Four New Messages (5 page)

Students were coming out of the library but none clutched books, they held each other.

And a new beverage for a new generation, not bottles of water but
bottled water,
plastic, perspirant.

They didn’t need books because of the bags on their shoulders, which contained computers—tablets and pads on which they could read all that’d been written by anyone ever and also Em on Richard Monomian.

The phone rang but his rush to pick up was unnecessary.

Students, children essentially, pedestrated past as blithe as projected light.

He said, My mailman has no address.

Pigeons alighted on the pathway slabs, pecking at butts and clots of gum.

Was that the password?

You tell me.

We’re on track but also delayed.

Which is it?

Both. Plus I need that second thousand.

Behind her speech Mono made out the riddling whir of her computer’s cooling fan, the high screech of either passing sirens or neglected pets.

It wasn’t that it wasn’t spring enough yet or that it was sunset already—he was chilled from being scared, feeling himself recognized by all who passed. He remembered there had been another phone by the gym. Nothing remained besides a stanchion tumescent from a speck of foundation.

Can I call you back from my mobile?

And subvert our subversion—what kind of subterfuge is that?

I’m paying you—so you find a payphone, email me the number, set a time, and I’ll also call ten minutes late.

That’s precisely what I wanted to talk about. You have my invoice. I have material expenses.

Must be a reason I didn’t respond to your email about the next installment.

Richard, it might be better if we talked about this once you’re comfortably at home.

Mono had begun to suspect that this hacker of hers, this gensym guru he was never allowed to talk to, was not a person, not a man or woman and so not her lover as Majorie let on, claiming access to him at all hours: when Mono called from home bonged stuporous slack drunk at 3 AM on Thursday asking to be reminded whether they were trying to infiltrate the sites to remove the posts or just crash them with a Trojan she said, Let me ask him. He’s sleeping just right next to me. Then there’d be a murmur that had to be her respiration—Mono got the idea she never even took the phone from her mouth to imaginarily rouse this imaginary partner—until she’d say, Tech’s grouchy, not getting up. He had a rough day yesterday. I’ll ask him over breakfast and check in with you tomorrow.

Mono wondered how delusional Majorie really was, whether she’d invented an illusory male or, worse, she actually regarded her desktop itself as her lover: wedging its switches between her lips and flicking.

On the Friday noon call, which Mono also instigated—Damn, you missed him again! Techie just stepped out for frogurt!—Majorie was saying these blogs had incredible security.

These blogs that were just default regular and free for anyone to setup and whose platforms required no training for operation and were entirely intuitive to maintain—their protections were just topnotch.

It’s amazing, she said, all my attacks are repelled (she’d already slipped into the singular).

Mono grunted.

No offense works, I don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve followed all the instructions, took that extra class online, even signed up for the personalized tutorial.

Feels good I’m not the only one being scammed.

Which reminds me, Monday at the latest. Are you sending me my cash?

Monday I’m sending you a sympathy $100.

But there’s a program I need.

Your invoice said it was for a line of code.

I need both. Also have to pay the internet bill. Three months overdue. Not everyone’s a signal thief.

$100. No more payments after that.

Richard, we’re in this together, both our reputations are at stake. She posted my name! my real name!

Her name was Marjorie Feyner.

It was a Wednesday again, a new credit card had arrived, was activated by the ordering of Mexican
muy picante,
and Mono had begun to think about that name change. His computer booted to Word, the .doc scrolled boldly with his mother’s maiden name:
White, Richard White, Rich White, R. White.

In search results for just the word
monomian
—unenriched by Richard—he was still the sixth or seventh, the first five or six being the man who’d named him.

But
Richard White
was limitless—it was a nothing name, a nothing being. There was a Dr. Richard White OB/GYN, a Richard White, Esq., “Rick” White the builder/general contractor, Richard White the accountant, the actor/voiceover artist, the character in multiplatform franchises, movies, and television shows (the internet tending to catalog other media and not differentiating between an actor’s name and a character’s), even a Catholic martyr or errant knight—Richard the White?

One self-declared as a pre-op transsexual.

Mono wondered had his father heard about this yet.

This was encouraging, this purity—reboot, restart.

But Mono didn’t know what the process was, what documents were needed to make such an alteration official, was about to search for the answer—after anyway replacing his appellation on his most current CV—when the phone rang.

Only one person called anymore, who said, Rich, I have another solution.

Try me.

I’ve had enough of this cracking crap—this password guess where you’re given ten attempts at access then the account’s frozen when you fail. Let’s get back to the proven methods.

Which methods would those be?

Mono got out of bed, determined he needed more room for his cynicism, opened the door and walked out to the hall. A dull clatter at his sneaks, he swerved to avoid the neighbors’ leaky trashbags, greasy bikes.

What’s that noise? she asked.

I’m going out for air.

He walked down the hall to the door to the staircase, down the two tottering flights to parking—entirely vacant at midday, it was a lot of lot.

The stairs and landing were also cluttered with bikes—inextricably engaged, their wheels, pedals, gears—locked to the railings. Mono maneuvered, steps following him, steps just behind him.

Suddenly he realized he’d ripped his phone from the wall with the charger still attached. He’d been dragging the cord behind him and turned to pick it up, stashed the scraping prongs and whatever length he could into his jeans’ pocket.

Rich, she said, I finally decided to forgo the protocols and searched around for variations on Em—any Emma, Emily, Emilia, or [email protected]. You’re not supposed to do that. Every resource says it’s better to abstract the adversary, best to keep them symbols: IP or an email. Person to person, face to face, that’s the nuclear option—no other way to go.

I searched that two weeks ago, Marj. You know how many Emmas and Emilys go to Princeton?

I found about 100 possibilities.

99 more than necessary. And before we go any further, tell me this, there was never any tech guy—it was all you just studying up.

Rich, forget Techie. He’s over. Moved out. I’ve moved on. The circumstances have become exponentially more dire. My name’s all over the net. Another blog even uploaded a pic of me fatass at the beach. From Richter, Richter, Calunnia, & Di’Famare’s summer Law Lounge back when I was still employed.

Mono had to restrain himself from running inside, finding the image himself.

You checked all 100? he asked.

I plugged all their names into the usual social sites, opening a few false accounts to lurk. I took pains, signed in strictly from public connections. One persona joined the Princeton Jell-O polo team, another a networking group committed to combating squirrel chlamydia on campus. Then I got inspired: I opened an account under the real name and title of a real person who didn’t have an account—an associate dean of academic affairs who taught undergrad humanities—who’d turn down a friend request from her? She asked to be friends with all the Ems, which gave me access to their profiles.

Impressive, Marj, but what did you find?

She’s an Emmanuelle. I’ve emailed you her profile pic. When you get home I want you to verify then delete.

I’ll be home in a second, Mono hurried back upstairs.

If you don’t respond I’ll know it’s her.

You can just stay on the phone with me for another minute and I’ll tell you right away.

Mono quickened through the hall.

First he googled images of “Marjorie Feyner,” uncovered that shorefront snap. She engulfed a bikini, held a plastic coconut, a fake hairy ball stuck with a straw. People were laughing in the waves—waves of surfboards and tubes—not laughing at her.

Everyone but her was tattooed.

Mono said, Bad strength of connection today. xxxprs laptop-BCrib, what a weakling.

In a new window a pic unfurled, Mono tugging its edge taut.

So? Marj asked.

It’s her.

Here Em was, but pixilated younger, with shorter blonder hair hanging in wiry bangs. Braces like microchips programming an exaggerated dentition.

She was deep jawed, Mono recovered the memory—a mouth of gluttonous proportions.

She’s a sophomore, major undeclared. I called the school, said I was her grandmother.

You should go easier on yourself.

I told school I wanted to send her a surprise package but lost her address—said I’d found her baby booties, stuffed them silly with favorite candy. The workstudy brat said it wasn’t their policy to relay that information. She suggested I call her parents—be in touch with your daughter, with your son-inlaw, she said.

How responsible.

So I searched her friends and identified her high school, searched the local phone listings and called who I thought was her mom.

You what?

Said I was a high school acquaintance of Em’s just transferring schools—I positively detested it at Georgetown—and did you have her address as I wanted to get together?

You know—for a drink, take some pills, go to a club, have some seat-down bathroom cunnilingus?

The mother offered her email but I said I’d prefer her street address as my computer had just crashed—it’s tragic, I lost everything.

You’re jinxing yourself.

She asked wouldn’t I rather she give me the phone.

Wouldn’t you?

I was afraid it’d be a mobile but she gave me the landline too.

And you did a reverse lookup?

I had to look up how to do a reverse lookup. You’ll find both on my next invoice itemized separately.

And you’re going to call or send a postcard? Or go over there yourself?

No.

Don’t tell me I should go.

No I’ve met a new man. I call him Alban. He’s Albanian. He works security at my multiplex for the big crowds on the weekends. I’m always wasting Sundays and we talk. He lets me into a double feature no problem. I made a quiche for him last week.

Not Alban, his real name was Enver. He was a recent immigrant, born in Tirana. He worked for a security company that had classified his language skills as Minimal. Before moving to the area he’d lived in New York, which is where all immigrants live until they sleep with their brother’s wife. Enver was not even attracted to her.

His brother’s couch was three-cushioned, comfy. And his job, his first job his brother vouched for him, wasn’t bad. Enver worked for a friend of his brother’s at a pizza joint called, coincidentally, Two Brothers. Albanians being swarthy and proximal to the Mediterranean by birth pretending they knew their dough and cheese and sauce. But Enver wasn’t allowed to make the pies. He was supposed to sit on a stool by the back door, held ajar by cinderblock, waiting until his brother’s friend’s minivan appeared on his monitor. Then he was to open the door all the way, accepting from this man, Arben, whatever he was handed. Electronics, often bags containing something that looked like flour but was not—it was heroin—and less often, bags filled with cash (the entire ring was busted).

Enver was lonely in Brooklyn. His brother came home late from Manhattan. His cousin in Staten Island hated Brooklyn. His cousin in New Jersey hated Staten Island. Enver understood no relevant geography. Across the way was a hair and nail salon. That’s it. No other fact or germane sensation.

He tried to make friends. Like when that one time he was allowed to work the register he didn’t charge three kids for three slices plus diet grape sodas.

They looked hungry, Boss, he said to his boss, a taciturn elderly American with an erratic scar across his neck in the shape of a dollar sign who was the only employee permitted to make the pies and the next time Enver was in back watching the monitor and the minivan pulled up, when he opened the door Arben smacked him in the mouth and said, You looked hungry.

Arben said that in this language.

One night Enver spun home, spread himself like a fine crust on the couch and started watching—the TV, like the fraternal oven, was always on.

Appropriately disappointing: it was a cookingshow, the woman in it was cooking.

Liridona, wrung from the shower, sat next to him.

The recipe was just some simple stirfry.

Peel your vegetables but lose your nutrients.

By the time the show had cut to commercial Liridona’s robe was floored.

Next morning he left for Jersey, pawning himself off on a cousin. His brother never found out, that’s why Enver was still alive with intact knees.

Enver said to his brother, Time for you to have babies, as if that explained his abandonment of the couch.

He went to sit for that test at a security company his cousin’s friend moonlit for, went to a stripmall themed Early American Grange, sat at a desk exposed to a recently foreclosed storefront’s glass—a former florist’s still perfumed—and pondered the questions.

They could use him, they explained, as store security—that was the best job, requiring some sort of intelligence and special training—with the worst being crowd control: bars and nightclubs, live events. Almost everyone was retired law enforcement. The proctor, a tubby Hispanic kid who taught communication skills at a community college (a frustrated standup comic), kept calling him “Erven,” then “Mile High” because the corrected Enver sounded like
Denver.
They laughed through the exam. “Juan will be back ______ fifteen minutes.” (A) in; (B) on; (C) with; (D) about.