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 lan
dline 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.
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 topiary. 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 Hall 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 phrasebook come to life. What a terrifically executed textbook exchange, why thank you.
Emmanuelle wore mosquitoeye sunglasses, a tshirt 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 33 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. Let’s 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 corner with a receptacle she stopped, sipped her last, tossed the coffee inside—not a trashcan but an empty newspaper vending machine.
The day was warming, still not warm enough for flipflops—Em’s thongs to soles athwack.
She took two more blocks then rounded the corner: 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 flipflop. 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 naris, 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 rug.
And then, he said, to send email 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 Em’s neighbor, a spooked Korean grad student Enver thrashed past on the stoop, spilling the kid’s 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 cousin’s in Plainsboro).
At the Biergarten I 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 svidaniya. 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 born the same month, 1984), bought their BBQs, bought their inground pools, opened their email accounts—Mono related the success of this parental relocation, especially successful when compared with ours.
Four New Messages Page 4