Four New Messages

by Cohen, Joshua

  No I’m a courier.

  A courier. Is that your only problem?

  Now after the toilet a sink ran. Majorie might’ve been washing her hands. Which Mono chose to take as the mark of a professional.

  And you’re a paralegal?

  In the interests of disclosure I’m a paraparalegal. It’s the same difference pretty much.

  And where are you located? Could I come by your offices and talk?

  Majorie gave a cough or burp, an unforthcoming eruction.

  Excuse me, she said, I’m out of state.

  Don’t you realize we have the same area code?

  I prefer to do business over the phone.

  Why?

  Security.

  Are you recording this?

  It’s a federal law that you have to tell someone when you’re recording their conversation.

  Are you telling me that you’re recording our conversation?

  No.

  Mono suspecting now that her office was her residence, which was a disaster, had to be. He heard—suspected he heard—junkfood wrappers crunch under slipper as she stalked around, as if testing the echoes of a floor’s worth of partially furnished rooms in an old drafty inherited house: from the reverberant bathroom she, they, seemed to be now in a larger room or long hallway.

  She told Mono she could help him, she did this type of freelance all the time.

  Her voice was backed by clacking keys or particularly strident cicadas.

  Do what?

  First I customize a letter for your situation then I email it to the webmaster or mistress of the originating offending URL—that’s uniform resource locator.

  What does this letter say?

  It’s your standard-issue unequivocal demand: remove the original post from both website and cache and post instead a short retraction.

  Saying?

  This post has been removed. Or would you prefer a public apology?

  I think the less said about it the better.

  Then I’ll ask the webmistress to sign her name to another email acknowledging the site falsified its information before sending that around to every linking site asking them to likewise take down content and threatening suit if they refuse to comply.

  Every linking site?

  Tell me this: Is what Em wrote true? Did you really spray all over that girl?

  Mono, stymied, asked, We can’t be sure that Em’s her real name, can we?

  Doesn’t matter.

  How long is this going to take?

  There’s no guarantee—the web’s like sweaty footwear: stuff lives in there forever.

  Mono imagined the smell of her slippers—sweat: ammoniac, uriniferous, vinegar, chipotle sauce.

  How much do you need?

  I won’t accept payment in narcotics.

  Could you get started tonight?

  I’ll get started the moment you transfer $1000. Paypal to my email.

  I’m on it.

  Don’t worry, she laughed, I won’t fall asleep on the job, and only the next morning did he realize she was making a joke about him splooging all over women in their somnolence, which wasn’t funny.

  hey kidderoos guess what Mama got today?

  Re: that salacious stroking tidbit of earlier last week? … Just a note, below, after the jump.

  Toward week’s end the Emission posted not any scripted retraction but a screenshot of the retraction request itself, accompanied by Em’s commentary:

  This type of coercion has no legal basis whatsoever, Im not even prelaw and I know this.

  So let me make this as clear as clear as clear can be, which on the internet MEANS CAPS:

  I WILL NOT PUB A RETRACTION, Online Fidelity Fixers or whatever your ridongculous company is called that has no history anywhere, I dont think has ever been incorporated or registered or you get what Im saying and certainly has never filed taxes in the State of New Jersey [this hyperlinked to a state taxation page that said, “terms: ‘Online Fidelity Fixers’: No Record(s) Found”].

  This story Richard Monomian told me is TRUE. He knows it is TRUE.

  That he knows it is TRUE and nothing but the TRUE is why he hired you, Online Fidelity Fixers.

  I looked you up globally, suckers!

  What have you ever done? Your website hasnt been updated in two years [hyperlink to website]!

  Who designed it, a retardy chimpanzee [hyperlink to vid of chimp, unclear as to whether retarded but still slurping its own feces]?

  This email of yours is just a smear of yours truly. Funded by a desperate assaulter of women named Richard Monomian.

  Who is also a dealer!

  Whose coke is also BAD!

  And you Mrs. J. K. M. Jorie, LA—l.egal a.ssistant requires an abbreviation, are you queerious?

  This is amateur hour, yo.

  By that later Thursday afternoon, the last waning work hours when bored deskbounds log on and comment to do anything but improve their own existences, tidy the file chains, or disburden the inbox, this post had racked up over 350 responses like:

  MunchieZ: right on girl!

  anonymous: u tell it!

  anonymous: I am a practicing lawyer in the city and you Em are correctamundo as always.

  jd: Im with u. I call bullshit.

  m@jd: Bullshit!

  bullshit: Bullshit! (first!)

  anonymous: this letter is not even worth the paper it is not printed on.

  (Hugger89 and go_deep like that comment.

  That comment had a comment—see one reply: monomaniacal wtf!?)

  Friday morning after googling himself and finding that post Mono called Majorie and got a voicemail that said: You’ve reached Broken Wings: Last-Minute Frequent-Flyer Miles Broker to the Bereaved.

  He waited for the beep, Call me. This is unbereavable.

  He lay back in bed perusing a magazine he’d found weathered wet and unsubscribed to in the hallway last week, read from the cover in a whisper—revista feminina—as if a foreign language had the power to save him from what he did understand (was the internet as virulent in Spanish or Italian, in German or French?).

  He flipped the pages, past the makeup styles and recipe tips—what Mexicans had the kitchens for this? had the flatware, stemware, and jobless hours?—heading into an article headlined ¿qué es la depilación láser?

  Mono wondered if he’d ever be able to masturbate again. Not above a sleeping stranger and not even to the internet, which had been sexually ruined for him—but perhaps to this revista, that tan woman of thumb proportions depilating herself on page 34?

  The phone rang and Mono picked up.

  It wasn’t Majorie but Methyl.

  Which was good news—Mono having had no income in over a week. Had all of Jersey stopped getting—depilated?

  I’m coming over, Methyl said.

  Under the cashmere overcoat Methyl wore only a wifebeater, the chest hair coming in spirals like @ signs. Below were baggy jeans and between the jeans and beater was a full foot of red boxers exposed.

  He came swaggering into the apartment, sat on the bed—there was nowhere to sit but alongside Mono, Methyl waiting as the TV was repositioned, returned to the floor.

  This all? he asked.

  Mono asked, That mean you’re giving me a raise?

  Methyl had in his hands a gaming console as gray as a desiccated brain strangulated in black cords attached to two controllers.

  It’s a new game, he said, still in development. I gave these city guys some tips on how to make it rawer, they gave me a copy of the beta.

  He bent to fit plugs into sockets.

  Balancing the console on top of the screen.

  The TV showed a brick wall.

  A man walked past the wall. Another man passed by the wall in a car. The man in the car lowered his window, yelled something indiscernible—Hooooooo!?!?—pumped one shotgun round that struck the walking man in the no longer walking head. The car continued, drove offscreen. The man’s head broke apart, spattering th
e wall in seven spots of sanguinary graffiti that dripped down to form a word with seven letters: Corners.

  Kids crept up to the corpse, pulled spraycans from the pockets of puffies and tearaway trainers and tagged the brick.

  One wrote 1 Playa—effective aerosol sound effect—the other scrawled 2 Playas.

  I play the dealer, Methyl said, you play the snitch.

  The screen was splitscreen so there wasn’t one wall now but two and they were different.

  I’m gonna let you walk free for a while, Methyl said. Try and get a feel for the controls.

  Mono the snitch walked to the end of the wall, which was the end of the sidewalk. He walked to the end of the screen but there was more screen. The next block was crowded with bodegary. Fat mamas pushed pushcarts stacked fat with bags of laundry, bags of rice. Hot mamacita hissed. Stolid old guy swept a stoop. Kids, rather trainee cholos, junior bangers.

  A red blur burst from behind a tenement’s billboard—pigeon graphics flying wildly out of frame as Methyl lunged at his controls, pressed Pause.

  This billboard’s trying to kill you. Playa’s from a rival gang.

  Mono asked, What gang am I in?

  You used to be in my gang but you snitched me out so I’m trying to kill you too. But also the red niggas want to kill us both. And then the cops. You stay away from cops. I’m taking us off Pause. The second I do just cross the street. Red nigga won’t get a clear shot.

  Where’s the map? Mono asked.

  Ain’t no map. Just gotta memorize the streets.

  Memorize them how?

  Lady Liberty knish take the A train, motherfucker! Don’t you know New York?

  Not the outer boroughs.

  We in Manhattan—me uptown, you down. I have it saved in memory to start my every game on 145th and Amsterdam—Playa 2 starts by default down at Delancey but you can program any block.

  Then Methyl quieted and said, Ain’t like we in Staten Island.

  Snitch heading north up Orchard.

  Trendoid gastronomes. Theme outlets that had paid to be included in the game.

  Methyl spinning sewer lids like record platters. The soundtrack robotic cucaracha.

  Then the snitch stood and did nothing because Mono was watching Methyl’s screen half. The dealer was covering major blocks at a major clip shooting everything that moved—everything that moved that was malevolent. He took out pimps in parked cars, slaughtered whole drug deals and arms sales in dumpstered alleys and basements. Wasted lookouts execution-style. Then stole the drugs and arms for later resale. He stopped by a restaurant, ate soul food. He helped himself to seconds, a double order of biscuits to go. He stole a Mercedes coupe and drove off his half of the screen until the two screens converged with the car pulling up on Mono’s block.

  Mono managed to turn around, fumbled.

  Methyl, stepping from the Merc, held his gun sidewise, shot Mono in the face (button A to draw, B to cock to tricksy side, C to pull the trigger).

  Screen nasty black with game blood.

  You dead, Methyl said.

  Me?

  You fired too.

  I am? I thought you’d come with work.

  Methyl sat up, turned to him and said, Any other business you survive this. But the cops today, they online all the time.

  People don’t know I’m him.

  They will.

  I’m fucking broke, bro.

  The internet says you just that guy who whips it out. But I say you an onus.

  Instead of unplugging the gaming console Methyl unplugged the TV, put the controllers atop the console on top, boosted the entire package.

  Then he stood on the bed while Mono, getting the silence, got up to get the door.

  With the TV’s powercord pocketed, Methyl stepped to the floor and walked out to the hall, saying without turning around, I was you I’d start thinking about how to change your name. Bro.

  Without the television Mono’s apartment seemed both bigger and smaller, and worse.

  He should’ve handled this himself, Mono decided Sunday night when he was down to his last thousand dollars and applying for credit cards online: should’ve found Em’s address or phone through pleading at keggers and honor society socials, then handwritten a letter or called personally, throwing his future on her mercy or just paying her off, throw her a couple hundred or even a thousand—that would’ve cost the same if not less and less worry.

  He shuddered whenever the phone rang.

  Majorie? He didn’t think Ms. Airline Miles Mogulette ever intended to return his call.

  She sputtered, I hope you’re not recording this.

  I last asked that of you.

  Never mind. I’ve been talking to Tech.

  Who?

  My support guy.

  Who guy?

  My computer person.

  OK.

  But this is mondo illegal, shaky shaky ice. I never said that. I’ve never done this before.

  Done what?

  He lit a smoke.

  I’m liaisoning with my liaison, my hacker. He’s going to hack into this Em woman’s blog and erase the original entry then he’s going to do the same to all the other sites, I think.

  You think? trying to stabilize the ashtray on a knee.

  Or else he’s going to send them all a virus that destroys everything but leaves no trace, I don’t know, I’m no gearhead, just a paraparalegal.

  We’re talking additional costs?

  The tray teetered, heaping.

  It’s a sliding scale.

  A slide beginning where?

  We’re not prepared to quote just now. We’ll send you an email with the figure.

  We?

  Myself for project management but mostly my tools goon for the tool stuff.

  And who is he or she exactly?

  Richard, when it’s against the law I’m against naming names.

  What are the risks?

  We assume more risk than do you—that’s also why it’s expensive, if it’s traceable it’s to us.

  But then you’re traceable to me.

  Plus it’s time intensive—there are worms to code, firewalls to crack.

  You sure you know what you’re talking about?

  It’s not a minor undertaking, having to stealthify kludge all that daemon javascript and such—Tech was explaining it all just this morning.

  Mono’s cigarette was finished except for the filter, the foam pellet he thought of popping into his mouth as if a pacifier, chewy.

  I’ll call you back when the process is in process, Majorie said. Do you have any payphones in your neighborhood?

  I have payphones in my neighborhood.

  Find the number of one, making sure it’s not the most convenient but pick one a ways far out then email that number to me spaced over ten emails, one digit per email, you with me?

  With you.

  Then intersperse each digited email with other emails containing links to, I don’t care, hardcore penetration, but none of the emails can be sent from your address—be sure to open other accounts with multiple providers.

  Didn’t I tell you I’m through watching porn?

  Then send me more better news, Rich—I have no idea what’s happening.

  There are wars on.

  Mono sent her links.

  On Wednesday it felt like winter was finally breaking. The ice could crack for the grass to sprout and a warm breeze could balm the parkinglots and roundabouts and it was fine—winter would be back next year. Mono would be shattered forever.

  He put on his coat and walked to the only payphone he was sure of, located just outside the university’s main library—every student body could use that phone every day though they never did, they all had phones of their own that didn’t require booths. He’d recently forwarded Majorie a link to an article—a web exclusive, never printed in hardcopy—about the phonebook’s disappearance. They were going to stop universal distribution—this, the one book everyone could be in.

&nb
sp; Students were coming out of the library but none clutched books, they held each other.

  And a new beverage for a new generation, not bottles of water but bottled water, plastic, perspirant.

  They didn’t need books because of the bags on their shoulders, which contained computers—tablets and pads on which they could read all that’d been written by anyone ever and also Em on Richard Monomian.

  The phone rang but his rush to pick up was unnecessary.

  Students, children essentially, pedestrated past as blithe as projected light.

  He said, My mailman has no address.

  Pigeons alighted on the pathway slabs, pecking at butts and clots of gum.

  Was that the password?

  You tell me.

  We’re on track but also delayed.

  Which is it?

  Both. Plus I need that second thousand.

  Behind her speech Mono made out the riddling whir of her computer’s cooling fan, the high screech of either passing sirens or neglected pets.

  It wasn’t that it wasn’t spring enough yet or that it was sunset already—he was chilled from being scared, feeling himself recognized by all who passed. He remembered there had been another phone by the gym. Nothing remained besides a stanchion tumescent from a speck of foundation.

  Can I call you back from my mobile?

  And subvert our subversion—what kind of subterfuge is that?

  I’m paying you—so you find a payphone, email me the number, set a time, and I’ll also call ten minutes late.

  That’s precisely what I wanted to talk about. You have my invoice. I have material expenses.

  Must be a reason I didn’t respond to your email about the next installment.

  Richard, it might be better if we talked about this once you’re comfortably at home.

  Mono had begun to suspect that this hacker of hers, this gensym guru he was never allowed to talk to, was not a person, not a man or woman and so not her lover as Majorie let on, claiming access to him at all hours: when Mono called from home bonged stuporous slack drunk at 3 AM on Thursday asking to be reminded whether they were trying to infiltrate the sites to remove the posts or just crash them with a Trojan she said, Let me ask him. He’s sleeping just right next to me. Then there’d be a murmur that had to be her respiration—Mono got the idea she never even took the phone from her mouth to imaginarily rouse this imaginary partner—until she’d say, Tech’s grouchy, not getting up. He had a rough day yesterday. I’ll ask him over breakfast and check in with you tomorrow.