10VE in the Time of Dial-Up

UPSTAIRS IN THE bedroom Weber leaned against the molding of the doorframe. He wore a plain white t-shirt tucked into grey wool slacks. In his hands he turned over a poem he had written when he and his wife, Lita, first started dating. The paper was as soft and neat as his slacks. The penmanship wound across the page like ancient ferns grown over ruins. Lita always said she liked his poetry. She honored it by turning it into bookmarks. Weber thumbed through the book his poem held pages in. He read Collins’ Fishing On The Susquehanna In July. It made him smile.

Sunlight, white and even, came in through the bay window beside their bed. Their house had been cold all winter, and the sun didn’t make it any warmer, only brighter. Weber’s oxford shirt  slung over the back of the chair near the front of the room, ready to be put on. The chair Lita used to lay her clothes over had nothing on it. She got up with the sun and dressed herself before Weber woke up.

By this time Lita had usually finished her toast and coffee, read her newspaper, and gone to work, but this morning was different. Weber could hear her shuffling around downstairs. He wondered what she was doing down there, but he didn’t care to see for himself. Weber worked from home, and during the day, while his wife was away, the house was his domain.

Weber got dressed, making sure to walk on the carpeted areas, listening to the clack of his wife’s boot heels downstairs. He listened intently as the front door opened and shut. She was gone. Weber stopped tiptoeing and took his laptop down the narrow hallway to the top of the stairs.

He was startled to see her standing at the bottom of the stairs. The floorboards, like a trapdoor, caved a little beneath his feet. Maybe they would finally give way, and he’d fall down some rabbit hole, feet first and wild with excitement. Or maybe he’d be shanghaied off to some foreign country to fight in some awful war, but on the way the ship would run aground on a vast reef, forcing everyone to swim to the nearest island and start over. Instead, the wood held on, and all he could do was stand still in the silence of his own wars. Lita’s head was cocked down, looking at something in her planner. She was motionless, and for a moment Weber thought he was hallucinating. Then she snapped her planner shut and looked up at him as though he were the help.

“Weber,” she said, “Don’t forget to pick up the lamb from Tony’s and the dry cleaning from Cleary’s before four o’clock.” She turned and closed the door behind her. A draft of cool air snuck in and shivered up the stairs to Weber’s feet. His toes twiddled in his socks, and he went for his slippers before finally heading down the stairs.

***

The whistle of the teakettle brought Weber into the kitchen and away from his workspace — his wife called it the playpen. He poured the first half of his French press into yesterday’s empty cup and stood in the doorway to the parlor. Wind buffeted against the parlor windows, rattling the outside panes and chilling his fingertips. He put his coffee cup on the coaster, where a motley jester cavorted. His desk was a mahogany roll top with a number of cubbyholes and a row of drawers with tiny brass knobs and pull handles. Weber’s computer sat amidst the busy little drawers like a wizard in magic shop, humming spells about anything anyone would ever need to know. He worked for a while. Then he went to the kitchen for the second half of his French press and a banana. Howling police sirens sounded off in the distance. His banana peel drooped over his hand like a flaccid hilt. As the sirens grew louder, Weber began to imagine police cars and fire trucks crashing across his front lawn. Firefighters in heavy, yellow jackets busting through the front door with their sharp red axes as if there were ten-foot flames and plumes of smoke escaping through the kitchen windows, a crying baby in a crib upstairs. The sirens faded and Weber realized his phone was ringing in the computer room.

“Hello,” he said, as if he didn’t know who was calling.

“Weber,” his wife said, “I’ll need you to take some of my scarves to Cleary’s when you go. The white one and the herringbone one, too.”

“And pick up a booklet of stamps as well.” She hung up the phone without saying good-bye.

Weber slumped in his chair. He chewed on bits of his banana and looked out the window at the bloodless sky, the rooftops all pointing to it. A bare lilac bush shivered in the wind, and a mouse huddled among the dead leaves that surrounded the base of the bush. Weber turned to his computer and began surfing the web. He read about ants and the violence of deep space before logging in to the chat-room he frequents on occasion.  

There was a public chat log in the middle of the screen. On the right there was a scroll-down list of users that he could send private messages to and might receive private messages from. These private messages opened in smaller windows that scattered randomly over the screen, almost as random as the fragmented conversations people were having in the public log section of the page. Someone posted a news-link about a group of hikers who had gotten lost in bad weather, but survived long enough to be rescued by a volunteer rescue organization. A user named Orlando commented on the link.

ORLANDO: you take your life in your own hands out there. and if your unprepared its your own fault and you don’t deserve to live. plus its a total waste of tax payer’s money to go out and rescue those fools.

A few other users wrote in agreement and some in opposition and the conversation moved on quickly. People said whatever came to them without much regard for being polite. Under the alias Earl, Weber private messaged a few users. He asked them how they were and where they were from, but no one responded. He swirled his cold coffee and sipped it. He wondered if he should post a link in the public chat log, something about coffee plantations or ants. He wondered what people wanted to hear.

To Weber’s surprise a private message box popped open on the left-hand side of the screen. No one ever private messaged him.

OLIVE: Busy?

A few seconds passed before he could organize himself to answer.

EARL: No.

He considered how boring this must sound. He typed again.

EARL: How are you?

OLIVE: im good. thanx

EARL: Are you talking to other people?

He immediately regretted the question, but he couldn’t take it back. Olive was slow to reply. Maybe she would never reply. He was too forward. He probably missed his chance. She must be talking to other people. Weber scrolled down the list of users. Olive responded.

OLIVE: yes

Before he could answer Olive, another private message box popped open. This time on the right-hand side of the screen. Weber sat up and clicked over to the box.

American Idiot: so u went with earl. of all the names in the world, u picked earl

He typed quickly.

EARL: My grandfather’s name was Earl.

He typed again.

EARL: I think it’s classy.

American Idiot: classy like a meatball

It was an insult, but Weber couldn’t help laughing at American Idiot. He was having a good time. Another message-box opened, and then another, and Weber suddenly felt like the cool boy in the cafeteria. He began sending messages, initiating. How are you? What are you doing? Is it sunny on your side of town? A user named Sonora replied.

SONORA: Hi!

EARL: Hi!

SONORA: what are you doing, hun?

EARL: Not a lot. Sipping cold coffee. Thinking about palm trees.

SONORA: sorry your coffee’s cold, hun. are you looking for something hot? i have something hot. do you want to guess what it is? c’mon, guess!

Weber’s pulse quickened.

SONORA: ok, don’t. i can show you if you want.

Weber closed all other private message-boxes and moved Sonora to the middle of the screen.

EARL: When? Where?

***

            Inside Janus’s Coffee Stop the espresso machine hissed over chattering baristas and clinking saucers, but all the customers were too busy to notice. Their faces glued to newspapers, books, magazines, and cell phones—poking at their cell phones. Weber remained in the doorway. He surveyed the room, looking for Sonora. She said she’d be wearing red, but she didn’t say what. He imagined a little red beret tipped at a cocky angle over long, glossy, brown hair, or maybe a red brimmed baseball cap, her strawberry blonde ponytail sticking out the back. He walked through the room slowly, inching between the tables, making his way to the bathroom. He wanted to collect himself before meeting his date. Maybe she’d have on red ankle socks. He hoped so.

A phone number advertising for a good time was written on the wall above the urinal Weber was using. The door behind him opened and closed and footsteps squeaked across the tile flooring. A man wearing a red t-shirt stood at the urinal next to Weber. The man unzipped. Weber stared dead ahead at the good-time phone number. It became blurry the way those abstract coffee-table prints do just before a sailboat or a hot-air balloon appears. He could sense the man was looking him up and down. Weber squeezed out a few tiny droplets, little piddles of pee—the crossroads of dehydration and anxiety—and stared deeper into the phone number. Both men finished, or in Weber’s case, decided to call it quits, at exactly the same time. At the sink, Weber kept to himself and soaped up nervously with cold water. The man in red was looking at him through the mirror now, this time not so discreetly.

Without lifting his head, Weber spoke.

“Are you Sonora?” He asked. “In red?”

“Your fly’s down, brother,” the man said. He turned off the faucet and left the bathroom.

Weber caught his breath and dried his hands under the air machine. When he returned to the main seating area of the tiny cafe all he could see was red—a red coral bracelet, a red backpack, red hoop earrings, a red bandana with maroon paisley twists. Someone had used a red marker to write the daily pastry specials on the white board. Weber was a bull, but who was the matador? Where was Sonora?

He ordered a cup of coffee and got himself a glass of water. He sat down at a table near the window. The sun was starting to set and the temperature was dropping. One woman with a red scrunchie got up to pack her computer away. Weber’s pulse got up with her. He watched as she squatted down to unplug her computer cord. She pulled it free from the outlet beneath her table, wrapped it and stuffed it, along with a few papers, into her bag. Weber couldn’t move a muscle. He wanted to stand up. He wanted to ask if she was Sonora, but all he could do was lean his head against the cold glass window. It was so easy to initiate online, just click and type and press enter. He should say hello, ask her where she grew up and what she did last summer, but he didn’t The bell above the door jingled and she was gone.

A number of other customers began packing and leaving: the woman with the hoop earrings, the one with the bracelet, the girl with the backpack who looked twenty, but was likely no older than sixteen. Except for the shuffling of bags and the moving of chairs the cafe was quiet. Even the espresso machine was taking a breather. Weber’s phone began to buzz from his pant’s pocket. It was his wife and it was definitely past four o’clock. Weber hadn’t brought her scarves. He decided he could hide those in his sock drawer and deal with them tomorrow. But what was he going to do about the lamb and the other dry cleaning? And what about the stamps? His eyes had a fearful, fixed look of avoidance, like a gazelle about to bolt from a pride of lions. He looked at her name, Lita, flashing on the face of his phone, her number flashing below. It continued to buzz. Thoughts ambushed. What about the phone number above the urinal and the good times that might be had from calling it? It continued to buzz. He thought about Olive and American Idiot, about the others who had privately messaged him. He thought about Sonora. Where was she? Why didn’t she meet him? It continued to buzz. He wished he were an ant, hiding under thick blades of grass; or an astronaut, floating out in deep space. He wished for the life of him he were fishing on the Susquehanna in July.

Weber looked up from his buzzing phone to the entryway where someone had come in. An tiny old woman with wiry grey hair and long fingers with knuckles like beat-up marbles stood exactly where he had stood when he first arrived. A red and white checkered hair-bow rested daintily on her head. She wore a red blouse with matching red velvet pants and red lipstick—love-red. The door was shut behind her. This was, without a doubt, Sonora. Weber’s phone stopped its buzzing. The old woman made her way past the specials board where an employee was erasing the possibility of lavender scones and currant bran muffins. She took short, stabbing steps like an injured sparrow toward the counter. Weber’s phone buzzed from his pocket one last time, alerting him to the voice message his wife left for him. His stomach was a fist squeezing an apple seed. He lowered his head and began to panic. “Bolt,” he thought to himself. Weber left his coffee on the table and headed toward the entryway. The old woman stood at the cash register, totally ignored by the baristas, all cleaning up and getting ready to go. As Weber approached the door, the old woman turned in his direction. They locked eyes. In another time Sonora must have been radiant woman, fair and symmetrical. But now all Weber could see was that her crow’s feet told the same old story as her gaunt cheeks. Weber and Sonora stared at one another the way a person stares at an important painting, trying to understand just what is so important about it.

“Earl?” She finally said, so hopeful.

Weber stood still.

“Are you Sonora?” he asked.

“I am,” the woman said. A giant smile grew on her face.

Weber put his hands into his pockets.

“There was a man here a minute ago, looking for you.”

The woman’s smile slowly turned over.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

Weber left Janus’s Coffee Stop. He left the tiny old woman standing there alone. He got in his car, put his phone face down on the passenger seat, and drove and drove on down the road.

Advertisement