by Trisha Telep
It was three in the morning Saturday night – or Sunday morning – when the next call came. Stacey was so disoriented that at first she didn’t recognize the tinny, rhythmic music as being the sound of her cell phone ringing in the other room. She dragged herself out of bed, practically knocked over the lamp as she turned it on, and stumbled into the living room, groping for her purse. She was surprised that the phone was still ringing; it usually went to voicemail long before this.
“Hello,” she said breathlessly, when she finally found the handset and pried it open. There had been no number listed on caller ID, so she half-expected to hear her father speaking in reply.
But she didn’t. “Hello? Hello? Carina?” asked a woman in a rushed and frantic voice.
“No, wrong number,” Stacey said wearily.
“Don’t hang up! Please don’t hang up!” the woman cried. “I’ve been trying for days – I can’t get through – I don’t know what’s wrong with her phone—”
Stacey sank to the couch, one hand holding the phone to her ear, one hand shielding her eyes from the lights she’d turned on. “Maybe you could call the operator to assist you.”
“I did! Of course I tried that! But the operator won’t answer either. No one answers. I’ve tried every phone number I can think of. You’re the first person I’ve been able to get through to.”
Stacey felt a cold premonitory tickle send a live current down her spine. “Where are you calling from? Maybe there’s some . . . cell tower down or something.”
“I’m in New York. There are cell towers everywhere! Look, could you take a message for me?”
“I don’t know—”
“Please. Call my mom. Tell her I’m fine. I’m working on the story, and it’s going great.”
“But I—”
“I’ll give you her number. Do you have a pen and some paper?”
Stacey figured it would be easier to acquiesce, even if she never made the call. So she found a pencil and an empty envelope from the gas company and dutifully took down the number. “Who should I say you are?”
“Teresa Sanchez,” the woman said, then laughed. “Well, of course you don’t have to tell my mother my whole name. Just tell her Teresa called. Oh, and tell her it’s a lot warmer than I thought it would be! I don’t even need my coat.”
That caught Stacey’s attention. “You don’t—”
But the connection had already been cut.
Stacey sat there a few more minutes, more awake with each passing second, and finally nerved herself to boot up her laptop. She went straight to Google and typed in Teresa Sanchez. And swallowed a squeak of terror when the first page to come up was a two-week-old news item on CNN.com: Journalist Shot in Central Park. “A thirty-four-year-old reporter in town to interview a source was found dead early this morning. Police speculate that Teresa Sanchez was killed by a man she had come to talk to as part of a story she was writing for the San Francisco Chronicle . . .”
“Jesus,” Stacey whispered, rocking a little as she sat on the couch, the laptop on her knees. “Oh my God. Oh God.”
Not even bothering to shut down the computer, she set it on the end table and came to her feet, unsteady enough she thought she might tip over. Her hands were shaking and she was cold to the bone. “Now what?” she said aloud, rubbing her fingers against her thighs. She was wearing an old KU T-shirt and plaid, Christmassy pajama bottoms; the flannel felt good against her fingertips, but the friction wasn’t generating any warmth. “I go back to bed? What if the phone rings again? Oh God, oh God—”
She shouldn’t do it. She scarcely knew him. He’d been working all night, had probably been asleep for barely two hours. But she grabbed her keys and ducked out into the hallway anyway. She knocked hard on Nathan’s door and stood there shivering until he answered it. He looked sleepy and even more rumpled than she was, wearing boxers and an inside-out undershirt.
“I’m sorry. I got another call and it freaked me out – from a stranger this time, and she wants me to phone her mom, but she’s dead. She was killed in New York City, but I don’t think she knows she’s dead and I . . . Nathan, I’m sorry but I—”
That was as far as she got before he reached out and pulled her against him in a hug. He was warm and solid and smelled like deodorant soap. “Leave your phone in your apartment and come stay here for the night,” he said, his sentence split in the middle by a yawn. “No one will bother you.”
Stacey woke to the smell of coffee and the feeling of acute embarrassment. She knew exactly where she was – in Nathan’s apartment, in Nathan’s bed, though all they’d shared during the night were blankets. Well, and a little human contact. He’d tucked her in like a child, and then stretched out beside her on the king-size futon, which took up almost the entire bedroom. He was far enough away that she could scarcely feel his body heat. But he’d turned on his side, facing her, and taken her hand in a comforting clasp.
“Go to sleep,” he’d said, and instantly dropped off.
Stacey had been unable to comply, at least at first. She’d lain there for a good hour, alternately rigid and trembling, before sheer exhaustion had forced down her eyelids and she’d slept.
And now it was the morning after and she felt like a complete idiot. Nathan would think she was crazy. Would think she was needy. Would think she was selfish and stupid and careless of other people’s privacy and heedless of their desire to sleep after a really long workday that she had been told about in advance. And what must she look like? She buried her face in the pillow. Maybe she could stay here and pretend to be asleep until he left for his second long shift.
But, no. She had to use the bathroom. And she had to be an adult about this, get up, face him, humbly apologize, swear she would never do this again.
Unless she got more scary phone calls in the night . . . but she refused to think about that right now.
She was able to get to the bathroom without him seeing her and uttered a muffled cry of dismay when she saw herself in the mirror. Hair a mass of tangles, face pale and puffy, sleeping ensemble too wretched to contemplate. She used hand soap to wash her face, her index finger and Nathan’s toothpaste to clean her teeth, and a comb she found in the medicine cabinet to improve her hair, if only by a narrow margin. She took a deep breath and headed toward the kitchen where Nathan appeared to be making breakfast. He stood at the stove, his back to her; by the wonderful smell, she thought he was frying bacon and eggs.
For a moment, she studied what she could see of him. He’d thrown on a robe but didn’t seem to have bothered with the comb. His body language was relaxed. In fact, she thought he might be humming.
She took another deep breath and said, “I am so, so sorry. I should never have come over and woken you up in the middle of the night—”
He’d turned at her very first words, a smile already on his face. “Not a problem,” he said. “I’m glad I was here.”
Nathan had to leave by half past eleven, so Stacey called Teresa’s mother at eleven o’clock, because she wanted him there for moral support if it all went really badly. She sat on the fuzzy brown couch, while he settled in to the nearby chair, looking at ease as always.
The 510 area code must be California, Stacey thought; she wasn’t surprised when the woman who answered had a strong Spanish accent. “Good morning, you don’t know me, but I’m calling about your daughter, Teresa,” Stacey said.
She heard the gasp on the other end. “Teresa? Si? Are you with the police?”
“No, no – this is very strange, so I want you to hear me out instead of hanging up, OK? My father died a few months ago, but lately his . . . his spirit has been contacting me. Calling me. And last night your daughter called me.”
“What? My daughter called you?” The incredulous words were followed by a spate of incomprehensible Spanish. Stacey tried twice to interrupt, but a few moments later, a new voice came on the phone.
“This is Diego, I’m Teresa’s brother,” he said in a voice that sounded
faintly menacing, even over about 1,500 miles of open line. “What are you saying to my mother?”
“Listen. I don’t understand it. I didn’t ask for it to happen. But I’ve started getting phone calls from people who are dead.” Stacey heard the words coming out of her mouth and almost wanted to laugh. Unbelievable. She would have hung up on anyone who called her with such nonsense. She glanced at Nathan and he gave her a reassuring smile and a thumbs-up. She continued, “Your sister called last night and asked me to get in touch with your mother. She wanted me to say that she was doing well; she was working on the story. She said she was so warm she didn’t even have to wear her coat.”
There was a moment’s silence. “She was worried about her coat,” Diego said. “She didn’t have a heavy one to bring with her, you know? She had this green suede jacket. She kept saying, ‘Do you think it will be warm enough?’ I said, ‘It’s New York City, you can buy a coat,’ but she thought it would be too expensive.” There was a sound as if he were shaking his head. “But she didn’t have time to shop. She was only there a day before she died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Stacey said.
“So she called you? Why did she call you? Why didn’t she call me?”
“I don’t know. But the past few days I’ve started getting calls on my cell. See, my dad and I were talking on cell phones when he died, and I keep thinking – I don’t know – maybe that opened up some conduit to the otherworld or something—”
“Teresa was on her cell phone when she was shot,” Diego said sharply. “She was talking to her editor. He heard the gunfire. He heard Teresa scream.”
“Jesus,” Stacey whispered.
“But you say she’s OK now?” Diego asked, sounding for the first time like he accepted the news, like the news was good. “She’s happy? She’s not in any pain?”
“She said she was fine. She said she was warm. She sounded happy.”
“Bueno,” he said. “Gracias. You did a good thing to call mi madre.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. Diego hung up before she could think of another thing to say.
Stacey closed the phone and stared at Nathan. “I think he actually believed me,” she said.
He shrugged. “Good, since it’s true.”
“But is it? I mean, why do you believe me? If you were the one telling me you were hearing from ghosts – well – I wouldn’t be going out to dinner with you and letting you in during the middle of the night. I’d be calling the cops and reporting you as a lunatic.”
He tilted his head, considering her as if he were considering the question at the same time. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I just do.”
She took a shuddery breath. “And thank God you do. I’m not quite sure how I’d have gotten through this week without you.”
“You realize this won’t be the last one,” he said.
“The last what?”
“Phone call. You realize if you really do have some . . . some conduit to the afterlife, you’re going to get more calls.”
She could feel her mouth go slack as her eyes went wide. “Hell. Will all of them be people who were on their cell phones when they died?”
Nathan looked interested. “Was Teresa Sanchez?”
“That’s what her brother said. And my dad was.”
“Well, that narrows the pool to a finite number,” Nathan said. “Though not necessarily a small one.”
Stacey groaned and put a hand to her forehead. “I think I need some coffee.”
“Coming right up,” Nathan said, getting to his feet. He paused to glance down at her. “And then maybe . . . a shower.”
She was laughing so hard she couldn’t aim straight; the pillow she threw at him landed a good three feet wide. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that the laughter loosened some of the dread that had clamped around her heart. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe the phone wouldn’t ring again.
Stacey got eight more calls on her cell phone in the next two weeks.
One was from a mountaineer who had completed a dangerous ascent. “We made the summit, but there was an avalanche as I was calling my wife. Could you let her know it will be a while before we dig out? But it’s beautiful here. You cannot believe the view. I’ve never seen anything like it, not from Everest, not from K2.”
Two were from girls who had been in car crashes, one of them rear-ended while she was on the phone with her boyfriend, one having lost control of her vehicle when she tried to text and drive.
Another caller was a man who had been electrocuted while he was trying to fix a wiring problem in his house. He’d been on the phone with his brother, getting instructions that were obviously incomplete. Another was a farmer who slowly bled out in a field two miles from his house after he got his arm tangled in a piece of equipment.
A day later she heard from a young man shot during what was clearly a drug deal. Stacey was nervous about phoning his mother, but this woman was the one person who most readily accepted what Stacey had to say. “He was a good boy,” the woman repeated over and over. “He was a good boy. He’s in a better place now, with better friends.”
She was contacted by a woman who wanted to let the police know someone had broken into her house. She was hiding in the bedroom closet. That was the call that made Stacey sick to her stomach, but the woman herself sounded remarkably cheerful.
“Guess it was just the cat knocking something over in the kitchen,” she said. “But I’m going to wait until tomorrow to go down and clean it up. You have no idea how comfortable a walk-in closet is! And it smells so good. I’ve been using this organic laundry detergent, and all the clothes smell like orange blossom. I think I’m going to start sleeping in here every night!”
The strangest call came from a woman who had dialed a number as she went skydiving for the first time. Stacey could only guess that the woman’s chute had failed to open. “I’m trying to tell my friends that I did it,” she complained to Stacey. “But no one will answer their phones. I’m seventy years old and I jumped out of an airplane! How cool is that?”
“Pretty cool,” Stacey said. “I hope I’m as brave as you are when I’m your age.”
She stopped being frightened every time the phone rang. She stopped needing to run to Nathan’s when the calls came in the night, though she invariably told him about them the next day, since he invariably stopped by to ask. But the sad, hopeful, confused communications took their toll on her and she wished they would stop. She ordered a sleek new BlackBerry with a brand-new number, though she didn’t trade in the old phone. But she no longer recharged it; she even took the battery pack out.
Even so, the calls still came in, and she still felt obliged to answer them. And obliged to take down messages and contact loved ones and pass on the implausible, inconceivable and desperately welcome news. I talked to him this morning and he was at peace . . . She told me all the pain is gone . . . It’s sunny there, it’s safe, no need to be afraid . . .
Her father phoned every few days, too. Those calls were more welcome, but wearying in their way. It was hard to entirely let go, to complete her mourning process, when he still seemed so alive and so interested in her life.
He always asked about Nathan. “So? You still seeing that kid next door?”
“He’s hardly a kid, Dad. He’s thirty-two.”
“Why isn’t he married if he’s thirty-two?”
“He was married. It didn’t work out.”
“Well, you know, maybe he learned how to be a better man to his next wife. Of course, maybe she left him because he’s a lazy slob. You want to make sure you find out before you get too attached to him.”
“He doesn’t seem lazy. Or slobby, either.”
“What, you’ve been inside his apartment?”
I spent the night there once. “Sure. I’ve gotten a glimpse now and then. He seems neat enough.”
“I hope he’s not too neat. That means he’s kind of a funny guy, if you know what I mean.”
She
couldn’t help laughing. “He’s just the right level of neat, Dad, but thanks for explaining it to me.”
She told Nathan about those conversations, too. It seemed like she told him everything. What her ghostly callers had said. What her boss had done. What she’d had for lunch. What she’d majored in when she was in college. What she liked about the small Missouri town where she’d grown up. Everything.
His default mode was to listen rather than speak, but any time she prodded him with questions, he willingly answered. When he was a boy, he’d wanted to be a racecar driver. He rarely followed series television, but he could spend hours watching ESPN. The place he most wanted to visit was Alaska, followed by Norway. (“I want to see those Northern Lights.”) When he bought his own house, the first thing he was going to get was a dog. (“Big one. Collie or shepherd or Lab. Maybe I’ll get two.”)
She could tell he liked her. She could see him watching her from time to time with that look she remembered from boyfriends in the past – the look that meant she was under his skin, on his mind. Occasionally he’d take her hand or put his arm around her shoulder, but he hadn’t kissed her, even on the cheek, since that first date. She thought he was ready to fall in love again, but something was holding him back. It wasn’t too hard to guess what that something was.
They’d known each other almost a month when she deliberately brought up Mandy’s name. They were sitting in his apartment, having finished an entire pepperoni pizza that was supposed to feed four, and he’d said, “I think you’re the easiest person to be with that I’ve ever met.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said. “I always got the idea that Mandy wasn’t so easy. I have to say I’m a little curious about her. About the two of you.”
“Yeah, I can see why you would be,” he said. He thought it over for a moment. “Where we were good together,” he said, “was in our energy. We both liked doing things – riding our bikes, rehabbing the house, doing an Outward Bound course. It was when we had to sit in a room and have a conversation that we started wearing on each other. Picking at each other. Finding faults.”
