Curioddity (18 page)

Wil studied the Lemon phone's screen, completely clueless as to how to bring up the dialing function. For the next three minutes he managed to check the stock reports in Nicaragua, look up “telephones throughout history” on the Internet, and accidentally join two social network sites without actually wanting to. There was no choice, he realized. He was going to have to elicit SARA's help. He found a quiet place in a nearby alley, held his breath for a moment, and switched on the computer interface.

Silence. Wil waited for SARA to start the conversation. For her part, SARA waited for Wil to make himself look foolish. She didn't have long to wait.

“Hello?” said Wil, anxiously. “Is anybody there?”

“
Hello, Wil Morgan,
” replied SARA with a calculated lag designed to unnerve a professional boxer. “
You have been absent from this interface for approximately fifty-three minutes. Would you like an updated weather report?
”

Judging by the slightly aggressive metallic tone, Wil surmised SARA was still annoyed with him as a result of their first encounter. “I'd like to dial a number, please,” he stated, flatly. Best to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“
Searching address book database,
” replied the demonic interface. “
You have zero friends.
”

“Yes. Thank you for that observation,” replied Wil, slightly aggrieved by the actual truth behind the statement. In his seven years in the city, Wil's closest friend was currently Mr. Whatley, the Castle Towers superintendent. “As difficult as this may be for a smartphone to accept,” he continued, “I'd like to dial a telephone number. So let's just get about our business and make a phone call, shall we?”

“
Would you like to make a phone call?
” asked SARA, innocently.

“Yes, I'd like to make a phone call. I'd like to see the telephone dialing function on my Lemon phone. And please don't show me the stock reports from Monaco.”

SARA brought up the stock reports from Monaco, just to be a wiseass.

“Look,” said Wil, “I'm not going to play games with you, SARA. I want to make a phone call—”

A computerized game of card solitaire appeared on Wil's Lemon phone screen. Wil gave his phone a dangerous look. “Now cut it out! Just bring me the dialing function!”

No response. SARA was apparently also in a dangerous frame of mind.

“I want to dial a telephone number!” yelled Wil. At this point, he was beginning to lose reason. And to think he had only been a Lemon owner for less than one hour. He wondered if this was a world record for the shortest amount of time a new telephone owner might possess their phone before wanting to crush it under a steamroller, then decided he was probably a record holder for the Lemon phone owner who'd held out the longest. “Phone call!” he bellowed. “Telephone! TELL-EE-PHONE! I swear I'm going to punch you—”

Wil looked up to find a bemused elderly couple staring at him as he argued with his cell phone in public. He glowered at them, so that they hustled away quickly. Suddenly, the telephone function appeared on his touch screen. Apparently, SARA was ready to concede that Wil was capable of tossing her under a passing car.

“That's better. Now please dial this number.” Wil recited Lucy's cell phone number as accurately as possible, making sure to enunciate in such a way that if SARA got it wrong she would clearly be doing it on purpose. He waited for the phone to ring. Instead, there was only silence. Wil looked at the screen, which was now providing weather reports for Harare, Zimbabwe.

“
Would you like me to dial a number?
” asked SARA, sweetly.

“Yes!” screamed Wil. “I swear I'm going to throw you under a school bus. Are you completely mental?”

“Hiya Wil,” replied a familiar female voice emanating from his cell phone, “are you having a bad day, or is it just me?”

The blood drained from Wil's face with the kind of speed reserved for comets on a collision course with the sun. “Lucy?” he muttered, weakly. “Is that you?”

“Your first clue would probably be that you dialed my number,” replied Lucy from the other end of the ether. “Who were you expecting? And by the way, were you shouting at me or are you driving?”

“I wasn't shouting at you, I promise. I wasn't even shouting. I'm just…” Wil allowed his voice to trail off. The chances of a rational explanation at this point were in exact proportion to the chances of Lucy believing it. “I'm having a bit of trouble with my new cell phone.”

“Bummer. I hate my phone, too, if it's any consolation. Everyone does.”

“I doubt it,” said Wil, feeling a little sorry for himself. “Most people's phones don't look up the population of Warsaw when you ask them to dial a telephone number.”

There was a pregnant pause. “Don't tell me you bought a Lemon?”

“The same,” replied Wil, hesitantly. He hoped Lucy wouldn't find his obvious lack of computer savvy unattractive. “I think the interface is trying to kill me.”

Another silence. Wil checked his phone to see if Lucy had disconnected. He could hardly blame her for doing so.

“Now that,” said Lucy in a spooky and ominous tone, “that … is … awesome!”

“Really?”

“Sure it is. I don't know a single person in their right mind who'd buy a Lemon phone on purpose. Those things are a train wreck. I hear their texting function sends to your entire address book. Is that true?”

“I wouldn't know,” said Wil, despondently. He had a terrible feeling the context of the conversation was getting away from him. “I don't know how to send a text.”

“Doubly awesome,” replied Lucy, happily. “You know, you really are a complicated man, Wil Morgan. Did you find a good Korean restaurant for Thursday?”

According to my Lemon phone there are five of them but they're all a bit of a drive.”

“How far?”

“Korea.”

This elicited a spontaneous giggle from the other end of the phone. Wil could see himself getting quite used to that sound, and he found himself looking forward to his date more eagerly than ever before.

He looked down at the inlaid box nestled under one arm, the Tesla Kit nestled under the other, and the large cup of coffee held in his free hand. Adding a smartphone to this equation was putting him in jeopardy of dropping the whole kit and caboodle. Wil decided to head toward the Castle Towers so that he could reset and put himself in order. It would be at least another hour before the clock tower tried to bother him, at which point he'd already be halfway to the Curioddity Museum. Wil felt a tinge of guilt at the idea of bringing the rotting old box to the museum but he sloughed this off by agreeing to himself that Mr. Dinsdale would at least have one failure to strike from his list of box-shaped candidates.

“So is this a social call,” asked Lucy, “or did you want to tell me where we're going Thursday night?”

“Right. Well,” said Wil, “since I don't know how to send a text, I guess I called to see if you had a favorite restaurant? Korean's pretty specific. Is there one downtown?”

“We could go to Happy Spice. I love their thousand-year-old eggs and they do a killer bubble tea.”

“Sounds revolting. Is everything on a Korean menu something we're supposed to eat on a dare?”

“Pretty much. That's why it's so much fun.”

*   *   *

W
IL HAD
been thinking about what he was going to say to Lucy ever since he'd met her the previous night. He'd thought about it on his way home, and as he'd brushed his teeth before bedtime. He'd thought about it the moment he'd woken to the smell of mushrooms, and he'd thought about it while standing in the line at Mug O' Joe's, waiting to argue with his daily teenager. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Wil Morgan had a plan that did not involve walking to work, nor standing in a vomit-inducing elevator, nor skulking through the lobby of his apartment building.

Now, he was ready to make his move: For the first time in many years he was going to be a catalyst, the spark that set off the firework. He could only hope it didn't all blow up in his face.

“Have you ever heard of the Curioddity Museum?” he asked, innocently.

“I love museums!” replied Lucy, eagerly. “Especially ones I've never been to before. Where is it?”

“Do you know the divided highway that runs through the banking district?”

“There's a museum there?” Lucy sounded a touch skeptical. “I thought that place was just a bunch of industrial buildings.”

“Yeah, so did I,” admitted Wil without bothering to explain the rest of the story. “I, uh … I found it the other day. I was wondering if you'd like to go there with me someti—”

Before Wil could enunciate the
m
in “sometime” he heard a shriek at the other end of the line.

“Are you okay?” he inquired, genuinely concerned for Lucy's well-being.

“Of course I am, silly! I hoped you were going to ask me out again. I mean dinner's great, an' everything. I mean I wasn't sure if you were into me but I guess you dig me. I mean I dig you.”

Wil looked at his cell phone, confused. Despite Lucy's liberal use of the phrase “I mean,” he wasn't sure what she meant at all. He'd lit a spark, all right: Lucy's metaphorical firework seemed primed to explode at random intervals. He decided it might be a good idea to defuse the situation, just to be on the safe side.

“I mean if you have time,” he said, feeling self-conscious.

“I'll make time. What street is it on?”

“Right. What street.”

“Okay. What street?”

Wil felt his hesitance was quite understandable. For all he knew, Upside-Down Street was a figment of his imagination, or one of Mr. Dinsdale's elaborate tricks. “I think it's called Mons Street though I can't be sure. Oh, but the museum is right across from an old cinema. You can't miss it.”

“Sounds tremendous,” said Lucy with her typical level of unbridled enthusiasm. “I'll meet you at Happy Spice on Thursday at seven. Don't be late!” And with that, she closed the connection on her end.

Wil stared at the cell phone, half-expecting it to do something unexpected. SARA remained subdued—no doubt angry that Wil's phone call had gone off without a hitch—and her screen remained dark. A small triumph, Wil conceded, but a triumph nonetheless.

And he was to enjoy this minor success for roughly twenty seconds before the bottom fell out of his universe once again.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

H
INDSIGHT WOULD
later suggest to Wil that things coincidentally began to fall down at exactly the same time he began to relax. He wasn't to know this at the time, of course. Otherwise it would've been foresight.

Wil walked toward the Castle Towers for a few minutes, pleased with how he'd navigated the tricky waters of his first ever cell phone call. If life were a gushing torrent of unpredictability, he thought, then at this moment in time he was the captain of a very large submarine currently plowing right underneath it and wondering what all the fuss was about. Flushed with success and warmed by hot coffee, he wandered aimlessly with the flow of traffic until the current washed him up at the base of the Castle Towers. He was determined, however, that the ugly old edifice would not dampen his mood today. And he was doubly determined that the monstrous Swiss clock next door would fail in its daily ambush at six minutes after three. Today, he would be ready.

Wil dallied for a while, chuckling to himself as road-weary afternoon travelers passed by the statue of Pan outside his office building. Local drivers had become so accustomed to Pan's generously carved wedding tackle that they tended to navigate the confusing one-way roundabout without so much as a first glance. Many of the people inside the cars carried the resigned looks of those who would rather be living anywhere else, and any other time in history. But every so often, an out-of-town driver could be seen trying desperately to avoid a collision as they spotted Pan's enormous endowment to the arts for the first time. Poor saps, thought Wil as he sauntered knowingly toward the entrance to his office building, they really needed to watch what they were doing.

And it was precisely while indulging in this disparaging frame of mind that he made his second mistake in a row.

*   *   *

W
IL'S FIRST
mistake, to be fair, had been somewhat understandable. The excitement of an upcoming date with Lucy Price—added to the money in his bank account, and the general sense that all had become somehow right with the universe—had led him to conclude that all was somehow right with the universe. Naturally, the universe had other ideas.

Wil's second mistake was to call his father using his brand-new Lemon phone.

*   *   *

I
T HAD
been a full three days since Barry Morgan's answering machine message had threatened to ruin his son's entire week. Now, Wil found himself standing at the base of the Castle Towers preparing to return fire. He paused for a moment at the main doors to the building, held up his brand-new cell phone, and pretended he was staring into SARA's eyes in a challenging fashion. He activated SARA's voice recognition function, with no intention of being the one who blinked first.

“Hello again, SARA,” said Wil with as much of an I-wear-the-trousers-in-this-relationship air of bravado as he could muster. “I'd like to make a phone call.”

The Lemon phone remained silent. Wil was getting the distinct impression SARA had cottoned on to his game of chicken. But he was determined not to repeat his previous performance and come off as a crazy homeless person yelling randomly into the air. He waited.

“
Hello, Wil Morgan,
” said SARA's disembodied voice eventually. “
It has been approximately seventeen minutes since our last interaction. Would you like to dial the previous number?
”