Do Not Call

by Julian Folk

  Time on the cable box is 9:23

  The ringing of the retro phone cuts the air to pieces.

  Who plugged that thing back in?

  She sighs at the phone’s distance, heaves herself to the edge of the sofa, gets her legs underneath her, blasts to her feet, waddles to the end table and answers with extreme prejudice:

  “WHAT.”

  “Hey, ma’am, this is Bud at Mass National Bank—”

  “Die, Bud,” she says.

  She intends to slam the receiver but hesitates and hears, “After you, fat bitch.”

  “Vile pig,” she says and unplugs and disconnects the phone.

  Today is Day One of Pre-Production on Book IV.

  The author dumps her cold, untouched coffee and brews another.

  She powers up her laptop and cracks the office windows to cycle out stale air. After glancing at the Master Outline tacked to the wall, she panics at the iffy plan for Book IV.

  Book III was one long crescendo. It terminated at the midpoint of the series. This book is transitional, a comedown, a re-orienting.

  In The Mother of the World, an ancient empress masters the so-called Way of Nature, transforms into a goddess and unites warring kingdoms. But she dies by an unknown killer’s hand prior to naming a successor. No one has a clue who did it or what the goddess’s choice was. Two women acolytes wage war to succeed her, while a court advisor investigates the murder.

  Book IV’s action starts after the war’s end.

  Piece-by-piece, Ayelet constructs a story.

  Her story flows, characters grow and change, major players fight atop mountains and perish, or convalesce in valleys and strategize. She designs exhilarating scenes, ridiculous scenes, filthy scenes, soul-killing scenes and scenes of renewal. She works faster than time ordinarily permits.

  But the Writing Gods have other plans.

  Oh no.

  The screen turns solid blue and stays that way.

  NO NO NO.

  She waits for a message to indicate the error. She waits and waits. “We can work it out, kid,” she says to the laptop, “just tell Momma what’s wrong.”

  Still no error message. She presses the power button. Nothing happens. She holds the power button down. And holds it. Blackness replaces the blue screen. She presses the button again. Reboot denied. A pain afflicts her below. In Baby’s neighborhood.

  Ayelet thinks, Oh my God don’t get born yet. Life is fucked up at the moment. Wait two months. Trust your mother. It’s better in there.

  She releases the power button. Nothing. She stares daggers at it. Abruptly, the laptop reboots on its own. Frank Profeta’s digital mug occupies the screen.

  Connor said he had no memory of this Frank guy.

  The goofy face looks fake.

  It snarls and speaks:

  “Stupid bitch, your hard drive has been deleted by HACKTIVATE. Divorce my bully Connor Yard. REPENT and REFORM! Then you get your precious outline back. Frank, Out.”

  The face remains. The words “REPENT” and “REFORM” appear above it. His snarl morphs to a mean grin.

  Ayelet shuts the laptop.

  Anxiety wraps its tentacles around her and won’t let go. Her heart beats so hard the muscle hurts. Her eyes rove the room—a pen on the desk. Pens write. She opens the drawer onto a spiral notebook with a panda cover. Pens write on paper.

  In defiance of HACKTIVATE and “Frank,” she crafts a superior outline, crossouts, smudges and all.

  The phone blares a song. Spontaneously. A ringtone she hasn’t chosen: Queen and Bowie, “Under Pressure.” Caller’s name: Marcello.

  “Hey,” he says.

  Her lover’s voice flips a switch in her being. Loverboy never says the wrong thing. She reverts to sex mode. Instantly. Completely.

  “You know HACKTIVATE?” she asks. “The hacker group?”

  “Call the police, Gorgeous,” he says. “They published your landline. I called it and got a busy signal.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” she says. “I disconnected the phone.”

  “Yeah, so, I’m in New York today.”

  “I’m at the edge of a forest of two-hundred-foot-tall Christmas trees.”

  “Since HACKTIVATE published your address, too, I looked up the directions. What a big lake behind you. Probably can’t see it from the house—”

  “Well, there’re bears and I’m pregnant,” she says.

  “In current traffic, Gorgeous, you’re only three hours and thirty-two minutes away.”

  Ooooh.

  “The town is, um, rising up against us—”

  “I’m halfway there. I’ll kill the hostiles for you…”

  Oh thank God…

  Irrevocably in sex mode, Ayelet draws a bath and fights the temptation to spoil her sexual appetite.

  Dov calls and offers private security. “Not necessary.” Gladys made her point last night. The rest of the town, forget about it, they’re hippies. And her stud is closing in on her location.

  Then Dov detonates a bomb:

  “The pilot script’s gone missing.”

  What the?

  She emailed it to her agent, Ava (the producer) and Gabriel (the director).

  “Ava and Gabriel have it,” Ayelet says.

  “No, Ayelet,” he says. “All the files. They’re missing. Scrubbed from our emails and hard drives. I asked my tech guy to recover them. He told me no dice—”

  The sky’s falling—

  “Look on your computer,” he says.

  My destroyed computer.

  “I’m in the bath,” she says. No doubt HACKTIVATE bugged her phone. “Don’t worry. I’m paranoid about my writing. I hide copies of my work in secret places. We’re good, Dov.”

  “I hope so,” he says.

  She towels off, dons a black maternity dress and leaves her hair wet, even though people judge a woman out in public with wet hair. Let them. That shit ranks low among her problems now.

  Confident she has the mettle to withstand potentially hostile townies, Ayelet addresses an envelope to Dov, plasters it in stamps, tucks a flash drive inside and hauls down to Main Street.

  Pregnant, proud and slow as molasses.

  Bean-to-Martha’s buzzes with caffeine addicts and fiends for sweets. Preliminary check: looks safe. Ayelet crosses to the south side of the street and walks east a block, casual as hell, neither avoiding nor seeking eye contact. She flips the mailbox lid open, dumps the envelope, crosses back to the north side, walks west, homes in on Bean-to-Martha’s, her mouth already tasting coffee and a black-and-white cookie. She glances behind her, at the mailbox, afraid some HACKTIVATE asshole might light an M-80 and bomb it.

  But shiny happy pedestrians pass. Shoppers. Lunch-eaters. Nobody of concern.

  Excellent.

  She enters Bean-to-Martha’s and says good morning to the retired men lounging cross-legged, their eyes buried in broadsheet newspapers. No one pays her any mind. Line at the counter, four customers deep. Singing to her sweet tooth from the display cases she finds assorted pie slices, cupcakes, cookies (black-and-white, chocolate chip, chocolate fudge, etc.), muffins and scones. Baby’s feet pat his confines. Mommy craves a nuclear blast of sugar and she imagines Baby does, too.

  Middle-aged, a hardy user of her own product, the hippie-woman at the counter is a fountain of cheeriness drained partly by weariness. On the name tag: “Martha.” Ayelet’s heart emits a pulse of love.

  “Medium coffee, one milk two sugars,” Ayelet says, “and how ’bout a black-and-white cookie.”

  Four movements later, Martha places Ayelet’s coffee midway between them. The customer’s nose sucks in the swirling aromas: floral, nutty, spicy.

  But angry hands tear the door open. As if sadistically ripping apart the stitches that close a wound. Martha and the counter girls whip their heads to the source of the sound. Ayelet fears a stick-up. A stick-up man wouldn’t harm a pregnant woman, would he?

  A chant sounds:

  “BULLY! BIGOT
! Corporate WHORE!”

  Ayelet hasn’t been in here five minutes…

  “BULLY! BIGOT! Corporate WHORE!”

  Gladys’s voice dominates the others.

  Ayelet rotates at the speed of an oil barge.

  Gladys and her two friends hold freshly-printed “I Stand with Frank” t-shirts.

  Ayelet laughs. What a pathetic way for these women to assert their existence. They need to get a life. She scolds:

  “This Frank person doesn’t exist, Gladys. It’s a stupid internet hoax. Jordan has stitches in her hand because of you. What fools you people are. Tomorrow you’ll apologize to me with egg on your face.”

  “BULLY! BIGOT! Corporate WHORE!”

  Ayelet’s resistance feeds the chant, which gains in volume and heightens in pitch. These women are free-flowing particles of hate. Today they attach to Ayelet.

  She turns back to the counter and reaches for her coffee. But Martha pulls it back. “I can’t serve you ’til the Frank business is cleared up, ma’am. I’m sorry. Besides, I don’t believe caffeine benefits pregnant women…”

  Ayelet paid but she walks away empty-handed.

  The chant changes as she passes between Gladys and Friends:

  “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!”

  This is a twisted medieval ritual.

  “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!”

  The old chant follows Ayelet at a snail’s pace a quarter mile up the block:

  “BULLY! BIGOT! Corporate WHORE!”

  She shuts the windows, in spite of the residual summer stuffiness, collapses backward on the sofa and rests her eyes, daydreaming of the medium coffee and black-and-white cookie Martha so cruelly took back.

  Ayelet quits her dreamless nap to accept kisses on her lips. I’ve got skunk breath. Loverboy couldn’t care less. His tongue has a pain-relieving effect, and it nurtures intense pleasure, like topically-applied Mollies.

  The maternity gear jumps to the floor.

  Connor has a full day of classes. He won’t come home. He won’t know.

  Marcello discards his polo shirt and latches onto her nipples. Every time he touches her body it feels like he’s been searching for it since the dawn of time and training just as long to pleasure it. Now his mouth circles south.

  “You’re not a father, right?” she asks.

  “Not yet.” He says it glibly. She lets it go. “State Department’s a demanding place. Almost as demanding as your pussy.”

  Ayelet would like to laugh but his tongue silences her.

  He demands she tell him what he wants to hear.

  So she moans about leaving Connor, loving Marcello, having his babies. It’s just play. They established that months ago. Just play. It turns the temperature up in the room.

  That’s all.

  They go a couple rounds. Marcello’s skills revolutionize her understanding and experience of pleasure, intoxicate her. But in late afternoon, the effect fades.

  They sixtynine on the floor, Marcello on top, bending at an awkward angle to avoid squishing the miniature planet her belly has become.

  She finishes coming and rushes him.

  How reckless this is.

  Disruptions at school could send Connor home early. Protocol obliges Ayelet to clear these extracurricular activities with him. She didn’t today.

  “I need to get back to work,” she says and dresses.

  Ayelet bets he’s never seen a pregnant woman move this fast.

  “Cool,” he says. “Wanna hit the coffee shop first, Bean-to-Martha’s? It’s got great reviews on Yelp.”

  “Martha won’t serve me,” she says, head down. “The Frank thing.”

  “Is it true, about Connor…?”

  “He’s innocent, trust me.”

  “No, I mean, what HACKTIVATE says. Like, he hasn’t earned the balls he was born with?”

  What’s gotten into Loverboy?

  “Don’t speak about my husband that way in his house, Marcello. You need to leave.”

  “Hey, Gorgeous. Come on. We should sit down and figure this out. I’m entitled to an explanation…if Connor plans to have a hand in raising my son.”

  This is not happening.

  Ayelet screams affair-ending gibberish, hobbles to her office, locks the door and wails.

  But the office windows are still open. The protest rages on. She counts thirty-three angry souls marching in an ellipse. The chant is:

  “CONNOR YARD,

  AYELET MARTIN,

  YOU MAKE

  OUR TOWN

  UNSAFE!

  UNSAFE!”

  Chapter 5

  Connor’s drunken sleep amounts to one long nightmare, unfolding in two phases. Phase 1 features his high school bully, Eric Rice, invading the North Berkshire CC campus to disrupt Connor’s lecture and accuse him of a slew of career-killing misdeeds: plagiarizing his dissertation, fabricating his memoir, sleeping with students, sexually harassing women and saying bigoted things.

  Eric’s campaign gets Connor fired and blacklisted from academia.

  Then it shifts.

  Phase 2 features Eric in a more twisted scenario.

  Connor steps inside the living room of his new home. The coffee table is gone. His family sits in a circle. Posture tight, faces mean.

  This is a perverse intervention, starring his working class parents, Jan and Jimmy; FBI agent brother Robert; sister-in-law Melody; Xavier and Jordan; Ayelet and her estranged parents, Val and Jeff—whom Connor hasn’t even met in real life; and Eric, brown fire in his eyes, with his father, Officer Rice, decked in police blues.

  “Take a seat,” Eric says.

  Connor launches a tirade against Eric. But Ayelet shuts him down. In a twist, Eric confesses to the castration. Officer Rice confesses to breaking Connor’s skull. Not a crime is omitted.

  This pleases him.

  But members of Connor’s family take turns calling him out. They recall words and deeds of Connor’s that hurt them, still hurt them and will hurt them forever. Tears spill. Gradually, he remembers:

  I said these things, I did these things. The harder I tried to be a good person, the nastier I was. So haughty, so oblivious. I terrorized the people closest to me and had no idea I was doing it.

  Ayelet takes the floor. Sobbing, she recites a litany of Connor’s tiny acts of emotional cruelty. She says she only pretended to want sex with him and pretended to like it. But deep down, every kiss suck and fuck was unwanted. She loathed his “porn-for-women” lovemaking. His wife let him have sex with her because she thought it would buy freedom from his cruelty. Eric changed everything.

  In the process of healing his high school wounds, Eric contacted Ayelet one day. They commiserated and fell in love. He impregnated her.

  Everyone in the room pledges to help raise Eric and Ayelet’s baby together.

  “This meeting wasn’t called to help you, Connor,” Eric says. “We’re Survivors of You. Survivors of Connor. We’re here to help ourselves. That’s why we’re confronting you.”

  The Survivors adopt a resolution. They agree to do everything in their power to render Connor a social pariah. And keep him that way. Forever.

  “We bought you a plane ticket,” Eric says. “One way to Alaska. I included a helicopter pass to Little Diomede, an island in the Berring Strait, technically part of Alaska. The closet place in the U.S. to Russia.”

  I’m banished to Siberia.

  Eric and Ayelet packed his suitcase.

  Sweating and crying, Connor wakes. His heart beats like a death metal snare drum. He slingshots his body to the coffee table and searches “Eric Rice” on his phone. The top search result, a Facebook page, alleviates Connor’s distress.

  He clicks.

  The banner reads: “Eric Rice in Memoriam (1984-2005).”

  Dead eleven years. Goddamn castrator was two grades ahead of Connor. Please don’t rest in peace.

  7:40 a.m.

  Connor skips south.

  The sun is a godlike smiley face. The Berkshire Hills
bless him with fresh moist warm air. Weather like this feeds his eternal optimism.

  I-Stand-with-Frank is a real threat. Punches and spitballs will come Connor’s way today, no doubt. Nothing about it will feel fair.

  Dr. Hardin, his dissertation supervisor, once told Connor a story:

  There was a Zen master beloved by his community. One day angry neighbors accused him of knocking up their teenage daughter.

  The Zen master asked, “Is that so?”

  The community shunned him. The neighbors left the baby with him. He took good care of it.

  A year passed. The neighbors knocked on his door. They said the butcher was actually the father.

  The Zen master asked, “Is that so?”

  The neighbors apologized and took the baby back.

  I-Stand-with-Frank is Connor’s version of the illicitly-conceived baby. He must keep his calm, shelter and feed the baby, change its diaper and in time the neighbors will take it back, and if they don’t, he’ll raise it right.

  Connor hits up Bean-to-Martha’s. Yelp reviewers praise Martha’s fast service and flavorful coffee. This morning, the proprietor serves Connor personally, calls him dear, honey, and sweetie.

  Guess she hasn’t heard about Frank yet.

  Crossing Main Street, Connor tastes the coffee. His experience confirms the reviews. The flavor and caffeine elevate his mood. The coffee emboldens him to deal with disruptions in class. Besides, if students protest him, it means they care, that he’s relevant.

  He’ll use the students’ passion, their concern, to connect.

  Campus politics might seem wacky to outsiders. But college is a wacky time. In his undergrad years, old-fogey professors aggravated Connor. He let them know. He expects the same of his students.

  Gotta grin and bear it. Embrace it. Insist on civility and hearing all voices. Earn the trust of popular students.

  At least he looks sharp, donning a blazer, sport shirt and jeans—stylish but not conspicuous. A cute girl walking to class looks up from her phone to smile at him. In this brief walk, she’s not the only one.