To Rise Again at a Decent Hour: A Novel

by Joshua Ferris

  “Dr. O’Rourke?”

  It was Connie with her iPad.

  “When you get a minute,” she said.

  “Connie, it’s killing me,” I said. “Who are Daughn and Taylor?”

  She looked at me like I’d just drunk a box of chlorine. “You don’t know Daughn and Taylor?”

  “I do and I don’t,” I said.

  She told me who they were. They were so minor!

  I finished sewing up my gum graft and met her in the hallway.

  “I just got a friend request,” she said.

  “You mean on Facebook?”

  “Yes, on Facebook.”

  “Why are you telling me? What do I care? Listen, you want my advice? Friends are wonderful. Irreplaceable, really. Probably ultimately better than family. But next time you find yourself flicking through the contacts on your phone, ask yourself how many of those people are really your friends. You’ll find one, maybe two. And if you really start to scrutinize even those two, you may find that it’s been forever since you last talked, and now, in all likelihood, you’ve drifted apart and have nothing to say to each other. So if you’re asking my opinion, I say decline. Who’s it from?”

  She held out the iPad. “You,” she said.

  The picture of me on Facebook was another surveillance-grade photo. A telephoto lens had poked its eye through the window of room 3 while I was chairside with a patient.

  My name was there, too: Dr. Paul C. O’Rourke, D.D.S., Manhattan, NY.

  Under “Activities and Interests,” it was written “Boston Red Sox.”

  The Boston Red Sox, an activity and an interest. Not a devotion to be suffered. Not a solemn vow in the off-season. Not a memorial to a dead man. Not a calling beyond reason. Just an interest. I take an interest in when they play, whether home or away, whether they win or lose—things like that. Maybe read about it in the paper the next morning. Millions of others just like me, taking an interest. Not “Coronaries and Rehabilitations.” Not “Dedications and Forfeitures.” Not “Life and Death.” “Activities and Interests.” This was how it was presented, in terrifying simplicity. What it was all reduced to, the thirty years, and the stupid tears, and every extra inning. An activity and an interest.

  I wasn’t just mad about the injustice done to my relationship with the Red Sox. Did I not have other interests? What about the banjo? Indoor lacrosse? Spanish? Before retiring my clubs, I’d paid an ironworks guy to remove three feet of railing from my balcony overlooking the Brooklyn Promenade, and on nights of chronic insomnia, I drove balls into the East River until the Port Authority boat came by with its telescoping light. Where was “river golf” under “Activities and Interests”?

  In the summer of 2011, Facebook had only one toll-free number for users and nonusers alike to call if they encountered a problem or wished to voice a concern. The caller was greeted with this helpful message: “Thank you for calling Facebook User Operations. Unfortunately, we do not offer customer service over the phone at this time.”

  I pressed a lot of buttons in hope of an extension, a human voice, but got nowhere.

  No invention in the world, not the printing press or the telegraph, not the post office or the telephone, had done more to get people communicating than the Internet. But how did one person, the inaudible and insignificant single human voice, communicate with the Internet itself? To whom did it appeal an error? How did it seek redress?

  “Why are you calling?” said Connie. “Who calls Facebook?”

  “Shouldn’t they have some kind of customer service?”

  “They don’t have customers.”

  “A hotline? A complaint center? Shouldn’t you be able to pick up the phone and call your friends?”

  “Let’s go to the site and see what they suggest,” she said.

  “The site!” I cried. “This is outrageous. An activity and an interest! These soul-flattening fuckers!”

  “Hey!”

  I was screaming in Dolby. She nodded in the direction of the waiting room.

  “Calm down.”

  “Calm down how?” I whispered.

  She looked at the screen a long time. “What is an Ulm?” she asked.

  “A what?”

  “An Ulm. You’re listed here as an Ulm.”

  I looked at the iPad again. Fixated as I’d been on my “Activities and Interests,” I’d missed what “I” had listed as my religious affiliation: Ulm.

  “That’s the thing Frushtick called me!”

  “Who?”

  “My patient! The guy who registered the website.”

  “The one who said he was leaving for Israel?”

  “He called himself an Ulm. He said I was one, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but they’re going to think I am one.”

  “Who is?”

  “Anyone. Everyone. I’ve lost control, Connie. I’m helpless. Look at this! They’ve hijacked my life!”

  “Just online,” she said.

  I thought about the difference between my life and my life online.

  “You can’t opt out,” I said.

  “Opt out?”

  “I tried to opt out, but you can’t opt out. Not anymore. I’m in it,” I said, looking down at my Facebook page. “And this is what I am.”

  I called Talsman, who referred me to someone specializing in cyberlaw.

  Then I wrote to Seir Design, forgoing anger, threats, promises of retaliation, for an appeal to the heart.

  I don’t know what I’ve done to you, but it must have been really something, because you’re ruining my life.

  I soon received this reply, only the second one, and much like the first.

  What do you really know of your life?

  I called Sookhart. He’d heard of Ulm, Germany, birthplace of Albert Einstein. But an ancient people descended from the Amalekites? He was doubtful.

  “A second Semitic clan surviving from biblical times…” He trailed off. “I just don’t find it very likely.”

  I asked him if he’d found out anything about this holy book, the Cantaveticles.

  “I had a cursory look,” he said. “There’s nothing online, and I’ve never heard of it. I’ve made a few inquiries on your behalf, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. I will give you this, though,” he added. “It almost sounds like something real.”

  Late in the day I sat down chairside with a new patient who immediately informed me of his aversion to pain. We all have an aversion to pain, he said, but his was greater than most. As a rule he didn’t go to the dentist. The plastic doohickeys we put in his mouth for the X-rays were too much to bear, and he never let anyone clean or polish his teeth for fear of the pain. He just wanted to open his mouth, have me shine a light into it and assure him that he didn’t have mouth cancer. He had woken up a few months prior with what he thought was a canker sore or some other temporary whatever, which he expected to go away as mysteriously as it had appeared, but it had not gone away. It may have even grown some, he thought, over the days and weeks he’d been worrying it with his tongue. When I asked him exactly how many months he had been aware of the growth, he said a total of maybe six or seven. “Okay,” I said, “let’s have a look.” But he didn’t open his mouth. I’d never had anyone not open his mouth after I’d said, “Okay, let’s have a look.” He even sort of locked his jaw and pursed his lips and commenced to stare at me as if we had just met, sweaty and sexually deprived, in the middle of a ring. “I hope I’ve made myself clear,” he said. “I’m not here to see a dentist. I don’t give a damn if I have plaque buildup or gingivitis. I know it’s a wreck in there. You’ll want to do this and that. I don’t care. That’s the number one thing I want you to understand. I do not tolerate even the smallest bit of pain. And I don’t buy the anesthesia argument, either. After the anesthesia wears off, there’s pain, and I really, really can’t tolerate it. Is that absolutely clear?”

  I handed the explorer back to Abby and held up my hands like a guy wh
o’s just dropped his gun.

  “Please say it out loud to reassure me,” he said. “Is it clear?”

  “It’s clear,” I said.

  He opened his mouth. He probably had six months to live.

  After I referred that man to an oncologist, and after our last patient left for the day and blessed silence settled in again, the machines quiet and the TVs turned off, and each of my three employees at her individual tasks, I started cleaning. Cleaning was ordinarily Abby’s job, but I felt like doing some of it that night. I sterilized the chairs and wiped down the lights. I removed everything from the countertops and gave them a thorough bath. I scrubbed the sinks. I removed the medical-waste containers and the regular trash. I walked to the front desk to collect the trash there but got distracted by a stack of old patient charts. They had yet to be filed or had been filed a long time ago and were now displaced by newer files and being readied for storage. I picked one at random: McCormack, Maudie. Date of last appointment: 04/19/04. I tossed it into the garbage bag. I tossed all the files in that pile. I took a file off the shelf: Kastner, Ryan. Date of last appointment: 09/08/05. It, too, was tossed. I pulled down more patient charts and tossed them. Mrs. Convoy peered in with a cocked head. “What are you doing?” I ignored her. She took a step forward and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” I opened another garbage bag and tossed more files. She fished out a file from the first bag and opened it. “You can’t throw this away,” she said, inspecting it closely. “Do you see the date of last activity on this chart?” I ignored her, tossing more files, and she said, “All patient records must be retained for at least six years in accordance with section 29.2. This file is only four years old.” “I’m tossing it,” I said. “But you can’t. The ADA says…” She went on to tell me all sorts of things about the ADA. I didn’t give a damn about the ADA. I suddenly didn’t give a damn about rules, regulations, continuity of care, or professional liability. “These people need a fresh start,” I said. “I’m giving them all a fresh start.” “A fresh start?” she said. “Have you lost your mind?” I ignored her, tossing more files. Connie stood out on the periphery watching us. Mrs. Convoy had to open each file she rescued, in order to inspect the date of last activity, while I could grab five, six, a dozen at a time and toss them in. “Here is one from 2008,” she said. “You cannot dispose of this file. You have a professional obligation…” She went on to tell me of all my professional obligations. “2008 was a long time ago,” I said. “That clown’s not coming back here.” “How do you know that?” she asked. “You don’t know that.” I tossed more files as she tried to prevent me. I noticed that Abby was now standing just behind Connie, and that the two of them looked on as children do when they find their parents at each other’s throat. “They don’t come back,” I said. “None of them ever comes back. Not in time. Never.” “That’s not true. That’s not true at all. We have an extraordinary retention rate. You should be very proud of your retention rate.” She went on to tell me how very good my retention rate was compared with that of other dentists she had worked for and how proud I should be of it. I tossed more files. “Who cares if they come in? What difference does it make if they come in or not? No difference! None!” I grabbed twenty files and tossed them. “Stop!” she said. “What the hell are we doing with all these goddamn files!” I cried. “Paul!” she said. “Please! Stop!” I tossed one last file and then I went home.

  Five

  KARI GUTRICH, TALSMAN’S CYBERLAW expert, returned my call the following Wednesday. She informed me that I might be able to sue once the damage was done, but as for stopping it, that was almost impossible. The Internet moved too fast.

  “What legal body,” she asked, “governmental agency, or law-enforcement bureau would you appeal to at the moment?”

  “The police?” I suggested. “The courts?”

  She laughed, I thought a little too heartily. “That’s good for out there,” she said. “But you’re in here now.”

  “In here?”

  The police, the courts—that was common sense, whereas we were discussing technology and the law. Future legislation might introduce stricter controls governing misappropriations, impersonations, defamations, and other disputes of character and online reputation, she said, but the current laws were vague on how to address those issues in real time. And people don’t have access to the courts just because they’re irritated.

  “Irritated?” I said. “They’ve created a website for my practice, started a Facebook page in my name, took unauthorized photographs of me, creepy photographs, and now they’re using my name to comment all over the Internet, implicating me in some kind of religion, and the only legal claim I can make is to being irritated?”

  “Do you know who’s doing this to you?”

  “I know who registered the site,” I said. I gave her Al Frushtick’s name.

  “We can probably get the site to come down,” she said. “But as a legal matter and, more important, as a practical matter, there’s just not much more we can do at the moment.”

  I wanted to hit the wall in frustration.

  “I can’t sue for defamation?” I asked.

  “What damages have you suffered? We don’t fully know yet.”

  She counseled me to do nothing, and to do it carefully. For if I did something, I might inadvertently call more attention to my new online existence, a phenomenon known as the Streisand effect: once people knew I was trying to suppress something published on the Internet, they would actively seek it out to see what all the fuss was about, which would create a negative feedback loop, more attention drawing yet more attention.

  “Streisand? As in Barbra?”

  “We have a best-practices worksheet we advise all our clients to follow,” she said. “Give me your email address and I’ll send it over.”

  “Can you just fax it?” I asked.

  Don’t engage, she cautioned me, despite how hard that might be, and let matters take their course. Later we could reassess the situation to determine what actionable complaint I might have.

  She was looking at the website as we spoke. “You really didn’t make this site?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, “I really didn’t.”

  “Well,” she said, possibly attempting to console. “At least it’s a nice one.”

  I stood outside room 3 composing a reply to Seir Design on my me-machine. “Why do you keep asking me what I know about my life, Al?” I wrote.

  And what business is it of yours, anyway? You’ve shown the limits of your knowledge by calling the Red Sox an “Activity and Interest.” I have no reason to even consider you so much as a man. You’re a program designed to scam me. Only a database would know that my middle name begins with C.

  He (or they, or it) replied quickly:

  My name’s not Al, Paul. And what I know about you goes much deeper than any database. I’m not a computer program, but a person with a beating heart, reaching across this divide to say I feel for you. I am your brother.