Curioddity

by Paul Jenkins

  Wil looked up to find a bemused elderly couple staring at him as he argued with his cell phone in public. He glowered at them, so that they hustled away quickly. Suddenly, the telephone function appeared on his touch screen. Apparently, SARA was ready to concede that Wil was capable of tossing her under a passing car.

  “That’s better. Now please dial this number.” Wil recited Lucy’s cell phone number as accurately as possible, making sure to enunciate in such a way that if SARA got it wrong she would clearly be doing it on purpose. He waited for the phone to ring. Instead, there was only silence. Wil looked at the screen, which was now providing weather reports for Harare, Zimbabwe.

  “Would you like me to dial a number?” asked SARA, sweetly.

  “Yes!” screamed Wil. “I swear I’m going to throw you under a school bus. Are you completely mental?”

  “Hiya Wil,” replied a familiar female voice emanating from his cell phone, “are you having a bad day, or is it just me?”

  The blood drained from Wil’s face with the kind of speed reserved for comets on a collision course with the sun. “Lucy?” he muttered, weakly. “Is that you?”

  “Your first clue would probably be that you dialed my number,” replied Lucy from the other end of the ether. “Who were you expecting? And by the way, were you shouting at me or are you driving?”

  “I wasn’t shouting at you, I promise. I wasn’t even shouting. I’m just…” Wil allowed his voice to trail off. The chances of a rational explanation at this point were in exact proportion to the chances of Lucy believing it. “I’m having a bit of trouble with my new cell phone.”

  “Bummer. I hate my phone, too, if it’s any consolation. Everyone does.”

  “I doubt it,” said Wil, feeling a little sorry for himself. “Most people’s phones don’t look up the population of Warsaw when you ask them to dial a telephone number.”

  There was a pregnant pause. “Don’t tell me you bought a Lemon?”

  “The same,” replied Wil, hesitantly. He hoped Lucy wouldn’t find his obvious lack of computer savvy unattractive. “I think the interface is trying to kill me.”

  Another silence. Wil checked his phone to see if Lucy had disconnected. He could hardly blame her for doing so.

  “Now that,” said Lucy in a spooky and ominous tone, “that … is … awesome!”

  “Really?”

  “Sure it is. I don’t know a single person in their right mind who’d buy a Lemon phone on purpose. Those things are a train wreck. I hear their texting function sends to your entire address book. Is that true?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Wil, despondently. He had a terrible feeling the context of the conversation was getting away from him. “I don’t know how to send a text.”

  “Doubly awesome,” replied Lucy, happily. “You know, you really are a complicated man, Wil Morgan. Did you find a good Korean restaurant for Thursday?”

  According to my Lemon phone there are five of them but they’re all a bit of a drive.”

  “How far?”

  “Korea.”

  This elicited a spontaneous giggle from the other end of the phone. Wil could see himself getting quite used to that sound, and he found himself looking forward to his date more eagerly than ever before.

  He looked down at the inlaid box nestled under one arm, the Tesla Kit nestled under the other, and the large cup of coffee held in his free hand. Adding a smartphone to this equation was putting him in jeopardy of dropping the whole kit and caboodle. Wil decided to head toward the Castle Towers so that he could reset and put himself in order. It would be at least another hour before the clock tower tried to bother him, at which point he’d already be halfway to the Curioddity Museum. Wil felt a tinge of guilt at the idea of bringing the rotting old box to the museum but he sloughed this off by agreeing to himself that Mr. Dinsdale would at least have one failure to strike from his list of box-shaped candidates.

  “So is this a social call,” asked Lucy, “or did you want to tell me where we’re going Thursday night?”

  “Right. Well,” said Wil, “since I don’t know how to send a text, I guess I called to see if you had a favorite restaurant? Korean’s pretty specific. Is there one downtown?”

  “We could go to Happy Spice. I love their thousand-year-old eggs and they do a killer bubble tea.”

  “Sounds revolting. Is everything on a Korean menu something we’re supposed to eat on a dare?”

  “Pretty much. That’s why it’s so much fun.”

  * * *

  WIL HAD been thinking about what he was going to say to Lucy ever since he’d met her the previous night. He’d thought about it on his way home, and as he’d brushed his teeth before bedtime. He’d thought about it the moment he’d woken to the smell of mushrooms, and he’d thought about it while standing in the line at Mug O’ Joe’s, waiting to argue with his daily teenager. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Wil Morgan had a plan that did not involve walking to work, nor standing in a vomit-inducing elevator, nor skulking through the lobby of his apartment building.

  Now, he was ready to make his move: For the first time in many years he was going to be a catalyst, the spark that set off the firework. He could only hope it didn’t all blow up in his face.

  “Have you ever heard of the Curioddity Museum?” he asked, innocently.

  “I love museums!” replied Lucy, eagerly. “Especially ones I’ve never been to before. Where is it?”

  “Do you know the divided highway that runs through the banking district?”

  “There’s a museum there?” Lucy sounded a touch skeptical. “I thought that place was just a bunch of industrial buildings.”

  “Yeah, so did I,” admitted Wil without bothering to explain the rest of the story. “I, uh … I found it the other day. I was wondering if you’d like to go there with me someti—”

  Before Wil could enunciate the m in “sometime” he heard a shriek at the other end of the line.

  “Are you okay?” he inquired, genuinely concerned for Lucy’s well-being.

  “Of course I am, silly! I hoped you were going to ask me out again. I mean dinner’s great, an’ everything. I mean I wasn’t sure if you were into me but I guess you dig me. I mean I dig you.”

  Wil looked at his cell phone, confused. Despite Lucy’s liberal use of the phrase “I mean,” he wasn’t sure what she meant at all. He’d lit a spark, all right: Lucy’s metaphorical firework seemed primed to explode at random intervals. He decided it might be a good idea to defuse the situation, just to be on the safe side.

  “I mean if you have time,” he said, feeling self-conscious.

  “I’ll make time. What street is it on?”

  “Right. What street.”

  “Okay. What street?”

  Wil felt his hesitance was quite understandable. For all he knew, Upside-Down Street was a figment of his imagination, or one of Mr. Dinsdale’s elaborate tricks. “I think it’s called Mons Street though I can’t be sure. Oh, but the museum is right across from an old cinema. You can’t miss it.”

  “Sounds tremendous,” said Lucy with her typical level of unbridled enthusiasm. “I’ll meet you at Happy Spice on Thursday at seven. Don’t be late!” And with that, she closed the connection on her end.

  Wil stared at the cell phone, half-expecting it to do something unexpected. SARA remained subdued—no doubt angry that Wil’s phone call had gone off without a hitch—and her screen remained dark. A small triumph, Wil conceded, but a triumph nonetheless.

  And he was to enjoy this minor success for roughly twenty seconds before the bottom fell out of his universe once again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HINDSIGHT WOULD later suggest to Wil that things coincidentally began to fall down at exactly the same time he began to relax. He wasn’t to know this at the time, of course. Otherwise it would’ve been foresight.

  Wil walked toward the Castle Towers for a few minutes, pleased with how he’d navigated the tricky waters of his fir
st ever cell phone call. If life were a gushing torrent of unpredictability, he thought, then at this moment in time he was the captain of a very large submarine currently plowing right underneath it and wondering what all the fuss was about. Flushed with success and warmed by hot coffee, he wandered aimlessly with the flow of traffic until the current washed him up at the base of the Castle Towers. He was determined, however, that the ugly old edifice would not dampen his mood today. And he was doubly determined that the monstrous Swiss clock next door would fail in its daily ambush at six minutes after three. Today, he would be ready.

  Wil dallied for a while, chuckling to himself as road-weary afternoon travelers passed by the statue of Pan outside his office building. Local drivers had become so accustomed to Pan’s generously carved wedding tackle that they tended to navigate the confusing one-way roundabout without so much as a first glance. Many of the people inside the cars carried the resigned looks of those who would rather be living anywhere else, and any other time in history. But every so often, an out-of-town driver could be seen trying desperately to avoid a collision as they spotted Pan’s enormous endowment to the arts for the first time. Poor saps, thought Wil as he sauntered knowingly toward the entrance to his office building, they really needed to watch what they were doing.

  And it was precisely while indulging in this disparaging frame of mind that he made his second mistake in a row.

  * * *

  WIL’S FIRST mistake, to be fair, had been somewhat understandable. The excitement of an upcoming date with Lucy Price—added to the money in his bank account, and the general sense that all had become somehow right with the universe—had led him to conclude that all was somehow right with the universe. Naturally, the universe had other ideas.

  Wil’s second mistake was to call his father using his brand-new Lemon phone.

  * * *

  IT HAD been a full three days since Barry Morgan’s answering machine message had threatened to ruin his son’s entire week. Now, Wil found himself standing at the base of the Castle Towers preparing to return fire. He paused for a moment at the main doors to the building, held up his brand-new cell phone, and pretended he was staring into SARA’s eyes in a challenging fashion. He activated SARA’s voice recognition function, with no intention of being the one who blinked first.

  “Hello again, SARA,” said Wil with as much of an I-wear-the-trousers-in-this-relationship air of bravado as he could muster. “I’d like to make a phone call.”

  The Lemon phone remained silent. Wil was getting the distinct impression SARA had cottoned on to his game of chicken. But he was determined not to repeat his previous performance and come off as a crazy homeless person yelling randomly into the air. He waited.

  “Hello, Wil Morgan,” said SARA’s disembodied voice eventually. “It has been approximately seventeen minutes since our last interaction. Would you like to dial the previous number?”

  “No, a new number, please. I want to call my dad—”

  “My database indicates roughly two and a half billion dads in the telephone directory. Would you like to narrow the search?”

  “I’m curious. Was the person who programmed you on some kind of medication or is this just a case of artificial intelligence gone rogue?”

  “Would you like me to search—”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I would not like you to search, nor suggest a search, nor even think about searching with that limited set of robotic cogs you call a brain. I would, however, like the telephone dialing function. And I would also like to make it quite clear, SARA, that I know where the nearest river is, and I’m thinking of taking you swimming later this afternoon.”

  SARA remained silent for a few moments until suddenly, a neon-green dialing keypad began to glow and pulsate on the Lemon phone’s screen. Finally, thought Wil as he began to dial Barry Morgan’s cell phone number, the maniacal smartphone was beginning to wise up. For a moment, he considered the ramifications of accidentally dialing any one of the other two and a half billion dads on planet Earth by accident, and he decided that if he should randomly be connected with someone in, say, Lahore, Pakistan, then at least they could have a conversation about the local stock market and weather. This whimsical notion was soon to be ousted, however, as Wil’s father quickly picked up on the other end of the line.

  “Barry Morgan,” came a gruff voice presented in a type of crystal clarity reserved only for telemarketers and debt collectors. Wil stood for a moment, unsure of what to say. The idea of actually speaking with his father always filled him with dread, no matter the few hundred miles between them. “Barry Morgan,” repeated the voice. “Who is this?”

  “Hi, Dad,” said Wil, nervously. “It’s me. This is my new cell phone.”

  “Wil? Is that you?”

  “How many other people call you Dad?” There was a brief pause. Barry never much cared for humor, sardonic or otherwise. “I’m sorry I missed calling you back,” Wil continued. “I’ve been really busy at work.”

  “Oh. How’s everyone at the accounting firm?”

  This had been the opening sentence of virtually every single phone conversation between the two men for the last seven years, and while Wil could normally navigate this web of deceit with practiced ease, today he felt an awful lot like a fly who’d just landed on something very sticky and glanced up to find itself facing a predator with eight legs and two fangs. Wil gulped, searching for a line of bull hockey that might persuade his father to cancel his upcoming plans to visit and randomly decide to go somewhere else that was both far away and infinitely less stressful.

  “Umm. Things are fine, Dad. Really fine. But we’re busy. It’s nearing the end of the fiscal year so we’re just about to go into overdrive.” Wil hoped he’d used the word “fiscal” correctly in a sentence. No reaction from his dad. Not bad so far.

  Well,” said Barry, genially, “I suppose taxes will always come around at the same time every year. They always do for me.”

  “That’s what I always say to the guys.”

  “What?”

  “Taxes. They always come around. Unless you don’t do them.”

  This conversation was already beginning to derail. Wil moved through the main door of the Castle Towers and into the lobby, listening politely to his father’s generalities about the importance of timely and well-prepared tax returns. He knew that Barry could be counted on for a good five minutes of lecturing, and this would give him enough time to get up to the nineteenth floor. And with any luck, he might lose reception inside the Rat Barf Express on the way up to his office.

  As Wil listened to Barry waffling on about his favorite tax forms and great moments in accounting history, he moved past the two brothers inside the lobby, playing chess. The strange twins with their matching comb-overs seemed lost in their game, as usual, and so Wil gave them no more than a cursory glance as he passed by and entered the elevator. But as the elevator doors began to close and Wil girded his metaphorical loins for nineteen floors’ worth of the Vomit Comet—his Lemon phone now held roughly twelve inches from his left ear—one of the two brothers over at the table did something rather odd: he began to stand up. Weird, thought Wil. This was the first time he’d ever seen either twin actually move away from the chessboard. As the first brother began to stand, the second seemed to slump down a little on his chair, as if the removal of the first brother’s torso had created a little vortex under the table that had sucked him in. Just as the elevator doors closed, Wil watched with mild intrigue as the standing brother began to slip and fall to one side of the chess table, suggesting the effort of standing had proven too much for the poor man.

  Inside the elevator, the smell of rat vomit seemed more pungent than usual. Wil mentally crossed his fingers—even though he’d initiated the dialing process, he secretly hoped the ascending elevator might be too much for his Lemon phone and he’d lose the connection. As his father continued to waffle on about job security and the benefits of the accounting industry, a one-sided conversation tha
t Wil punctuated with the occasional “Uh-huh,” he allowed himself to daydream about the possibility of reprogramming the SARA function and letting her carry on the conversation by herself. The caustic smell of the elevator, however, was beginning to take its usual toll. Wil wrestled with his gag reflex, found himself on the business end of a metaphorical half nelson, and began to cough uncontrollably.

  “Are you listening to me, Wil?”

  “Huh?”

  Wil snapped to attention, realizing he’d almost blacked out somewhere during his ascent. He briefly imagined himself as an early-twentieth-century mountain climber wearing jodhpurs and a woolen scarf, mere yards from the summit of Everest as the clouds pulled in. This was not going to be an easy moment.

  “I was asking about your work,” continued Barry Morgan at the other end of the line. “How is everyone at the office? Are you still having trouble with that coworker of yours?”

  “Oh, yes,” lied Wil. “It’s terrible.” And with that, he descended into a full-on coughing fit.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” lied Wil again. “I’m fine.”

  “What was that person’s name, anyway?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your coworker. The one you told me is always being dishonest. I’ve known a few people like that: people who couldn’t tell the truth to save their lives.”

  Wil racked his brains as he tried to remember the name of the mythical coworker he’d woven a tale about the last time he’d spoken to his father. “Was it Jerry?” he asked, trying to ignore the irony of the lie he was perpetrating about a mythical liar. This was, of course, a name he’d fished out of mid-air in much the same way a black bear might try to target a spawning salmon fifty miles before it got upstream to the weir. He knew that it could not possibly have been “Jerry” the last time he and Barry had had this conversation, but he also knew his dad very rarely paid any attention to such details.