The Phone Company
Page 14
Bill turned back to the bar, tapping his lighter against the tabletop. “There’s only one guy who should be able to get at all my secrets like that, and it ain’t Sheriff Perkins.”
Steve nodded. He agreed, he did. He just thought it was weird. Here Bill was, upstanding, forthright, but sweating some background check like he hadn’t already subjected himself to one when he became a deputy.
Something beeped.
Bill, sweating even more, pulled out his Tether. “Critical battery,” he said. “Crap.”
Steve chuffed and looked around. Even Deb Disney was on a Tether, over by the pool table. She was swaying, not to the jukebox, but to the earpiece coiled around her ear.
“Hehehe.” It was the bartender.
Steve frowned at him. “What?”
“Check out this app.” He shined his phone on Steve’s face. “I scan in what drinks everyone buys, and it tallies them for me and keeps a running scoreboard.”
Steve saw his own face, miniaturized in the leaderboard. He didn’t know how it had gotten there, avatar-sized. But he looked terrible. Stubble, bags under the eyes, looking drunk. Looking exactly as he looked right now. He was astonished to see the beer count next to his head.
Way more than he’d thought.
“How’d you get that?” Steve said, jabbing at the pictures of everyone on the scoreboard.
The bartender backed away. “I took them, man, how do you think?”
“You just took a picture of me and put it on there without even asking?”
“What’s your problem, man? Yes, of course.”
Steve realized that all around the bar, everyone was playing the same app.
“It’s a drinking game,” said the guy who’d complained about Deb’s music. He leaned over toward Steve, landing his elbow in the Chex Mix. “See these little dollar signs next to everyone’s names? They’re betting on who gets the drunkest. Bartender keeps updating the scores, and it all gets posted to Follow.”
Steve turned to Bill, who was lost in his phone. “You, too?”
Bill offered him a sweaty look, then pocketed his phone. “Oh, yeah. Yep, totally. Hey, look, I’m gonna go hit the sink.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Steve craned around from where his elbows rested on the bar and watched his friend approach the officer at the exit. They exchanged words, and then Bill went to the men’s room, glancing over his shoulder before slipping inside.
* * *
“If you know me, then how come I don’t recognize you?” Bill had asked the officer before escaping to the men’s room.
“I’m new,” the guy said. His name was Barnes and he was basically just a crew cut on legs. Bill couldn’t read his eyes behind the mirrored Dragnet glasses.
“So Sheriff Perkins brings you on as a volunteer deputy, and somehow I don’t know about it?”
Barnes held up his Tether, the breathalyzer app. “He wanted me to see if it’s something we can start doing. Random bar checks to cut down on all the accidents and DUIs.”
Hand in his pocket, Bill picked at the Junior Deputy badge stuck to his phone. The guy had shown Bill his credentials. Indeed, Barnes now worked as a volunteer for the sheriff’s Reserve Unit.
“Why the hell wasn’t I told about this?” Bill said.
Barnes shrugged.
Bill took one last good gouge into the sticker and then pulled out a cigarette he’d bummed. “Excuse me,” he said, trying to get past the guy.
Barnes blocked the door. “I’m under strict orders.”
“I’m going for a smoke.”
“That may be. But Sheriff Perkins said not to let anyone sneak out.”
“Well, aren’t you a regular Boy Scout. You realize I can have you tossed out of the reserve.”
“Just doing my job,” Barnes said.
Bill evaluated his options. “Be right back. Got to take a piss. Maybe make a call.”
He couldn’t tell whether Barnes flinched at the threat.
Those glasses.
In the men’s room, Bill went straight to one of the stalls. His Tether beeped again. He pulled it out, locking the stall with his other hand before sitting down.
He’d left an app open. It had sucked the juice right out of his phone. And right now he needed his phone.
The bathroom door flung open.
Bill’s head jerked up.
“Well, bee-lorp to you, too,” said the boots walking past the stall. “Heh.”
Bill watched the two big hiking boots tromp, unlaced, over to the urinal. There was a burp, and then a sudden burst of urinal water percolating.
Then a fart.
Bill knew who it was now.
Dave Prescott.
Big red muttonchops. Suspenders decorated with skulls.
“Hey, man,” Bill said, disguising his voice from behind the divider, just kind of roughing it up a bit to fool the drunk. “Don’t let the new bouncer catch you hopping onto your hog in that state.”
“What’s that?” Dave called over the roaring waterfall of his own piss. “Oh, yeah. Good call.”
“He still checking people’s breath?”
“That he is.”
Another fart.
Bill thought for a second. “Does it work?”
Burp. “Seems to. Cop’s calling cabs.”
Yeah, Bill had seen that much. He’d been watching Barnes’s activities all night. He’d watched Barnes take away people’s keys so they had to wait for taxis. Outside. In the cold.
Bill knew the cab agency in this town wasn’t big. In fact, it was only a splinter off the main agency over in the city. In the town of Cracked Rock, a person could wait awhile for a cab.
“So can it really tell you how much you’ve had to drink since yesterday?” Bill asked.
“Up to twenty-four hours.”
From the urinal there was a trickling, a clothed shaking with the clink of a belt, then a zip-up, a hocked loogie, and finally a flush. The bathroom door was swinging closed before the guy even had a chance to wash his hands.
Yep, that was Dave Prescott. One big bodily function in boots. Bill focused on his dying phone.
He went straight to his app store and typed in
“Damn it.”
He tried the old “blow in your own face” method of smelling his breath, but like last time it didn’t work. It just kind of smelled like cigarettes and ferment. He’d been hoping to download the breathalyzer and test himself. He wanted to see—he needed to see—if the Boy Scout guarding the door really could tell that Bill, hours ago, had been drinking on the job.
What app had he left running, anyway?
The bathroom door flung open, and Bill’s head came up so fast he almost bashed it on the handicap rail.
“Bill!”
“Yeah.”
“You all right in there?” Steve asked.
“Yep.”
“Time to go, buddy.”
“Yeah, all right.”
He met Steve back in the bar, standing in line to leave. Volunteer Deputy Barnes was now scanning everyone, making them blow into the mic of his Tether while his Dragnet glasses blinked. Bill listened when it was Dave Prescott’s turn to the phone. Barnes said something Bill couldn’t hear.
“What the hell for?” Dave replied, leather jacket creaking as he crossed his arms.
Barnes didn’t answer. He just reached up and plucked a frizzy red hair from Dave’s sideburn.
Bill, knowing Dave, instinctually felt for his gun. Which, of course, wasn’t there. And Dave didn’t react at all how Bill thought he would.
“Can it really do that?” Dave asked, leaning over to see what Barnes was doing with his phone. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
Bill saw what the deputy was doing, too.
He was scanning the hair with
the Tether’s camera.
An FAEE test.
“How’s that even possible?” Bill said to Steve.
“Huh?”
“I mean, I get the breathalyzer app. That tech can be handheld. But how can a phone run a test that usually requires a mass spectrometer?”
“I don’t know, you’re the expert.”
Bill shut up as the Tether finished the test.
“Says here you’re an alcoholic,” Barnes said, holding up the phone and the chemical scan of Dave’s red hair.
Dave broke out into huge laughter that shook the shot glasses above the bar. He turned to everyone. “This thing’s right more often than my wife!”
Quite a few people joined his roar of laughter, and Bill glanced around, trying to think of an exit strategy. He had seen from here that the hair scan had broken down Dave’s alcohol consumption by volume per day for the past month, laid out kind of like a granular weather app. It could tell you exactly how much Dave consumed each hour of the day. On the hour.
Which meant it would be able to tell that Bill had driven under the influence. On the job. In a county-owned cruiser.
Crap.
Only a few patrons left ahead of him.
He couldn’t think. It was hard enough controlling his double vision. Not for the first time, Bill regretted trying to keep up with Steve. His friend always had been more of a lush; he just had way more control over it. Steve could binge drink one night at the bar and be fine the rest of the week.
“I don’t think so,” Deb Disney said by the door. Rather, she said, “I dunn sink so.”
Barnes was holding his hand out for her keys.
“I always drive myself,” Deb said, trying to put on her sweater. She was lost somewhere in the middle of it. One of her friends had to help her the rest of the way. “Thanks, Darlene. I always drive myself home.”
“Ma’am, you can barely walk—”
“You can barely walk!”
“The app’s already paged your cab. Now, please—”
“I’ll page you a cab!” Deb stole Barnes’s phone and started jabbing at the screen with her thumbs.
Bill almost let her do whatever she was going to do. Maybe she would break the Boy Scout’s Tether. Drop it, at the very least. But Bill couldn’t let her do this to herself. She’d be thrown in jail and heavily fined.
“Deb, Deb, Deb,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder.
She turned to him, angry tears burning in her eyes. “Oh, Bill. This, this asshole . . .” She shook a trembling finger at Barnes.
“It’s all right, Deb. You can share our cab, mine and Steve’s. We’ll pay.” He turned to Barnes. “That all right with you?”
“I need to scan you—”
“I just said we’re taking a cab.”
“I—”
Bill pushed Barnes’s phone away and shouldered by him, supporting Deb, letting her drape herself over him while she cried. He looked back at Barnes over Deb’s tangle of blonde hair. “Shame on you, bullying her like this.”
Barnes tried to test Steve’s breath anyway, but Bill wouldn’t have it.
“It’s fine,” Barnes said, tapping something into his Tether. “I rigged it so the bartender’s drinking game reports how much you all drank, anyway.”
Bill stopped. “For the whole day?” he almost asked, but thought better of it. “How many?” he finally asked.
Barnes checked. “Behind your buddy Steve here at ten.”
Steve grinned at Bill. “Ah, look at that. I won you at darts and drinking.”
Bill rolled his eyes and pushed through the door, thanking God for the rush of cold air chilling the sweat on his skin.
A minute later, they were all outside waiting for a cab, with Deb Disney puking in the shrubs.
The guy who’d complained about Deb’s music was standing nearby when his phone went
* * *
The cabbie dropped Deb Disney off first. She tried to kiss Bill goodnight, but he gently guided her to her front door and wished her goodnight.
On the way to Steve’s, his phone beeped. He’d forgotten he’d left open an app. It turned out his lie detector had been recording in the background ever since Rat’s.
He looked over at Steve, but Steve wasn’t paying any attention. He was resting his head against the glass, eyes shut. Curious, Bill put in his earwig and scrubbed through the recording. He wanted to check out Barnes’s story. He went back too far, though, landing on his conversation with Deb and Steve about their daughters.
“Where’d you get these?” Deb had asked. “My daughter stole these, didn’t she?”
“Wait,” Steve said, “Anastasia smokes?”
Bill hated what came next. He didn’t know when he’d started lying. It always felt justified at the time. They were white lies, for the most part. Always to protect, never harm.
The drinking, he thought. That’s when the lies had really started. No. Janice.
“Steve. Hey, Steve.”
“Hmmm.”
“You’d asked about Sarah skipping school. Truth is, I caught her. She’s smoking, buddy, I’m sorry.”
Steve stared at him for a long time after that. Bill could see his friend’s face get hot.
I deserve it, Bill thought, kind of hoping for his friend to yell at him.
Steve just shook his head and looked away. “They’re killing me, Bill. The kids. First JJ and his fight, and now this.”
“I’m sorry, man, I should’ve told you.”
Steve shook his head again. “JJ’s the easy one. Which is odd considering he’s the one in counseling. I get him, though. I get where his anger’s from, and he and his friend have already made up. Sarah I just don’t get. I mean, all she cares about is getting a phone. I don’t think it’s a good idea, and she treats me like shit for it. Now I found she’s cutting class and smoking, for chrissakes. As if that’s not what killed her mom.”
Bill frowned. They’d always both wanted Janice growing up. Bill had dated her for a while in high school, but then she and Steve went to the same college. That year, she got pregnant. Steve had won out. Janice dropped out. She raised little Sarah while Steve got the degree that got the job to keep the family fed.
It was times like this that reminded Bill it didn’t matter how much education a person got; it came down to chemistry and understanding. And Bill had always understood Janice. He had been friends with her long enough; he knew how she would have handled this thing with Sarah. It amazed him Steve didn’t know.
“Just get her the phone,” he said.
Steve shot him a look. “Serious?”
“Look, you can’t just put a book on their head. You got to let them do what they’re going to do, and all you can really do is guide them.”
“Yeah.” Steve suddenly brightened. “Hey, you want to adopt two kids?”
“Hah! No.”
The cabbie signaled to turn into Steve’s place.
“And just you wait,” Bill said.
“For what?”
“For some hormone-hound, some douchebag guy, come sniffing around your place.”
“Hah!”
Once the cabbie left, Bill and Steve stood in the driveway, with Bill halfway in his jeep. He could feel himself starting to sober up.
“Hey, want to take a ride?”
Steve crossed his arms, shivering against the cold. “Nah, I’m turning in. I think I need to sleep this night off, collect my thoughts in the morning.”
“Come on, man, it’s important. It’s something we got to do. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Rain check?”
Bill’s door creaked as he leaned against the jeep. “You’re mad at me.”
Steve shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Fine, sleep. But at least let me make it up to you.”
“How’s that?�
��
Bill grinned. “You still got all that leftover white paint?”
CHAPTER 14
That same night, JJ and Mini Mark lay in their sleeping bags on the Dick’s floor, faces lit by Tethers.
JJ kept an eye on the Dick lying in his bed. They had shaken hands, apologized, and all the other stupid crap their principal and parents had made them do. The Dick had been super nice ever since—except for the past few hours where he’d been awfully secretive, all tucked in, playing on his Tether.
Kids at school were still rapping the auto-tune song, “JJ Gregory Needs Help,” so it wasn’t as if JJ could easily trust the Dick whenever the shifty weasel was doing anything on his phone. Especially under the covers.
What JJ found most disturbing was that whenever he tried to spy on the Dick’s activities using The Enormous TV, the Dick wasn’t doing anything suspicious. Whenever JJ looked, his “friend” just happened to be surfing Miley Cyrus or Chuck Norris memes. And an older one of Keanu Reeves. As if the Dick somehow knew JJ was watching. As if he, too, owned some special app.
Some sort of antispyware app, JJ thought, and he typed the keyword in. Nope, no such app. At least not in his Needful Things store.
“Check it out,” Mini Mark said, leaning over JJ’s sleeping bag with his phone. He showed JJ a bit more of his world, Buttcrack Rock.
“Hey, are you changing the letters on the hill?” JJ asked, pointing.
Mark shook his head. “It just changes, man. They’re updating it all the time to match.”
“Really, that fast?”
“Real time, baby. Oh, hey, you know the First Step?”
“Yeah.”
“I found our library in the game, standing right where it stands now, and there was this book, like a town history or something.”
“You read books?”
Mini Mark pushed up his glasses. “Jerk.”
JJ chuckled.
“Laugh now, but I’m the one who told you Mrs. Campbell lets you get away with book reports on IT.”
“True. Jerk.”
“Heh.” Mark pushed up his glasses again and thumbed around his world, flying over a varied terrain of trees and rocky slopes above the verdant Burnt Valley. “I guess when the founders were digging one of the graves, that’s when they found the cracks. This guy fell through, and they never found his body, no matter how deep they looked. They got lowered down on ropes. Anyway, instead of moving the whole graveyard, they just sealed up the hole. With dead bodies. Indians.”