(wrote Dicknass).
The more the commenters commented, the more accurate even their inaccuracies felt, the more their elaborations felt essential.
The weekend after losing out on a janitorial job then failing to obtain two other minimum-wage positions (jeggings folder, organic waiter), Mono began searching for something else, not for this proliferating pomo about himself but for a number of basic variations: “how to get something off the internet,” “how to remove stuff from the net,” “slander on the web,” “info on online defamation and how to fight it,” “how to destroy a website entirely forever,” “is destroying a website technically legal if the work is contracted to someone in another country,” “how to knock out someone’s server if you don’t know anything whatsoever about hacking or even what servers are.”
He found a forum dedicated to cybersecurity that counseled a girl whose ex-boyfriend had uploaded a sex vid to contact a lawyer and sue for removal plus compensation.
One chat room included a comment from a genuine lawyer—“A Verified User”—advising a man whose wife had put up a Web site accusing him of being a compulsive gambler and not paying child support to contact him, he’d send a Cease & Desist for cheap.
That must have worked because the link www.myexhusbandrandy isalyingdegenerateteenfuckinggamblerwhosbadinbedanddoesnotpay forhisonly childsfoodandmedication.com was no longer functional.
Also the lawyer advised him to pay his child support: Ruddy, that’s just Christian.
Mono searched for lawyers in his area by typing “lawyers in my area.” The number-one result was a Web site called “What Is a Good Web Site to Find Lawyers in My Area.” Like digging a hole to find a buried shovel to use to dig a grave.
Then Mono typed in “how to get people to take down libel from online, adding the local zipcodes.
At the bottom of the first page of results, the tenth hit, was a link to a digital paralegal.
That’s what the header said, Da Digital Paralegal.
Mono didn’t hesitate, his connections did: B 4 UGO Network gave two
bars, Chuck’s Den gave three, Sally Sally Wireless Home—finally fullstrength.
He arrived at a site either terribly low-tech or tiying to keep the lowest of profiles: a page all blank white like paper with only a single addiess centered, the contact, dp@dadigitalparalegal.com, not even clickable—it had to be typed into the To: line of an e-mail.
What Mono sent this address was tentative, vaguely worded: Hello, my name is Richard and I am inquiring after your services, and though it was veiy late at night—though these were his normal working hours, beginning around midnight when, if Methyl had called, he’d be commuting the speed limit down U.S. i South between campus and the strip joints of Trenton—the DP wrote him back within the minute,
before he had the chance to sign off, amid a last reloaded scan of the news:
Climate change was being called a sort of temperature socialism—it redistributed warmth to the colder months. This winter had set records. A woman gave birth to triplets, her twin to quintuplets. The father of all—the nondescript fertility doctor.
Elections don’t end wars.
The DP’s e-mail, terse:
U still up -just call me, then it gave her number. Her name, appearing not as a signature by dully fonted macro but as if by regular typing, was Majorie.
Hello, Majorie ?
No reason she’d let it ring ten times.
Yes, the voice lidless, up, what time is it?
You asked me to call.
No, I know. I’m aware of my e-mail.
This is Dick.
Dick who?
Reluctance then because he’d have to say it anyway, Richard Monomian, and then he spelled it out.
It’s good to meet you M-O-N-O-M-I-A-N.
Behind her voice he could hear a toilet flush.
How does this work?
You were rather unclear in your initial query. But let me tell you to start, investing in taxi medallions is 100 percent safe and legal a burgeoning business. I myself own ten I’ve leased at absurdly favorable
terms.
You’ve lost me.
I have a comprehensive information packet if you’ll only give me your mailman address.
My mailman’s address? I’m calling about the Internet.
A pause and then, Mailmans address is just a code, of course—if you were active in the Celebrity Privacy movement you’d have answered my mailman has no address, then we’d be talking business. I take it you’re no technophile.
No, I’m a courier.
A courier. Is that your only problem?
Now after the toilet a sink ran. Majorie might’ve been washing her hands. Which Mono chose to take as the mark of a professional.
. And you’re a paralegal?
In the interests of disclosure I’m a paraparalegal. It’s the same difference pretty much.
And where are you located? Could I come by your offices and talk?
Majorie gave a cough or burp, an unforthcoming eruction.
Excuse me, she said, I’m out-of-state.
Don’t you realize we have the same area code?
I prefer to do business over the phone.
Why?
Security.
Are you recording this?
It’s a federal law that you have to tell someone when you’re recording their conversation.
Are you telling me that you’re recording our conversation?
No.
Mono suspecting now that her office was her residence, which was a disaster, had to be. He heard—suspected he heard—junk-food wrappers cmnch under slipper as she stalked around, as if testing the echoes
of a floor s worth of partially furnished rooms in an old drafty inherited house: from the reverberant bathroom she, they, seemed to be now in a larger room or long hallway.
She told Mono she could help him, that she did this type of freelance all the time.
Her voice was backed by clacking keys or particularly strident cicadas.
Do what?
First I customize a letter for your situation then I e-mail it to the Webmaster or mistress of the originating offending URL—that’s Uniform Resource Locator.
What does this letter say?
It’s your standard-issue unequivocal demand: remove the original post from both Web site and cache and post instead a short retraction.
Saying?
This post has been removed. Or would you prefer a public apology?
I think the less said about it the better.
Then I’ll ask the Webmistress to sign her name to another e-mail acknowledging the site falsified its information before sending that around to eveiy linking site asking them to likewise take down content and threatening suit if they refuse to comply.
Every linking site?
Tell me this: is what Em wrote true—did you really spray all over that girl?
Mono, stymied, asked, We can’t be sure that Em’s her real name, can we?
Doesn’t matter.
How long is this going to take?
There’s no guarantee—the Web’s like sweaty footwear: stuff lives in there forever.
Mono imagined the smell of her slippers—sweat: ammoniac, uriniferous, vinegar, chipotle sauce.
How much do you need?
I won’t accept payment in narcotics.
Could you get started tonight?
I’ll get started the moment you transfer $1000. Paypal to my e-mail.
I’m on it.
Don’t worry, she laughed, I won’t fall asleep on the job, and only the next morning did he realize she was making a joke about him splooging all over women in their somnolence, which wasn’t funny.
Hey Kidderoos guess what Mama got today?
Re: that salacious stroking tidbit of earlier last week? . . . Just a note,
below, after the jump.
Toward week’s end the Emission posted not any scripted retraction but a screenshot of the retraction request itself, accompanied by Em’s commentaiy:
This type of coercion has no legal basis whatsoever, Im not even prelaw and I know this. '
So let me make this as clear as clear as clear can be, which on the
Internet MEANS CAPS:
I WILL NOT PUB A RETRACTION, Online Fidelity Fixers or whatever your ridongculous company is called that has no history anywhere,
I dont think has ever been incorporated or registered or you get what Im saying and certainly has never filed taxes in the State of New Jersey [this hyperlinked to a state taxation page that said, “terms: ‘Online Fidelity Fixers’: No Record(s) Found ].
This story Richard Monomian told me is TRUE.
He knows it is TRUE.
That he knows it is TRUE and nothing but the TRUE is why he hired you, Online Fidelity Fixers.
I looked you up globally, suckers!
What have you ever done? Your website hasnt been updated in two years [hyperlink to Web site]
Who designed it, a retardy chimpanzee [hyperlink to vid of chimp, unclear as to whether retarded but still slurping its own feces]?
This email of yours is just a smear of yours truly. Funded by a desperate assaulter of women named Richard Monomian.
Who is also a dealer!
Whose coke is also BAD!
And you Mrs. J.K.M. Jorie, LA—legal assistant requires an abbreviation, are you queerious?
This is amateur hour, yo.
By that later Thursday afternoon, the last waning work hours when bored deskbounds log on and comment to do anything but improve their own existences, tidy the file chains, or disburden the inbox, this post had racked up over three hundred and fifty responses like:
Munchie Z: right on girl!
anonymous: u tell it!
anonymous: I am a practicing lawyer in the city and you Em are correctamundo as always.
jd: Im with u. I call bullshit.
m@jd: Bullshit!
bullshit: Bullshit! (first!)
anonymous: this letter is not even worth the paper it is not printed on.
{Hugger89 and go deep like that comment.
That comment had a comment— see one reply: monomaniacal wtf!?)
Friday morning after googling himself and finding that post Mono called Majorie and got a voicemail that said: You’ve reached Broken Wings: Last-Minute Frequent-Flyer Miles Broker to the Bereaved.
He waited for the beep, Call me. This is unbereavable.
He lay back in bed perusing a magazine he’d found weathered wet and unsubscribed to in the hallway last week, read from the cover in a whisper— revista feminina —as if a foreign language had the power to save him from what he did understand (was the Internet as virulent in Spanish or Italian, in German or French?).
He flipped the pages, past the makeup styles and recipe tips—what Mexicans had the kitchens for this? had the flatware, stemware, and jobless hours?—heading into an article headlined ^que es la depilacion
LASER?
Mono wondered if he’d ever be able to masturbate again. Not above a sleeping stranger and not even to the Internet, which had been sexually mined for him—but perhaps to this revista, that tan woman of thumb proportions depilating herself on page thirty-four?
The phone rang and Mono picked up.
It wasn’t Majorie but Methyl.
Which was good news—Mono having had no income in over a week. Had all of Jersey stopped getting—depilated?
I’m coming over, Methyl said.
Under the cashmere overcoat Methyl wore only a wife-beater, the chest hair coming in spirals like @ signs. Below were baggy jeans and between the jeans and beater was a full foot of red boxers exposed.
He came swaggering into the apartment, sat on the bed—there was nowhere to sit but alongside Mono, Methyl waiting as the TV was repositioned, returned to the floor.
This all? he asked.
Mono asked, That mean you’re giving me a raise?
Methyl had in his hands a gaming console as gray as a desiccated brain strangulated in black cords attached to two controllers.
It’s a new game, he said, still in development. I gave these city guys some tips on how to make it rawer, they gave me a copy of the Beta.
He bent to fit plugs into sockets.
Balancing the console on top of the screen.
The TV showed a brick wall.
A man walked past the wall. Another man passed by the wall in a car. The man in the car lowered his window, yelled something indiscernible— Hooooooo !?!?—pumped one shotgun round that struck the walking man in the no-longer-walking head. The car continued, drove offscreen. The man’s head broke apart, spattering the wall in seven spots of sanguinaiy graffiti that dripped down to form a word with seven letters: Corners.
Kids crept up to the corpse, pulled spray cans from the pockets of puffies and tear-away trainers and tagged the brick.
One wrote 1 P/aya— effective aerosol sound effect—the other
scrawled 2 Play as.
I play the dealer, Methyl said, you play the snitch.
The screen was splitscreen so there wasn’t one wall now but two and
they were different.
I’m gonna let you walk free for a while, Methyl said. Try and get a feel for the controls.
Mono the snitch walked to the end of the wall, which was the end of the sidewalk. He walked to the end of the screen but there was more screen. The next block was crowded with bodegary. Fat mamas pushed pushcarts stacked fat with bags of laundry, bags of rice. Hot mamacita hissed. Stolid old guy swept a stoop. Kids, rather trainee cholos, junior bangers.
A red blur burst from behind a tenement’s billboard—pigeon graphics flying wildly out of frame as Methyl lunged at his controls, pressed
Pause.
This billboard’s trying to kill you. Playa’s from a rival gang.
Mono asked, What gang am I in?
You used to be in my gang but you snitched me out so I’m trying to kill you too. But also the red niggas want to kill us both. And then the cops. You stay away from cops. I’m taking us off Pause. The second I do just cross the street. Red nigga won’t get a clear shot.
Where’s the map? Mono asked.
Ain’t no map. Just gotta memorize the streets.
Memorize them how?
Lady Liberty knish take the A train, motherfucker! Don’t you know New York?
Not the outer boroughs.
We in Manhattan—me uptown, you down. I have it saved in memory to start my eveiy game on 145th and Amsterdam—Playa 1 starts by default down at Delancey but you can program any block.
Then Methyl quieted and said, Ain’t like we in Staten Island.
Snitch heading north up Orchard.
Trendoid gastronomes. Theme outlets that had paid to be included in the game.
Methyl spinning sewer lids like record platters. The sound track robotic cucaracha.
Then the snitch stood and did nothing because Mono was watching Methyl’s screen half. The dealer was covering major blocks at a major clip shooting everything that moved—everything that moved that was malevolent. He took out pimps in parked cars, slaughtered whole drug deals and anus sales in dumpstered alleys and basements. Wasted lookouts execution style. Then stole the drugs and arms for later resale. He stopped by a restaurant, ate soul food. He helped himself to seconds, a double order of biscuits to go. He stole a Mercedes coupe and drove off his half of the screen until the two screens converged with the car pulling up on Mono’s block.
Mono managed to turn around, fumbled.
Methyl, stepping from the Merc, held his gun sidewise, shot Mono in the face (button A to draw, B to cock to tricksy side, C to pull the trigger).
Screen nasty black with game blood.
You dead, Methyl said.
Me?
You fired, too.
I am? I thought you’d come with work.
Methyl sat up, turned to him and said, Any other business you survive this. But the cops today, they online all the time.
People don’t know I’m him.
They will.
I’m fucking broke, bro.
The Internet says you just that guy who whips it out. But I say you an onus.
Instead of unplugging the gaming console Methyl unplugged the TV, put the controllers atop the console on top, boosted the entire package. Then he stood on the bed while Mono, getting the silence, got up to
get the door.
With the TVs powercord pocketed, Methyl stepped to the flooi and walked out to the hall, saying without turning around, I was you I’d start
thinking about how to change your name. Bro.
Without the television Mono’s apartment seemed both bigger and
smaller, and worse. >
He should’ve handled this himself, Mono decided Sunday night when he was down to his last thousand dollars and applying for credit cards online: should’ve found Em’s address or phone through pleading at keggers and honor-society socials, then handwritten a letter or called personally, throwing his future on her mercy or just paying her off, throw her a couple hundred or even a thousand—that would’ve cost the same if not less and less worry.
He shuddered whenever the phone rang.
Majorie? He didn’t think Ms. Airline Miles Mogulette ever intended to return his call.
She sputtered, I hope you’re not recording this.
I last asked that of you.
Never mind. I’ve been talking to Tech.
Who?
My support guy.
Who guy?
My computer person.
Okay.
But this is mondo illegal, shaky shaky ice. I never said that. I’ve never done this before.
Done what?
He lit a smoke.
I’m liaisoning with my liaison, my hacker. He’s going to hack into this Em woman’s blog and erase the original entry then he’s going to do the same to all the other sites, I think.
You think? trying to stabilize the ashtray on a knee.
Or else he’s going to send them all a vims that destroys everything but leaves no trace, I don’t know, I’m no gearhead, just a paraparalegal.
We’re talking additional costs?
The tray teetered, heaping.
It’s a sliding scale.
A slide beginning where?
We re not prepared to quote just now. We’ll send you an e-mail with the figure.
We?
Myself for project management but mostly the Tech for the tech stuff.
And who is he or she exactly?
Richard, when its against the law, I’m against naming names.
What are the risks?
We assume more risk than do you—that’s also why it’s expensive, if it’s traceable it’s to us.
Rut then you’re traceable to me.
Plus it’s time intensive—there are worms to code, firewalls to crack.
You sure you know what you’re talking about?
It’s not a minor undertaking, having to stealthify kludge all that daemon javascript and such—Tech was explaining it all just this morning.
Mono’s cigarette was finished except for the filter, the foam pellet he thought of popping into his mouth as if a pacifier, chewy.
I’ll call you back when the process is in process, Majorie said. Do you have any pay phones in your neighborhood?
I have pay phones in my neighborhood.
Find the number of one, making sure it’s not the most convenient but pick one a ways far out then e-mail that number to me spaced over ten e-mails, one digit per e-mail, you with me?
With you.
Then intersperse each digited e-mail with other e-mails containing links to, I don’t care, hardcore penetration, but none of the e-mails can be sent from your address—be sure to open other accounts with multiple providers.
Didn’t I tell you I’m through watching pom?
Then send me more better news, Rich—I have no idea what’s happening.
There are wars on.
Mono sent her links.
On Wednesday it felt like winter was finally breaking. The ice could crack for the grass to sprout and a warm breeze could balm the parking
lots and roundabouts and it was fine—winter would be back next year. Mono would be shattered forever.
He put on his coat and walked to the only pay phone he was sure of, located just outside the university’s main library every student body could use that phone every day though they never did, they all had phones of their own that didn’t require booths. He’d recently forwarded Majorie a link to an article—a Web exclusive, never printed in hard copy—about the phone book’s disappearance. They were going to stop universal distribution—this, the one book\eveiyone could be in.
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 lead 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 whirr 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 pay phone, e-mail 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 e-mail 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 three a.m. 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 top-notch.
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 instmctions, 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 eveiyone’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 cai*d 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 mothers 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.
Tiy 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 trash bags, 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, and 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, and Embeth @ princeton.edu. You’re not supposed to do that. Eveiy resource says it’s better to abstract the adversary, best to keep them symbols: IP or an e-mail. 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 a hundred possibilities.
Ninety-nine 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 one hundred? 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 e-mailed 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 for 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. xxxprslaptop-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 work-study 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-in-law, 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 e-mail 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 you rather I gave you her phone?
Wouldn’t you?
I was afraid it’d be a mobile but she gave me her landline, too.
And you did a reverse lookup?
I had to look up how to do a reverse lookup. You’ll find them 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, bom 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 thenbrother’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 brothers 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 thy 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 cooking show, the woman in it was cooking.
Liridona, wrung from the shower, sat next to him.
The recipe was just some simple stir-fry.
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 strip mall 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 eveiyone was retired law enforcement. The proctor, a tubby Hispanic kid who taught communication skills at a community college (a frustrated stand-up 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.
Freshly flowering bushes and trees went out of their ways to impress beauty on the youth—the scads of polished khaki kids stalking the kempt paths, groping in the topiaiy. A frisbee flew overhead. Birds high up enough resembled frisbees. Another class earning credit by punting at soccer. Extraneous jackets were laid out for impromptu picnics. Water bottles wafting clarifying alcohol. A girl smoked a cigarette wedged between her girlfriend’s toes.
She came out of Reading Freud PSY 23090, unbound from Green Hail and onto the green, headed toward Chancellor for a coffee. Did she want it iced? Indubitably. Anything to go with that? No, that will be all. It was like a phrase book come to life. What a terrifically executed textbook exchange, why thank you.
Emmanuelle wore mosquito-eye sunglasses, a T-shirt whose logo read Brand, her skirt never showed lines, no underwear map.
While she waited for change her phone rang, she took the call (from friend R., poli-sci major, public health minor, in the midst of a shaming crawl back from a date the night before with a thirty-three-year-old Ibanker in the city), skimmed milk into her coffee and half a packet of artificial sweetener without bothering to stir.
At the testudinal traffic light she crossed.
College students driving adult cars, vehicles actually too fancy for any adult and perhaps better never driven. They drove them impulsively, alternately absent then reckless as if they already had jobs to get to.
Nassau Street laid the boundary of campus.
Em caffeinated while walking, hollowing her cheeks, pursing for suction then chatty again. Such oversize overactive labials. Lets imagine the waves radiating from her phone—what if they were visible? what if they were colored by her mood? Rainbows, refractive rainbows. Wavelets of talk coursing through the air, coursing daily through our own ears and mouths and minds—yet we’re never privy to that talk. Or we’ll become privy only when it develops into tumors on the brain.
Retail gave purchase to the quieter suburban.
At a comer with a receptacle she stopped, sipped her last, tossed the coffee inside—not a trash can but an empty newspaper vending machine.
The day was wanning, still not warm enough for flip-flops Ems thongs to soles athwack.
She took two more blocks then rounded the comer: Victorians—two floors, three floors—windows that hadn’t been cleaned in failed semesters, porches in a slump. Stoops stooped. The lawns diseased.
Em stopped to tuck phone between ear and shoulder, scratched in her handbag for keys.
Enver crossed the street and waited at the bottom of the stoop until Em turned the key in the lock then he took the stoop in two steps and once on the porch gave her a smile of glittering fillings.
She kept the door open for him with a flip-flop. Thinking he was the roofer?
She was still on the phone but on hold. (Her friend’s banker date had called, the slut beeped over.)
Enver entered, held the door.
She had a teensy stud in the left nans, a diamond pimple.
He waited for her to check mail.
Yes? Em turned to say, flicking hair into a quote behind the uphoned ear.
Enver closed his eyes. He couldn’t talk while looking at her sunglasses.
What do you want?
She flipped shut her phone.
He said, I want you to change your blogs—opening his eyes only after remembering what Marjorie had told him—I want you to take what you say on your blogs about Mono Man down.
Excuse me?
She dropped the coupons received to the vestibular mg.
And then, he said, to send e-mail saying this was wrong and made up by you to everywhere also.
Also?
Linked, he was straining, posted.
That’s impossible! flipping open the maw of her phone, with hardbitten pink polish pressing three buttons then the most commodious, Send—and when she repeated, I want you to know how impossible that is! Enver knew she was stalling, for time, to call, the police.
He swiped at her phone, knocking it to fade its ring through the air as she kicked him with a flipper all gawky, sending her off balance— tricky this kicking in a skirt—and though he put out a hand and caught her before she fell, which must’ve been his attraction to her, which
must’ve been his, he knew the word from the only other language he knew besides this minimal language and Albanian, tendresse (there was so much his brother didn’t know that came to light in court: he’d labored a full year in Marseille), with his other hand he made a fist and punched her, driving his knucks into her skull cradled by his hand.
From the floor the ringing continued.
A CCTV camera awning a deli two blocks east caught him on the run—add that to the testimony of Ems neighbor, a spooked Korean giad student Enver thrashed past on the stoop, spilling the kids’ bachelor cold groceries: fruit and cereals, sprouts, soy yogurt.
Ludicrous to go back to campus—cameras, everywhere, had him everywhere, running between surveillances. Cutting between frames.
He was as big as a movie to the cops, who had him in custody within three hours (picked up hiding in a basement playpen at his cousins in Plainsboro).
At the Biergarteni paid for Mono’s beers then checked my phone. I’d missed a few calls, had a few messages. Parents, delete. My landlord wanting to make a final Prussian inspection of the premises once my duffels had been shipped then get my keys. Girls, including one Amsterdam video artist with whom I had one unfilmable night. Do not del. The more attractive waitress, the Turk, was attempting Russian with the Russian, saying their do svidanya. A foosball careered across its tabled pitch. A slot machine clanked from the interior dank.
Mono said, Naomi.
She was Mono’s cousin on his mother’s side. They hadn’t spoken in years—Mono had last seen Naomi at his mother’s grave—yet it was she who saved him.
Both sets of parents had emigrated together, had already settled into Jersey and Ph.D. programs by the time they were Mono and Naomi’s age, both had graduated together (1982), had bought their houses and had their children at the same time (Mono and Naomi were bom the same month, 1984), bought their BBQs, bought their inground pools, opened their e-mail accounts—Mono related the success of this parental relocation, especially successful when compared with ours.
Though Naomi, unlike Mono, was said to have matured.
She was to marry a man so incidental to even his own self let alone to this tale that his name shouldn’t be recorded—let’s have tact, let’s try for it.
About two months before Mono’s exploits went viral Naomi’s mother called to announce the nuptials and guilt him into being there there being New York—the tacky boathouse in Central Park.
She jotted his address for a formal invitation, said, We’ll catch up at the ceremony.
Mentioning, There’s a girl I’d like to introduce you to. She’s a nurse. She looks like A. Jolie.
I’m excited, was all he could say.
She said good-bye with: I called your father for your number. Don’t wony, the Poz is not invited. >
Poz being Armenian.
Mono, who did not speak Armenian, knew it meant dickhead or equivalent.
Imagine gripping the back fat of that nurselet for the slow dances, or having to replay the act behind his meme fame for his smuttier uncles in the bathrooms between the entree and dessert—Mono didn t want to go, but he had to go: he’d already RSVP’d.
Still he procrastinated, waited until the Friday before the event to ball his only suit into his backpack—the suit black crisp funereal, worn to his college interview—and drive out to find the dry cleaner’s.
He remembered a cleaner’s adjacent to a tanning salon or ye olde historic sandwich shoppe.
Or else adjacent to both.
' He didn’t google, wished to locate by memory alone.
An hour later returning, having stopped at a diner to park a reuben in his gut.
His suit would be ready only on Sunday, they opened at noon. He’d have to crawl into the suit in the car on the way to the bus or the train.
Out on the patio it’d become a clear summer night—not cloying anymore but breezy perfection—I couldn’t believe I had just a week of this left.
The smoke of our cigarettes the only clouds of the moon—closing time.
We were the only customers.
I wanted to offer Mono to pick up his suit, send it to him—airmail? or boat rate?
On me.
We haven’t been in touch.
Mono said:
Squad cars surrounded his building. He knew they were idling for
him. Foi dealing, for whatever Marjorie Feyner had done—he didn’t know Em was in a coma until resettled abroad, his second night insomniac in Paris when he’d checked that life online at a cafe.
Circling back, circling the lot.
His backpack was slung over the back of the passenger seat and inside the pack was his passport, which clinched it (the last codex, his last account, those durable blue covers).
They could have his computer, have bed and bare walls. His passwoid, his password for everything, was sdrawkcab (remember it “backwards”).
He drove his mother’s car to Newark International, abandoned it in Parking. He wasn’t in any databases yet. A ticket would be sold.
Nominated by The Paris Review, Don Waters