let her know you're going to be late," I said.

"No, no," he said, "I have to find her. She hasn't been home in two days, and I really don't know where she is."

"Well, that's not really our business," I said.

"I don't know what to do," he went on. "She's usually only gone the night."

"Have you tried calling the police?" I asked.

"The police." He laughed. "What are they going to do?"

I finished the forms and asked him where to send the driver with the gas. He gave me the address, and I paused as I looked at the screen.

"Isn't that your home address?" I asked.

"That's right," he said.

"You ran out of gas at home?" I asked.

"Well, technically it happened down the street a bit," he said, "but I managed to get her back in the driveway before she really gave out on me."

"Is there anything else I can help you with?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. There was a silence, like he was waiting for me to say something.

"Well, good luck with this girlfriend thing," I said.

"It's not luck I need," he said.

HOPE SAT IN THE cubicle next to mine. Every shift she received an obscene call. "It's always the same guy," she told me one night while we were waiting for the computers to come back up after a system crash. "He never says anything, but I know."

"How can you tell it's him if he doesn't say anything?" I asked.

"He always comes at the same time," she said. She tapped her watch. "Sixty seconds, that's all it takes."

"He comes when he's talking to you?"

"I can tell by the breathing," she said. "You know, it starts off slow and quiet, and then, wham, it's like he's dying."

"And you listen to this?" I asked. "Why don't you disconnect?"

She shrugged. "It's only sixty seconds out of my day," she said. "And it's a break from the regular type of calls." She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands on her lap, stared at her blank screen. "But I can't tell you how glad I am I wasn't born with a penis."

Once, she let me listen to him. I'd just come back from a break, and she waved me over. I plugged my headset into the extra jack on her phone base in time to hear this man gasping like he was running a marathon or something.

"Hello?" Hope said. "Is anyone there?"

The man made choking noises.

"Can I help you?" Hope asked, smiling at me. He let out a long sigh, and she pointed at her watch. "Hello?" she said again and kept repeating it until we heard the dial tone.

I unplugged my headset from her phone. "How does he keep getting you?" I asked. "I thought the calls were all routed automatically."

"They are," she said. "So I don't think it's coming from outside."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It's someone in here," she said, looking around the room. There were maybe a dozen men scattered around the cubicles. "But at least now I know it's not you."

I ONLY RECEIVED one obscene call during the time I was there. It was around three or four in the morning, the quiet time. "Bitch," the man whispered after I answered. "Slut."

"Hey," I said. "You're talking to a man."

"Tell me what you're wearing," he went on. "I want to know what you look like." I could hear soft slapping noises in the background.

"I've got an obscene call," I said to Hope.

"It's not my guy, is it?" she asked, frowning.

"Put me on the speaker phone," he gasped.

"No, this one talks," I told her.

"You cunt," he sobbed.

"What if someone was really in trouble?" I said to him. "What if their car was on fire and they were trying to call right now, but couldn't get through because of you?"

"That's it," he moaned and came.

JUDE CALLED ME two more times. The first time, his voice was low and thick, as if he was thinking about each word. "I was hoping you were working tonight," he said.

"How did you get me again?" I asked.

"I just kept trying until you answered," he said. "It only took three times."

"Why me?" I asked.

"I thought we developed a rapport the other night," he said. He pronounced the "t" in "rapport."

"Well, what can I do for you this time?" I asked.

"Dead battery," he said. "I need a boost."

"Your car in the driveway again?" I asked.

"It's a truck," he said. "And yeah, it is."

"All right," I said. I started on the forms. "How's the weather tonight?"

"It's getting worse," he said. "I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to work."

I looked up at the television. The weather channel was predicting sunshine for Yellowknife all week.

"All right, I'll send someone right away," I said.

"That'd be great," he said. There was a sound like ice clinking in a glass, and then he said, "I couldn't find her. She still hasn't come back."

"Who hasn't come back?" I asked.

"My girlfriend," he said. "It's been a week now."

"I don't think this is something I can help you with," I said.

"But she did call," he went on.

"Well, what more do you want?" I asked.

"She doesn't think it's working out between us," he said. "Now what am I supposed to do?"

"Have you tried asking her what the problem is?" I said.

"Oh yeah," he said. "She said she wasn't really sure. It was just a feeling she had. What am I supposed to say to that?"

"Maybe it's time to move on," I said.

"No, I can't do that," he said. "I just to need to repair this, uh, situation."

"I don't see why you're telling me all of this," I said.

"You talk to people all the time for your job, right?" he said.

"Yes ..." I said.

"So you're good with communicating."

"I mainly dispatch tow trucks," I told him. "That doesn't require too much communication."

"And you help people," he said. "That's exactly the combination I need."

"I don't understand," I said.

"I'll get her back here," he said, "and we'll call you. Then you can talk to her. And you'll fix everything for us. Right?"

I didn't say anything for a moment.

"Right?" he said again.

"Sure," I said.

"You'll take care of us?"

"I'll take care of you," I said.

When the call was done, Adam came on the line. "What," he said, "was that?"

I looked around but couldn't see him anywhere.

"This is a call center," he said, "not a distress line."

"What could I do?" I said.

"You could have told him to call back only if had a real problem. You could have not said you'd help him talk to his girlfriend."

"That was just to get rid of him."

"If he does call back, I want you to hang up on him."

"All right," I said.

"Or we'll be hanging up on you."

AND ONCE I HAD a suicide call. Before I could even say anything, the woman on the other end said, "I'm going to kill myself."

"You have the wrong number," I told her. "This is for people whose cars have broken down."

"I'm sitting in my car," she said. "I've got a knife. And a whole bottle of sleeping pills."

"Is there anything wrong with the car?" I asked her.

"I'm broken," she said. "I'm going to kill myself."

"So there's nothing wrong with the car," I said.

"No," she said. "The car is fine. I just had it tuned up, in fact. I'm driving it around as we speak."

"Well, what do you want from me then?" I asked.

"I want you to listen."

I looked up, across the room, and saw Adam standing outside his office, gazing around the floor. He was wearing his headset but he wasn't looking at me. I disconnected and went outside for a break.

Hope was standing on the stairs outside the building, smoking a cigarette. I told her about the suicide call.

"They always want you to listen," she said and shook her head.

"I'm not trained for this," I said.

"I wouldn't worry about it," she told me. "It's best never to believe anything these people say."

"So you don't think she was going to kill herself?"

"Well, what would you be able to do about it if she was?" She shook her head again. "No, it's really best not to believe them."

THE LAST TIME Jude called was the night I was fired. "I couldn't get her to come back here," he said, "so I'm just going to call her on my cell phone and we'll do it that way."

"You can't keep calling like this," I said.

"I can tell you what she says," he went on, "or I can just put the two phones together and you can talk to her directly. Whatever works for you."

"What works for me is hanging up right now," I said.

"But you're here to help me," he said. "It says so right on my membership card."

"Goodbye," I told him.

"I locked my baby in the truck," he said quickly.

I paused but didn't say anything.

"The truck's still running," he said. "In the garage. It's going to fill up with carbon monoxide."

"Why don't you just open the garage door," I said.

"It's stuck," he said. "Frozen solid. You have to help me."

"Don't do this," I told him.

"If you hang up on me," he said, "you'll be killing my baby."

"Do you even have a baby?" I asked.

"It's ours," he said. "Me and my girlfriend's."

I didn't say anything for a moment, and he took my silence for assent, started giving me the information I needed. By the time I was done filling out the forms on the computer, I could hear a distant ringing. "I'm just calling her now," he said, his voice distant. I realized he had put the phones up against each other and was listening in on both.

But there was no answer. The phone kept ringing and ringing. There wasn't even voice mail. "All right," I said after a minute or so of this. "You have to stop."

"Can we call her back later?" Jude asked.

"Yeah, we can call her back later," I said.

"I'll tell her to buy an answering machine," he said. "So you can leave a message if she's not there."

"All right," I said. "Sure."

"Great," he said.

"Someone will be there shortly to get your baby out of the truck," I said.

"Right, right," he said and hung up.

Adam came on the line right away. "You can start packing up your things now," he said.

I didn't even bother looking around for him. "What else could I do?" I said.

"I don't know," he said.

"Did you listen to the whole call?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Then why didn't you say something earlier?" I asked. "Why didn't you just disconnect the call?"

"It wasn't my call," he said. "It was yours."

"Do you think there really was a baby?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. There was only dead air for a moment, and then he said, "It's nothing personal."

OUTSIDE, HOPE WAS standing on the steps of the building, smoking a cigarette. I told her what had happened. She looked at me for a moment, then up at the sky. It was beginning to rain again. I couldn't see the moon anywhere.

"You got fired over someone you don't even know?" Hope asked.

"I sort of knew him," I said.

She took one last drag on the cigarette and then dropped it to the ground. "I hope he doesn't call me next."

"He just needs someone to talk to," I said.

Hope nodded, then said, "Well, I'd better get back inside. Someone's going to have to take all your calls now." But she paused halfway in there, holding the door open as she looked back at me. "I never talk to them myself," she said. "But I've been doing this a lot longer than you."

I didn't say anything, just looked at her. She closed the door and disappeared back into the building, leaving me alone there.

"All right," I said and went down the steps. "It's all right."