THE NEXT VOICE YOU HEAR

by Rob Lopresti

I recently read a short story about harassing phone calls. Since it was set in current times the writer had to explain all the ways the hero attempted to trace the calls and why they didn’t work in this case. Made you long for the good old days when technology made the villain’s job easier.

And that reminded me of something I experienced back in those dear dead days.

In the early eighties my wife and I were living in a rented house. It contained a single phone, hardwired into the back wall of the kitchen. One night, long after bedtime, it rang.

My wife is a sounder sleeper than I am, so I was the one who got to put on a robe and stagger out of the bedroom, across the living room, down the hall and through the kitchen. Felt like miles. When I picked up the phone the young man on the other end swore at me, laughed, and hung up.

Undropped shoes

Those of you who have experienced this kind of thing know what the worst part of it is. It isn’t wondering whodunit, or what (if anything) you did to annoy them. The worst part is trying to go back to sleep, while at the same time wondering whether the damned phone was going to ring again.

And it did. Not that night, but every few weeks. Nothing like a pattern, and the clown didn’t always do the same thing. I remember one night a man with a thick foreign accent seemed to be asking for someone and after I spent a minute or two trying to explain that he had the wrong number, the rat laughed at me and hung up.

What can you do about this? If you’re a crime writer you start dreaming up plots. Nasty ones. The phone company offered to put a trap on the line but for various reasons it didn’t seem like a good idea.

Eventually the calls died off and I assumed the moron had found some other game to play, presumably involving butterflies and cigarette lighters.

The finale

Then one night, around 2 AM, the phone rang again. I muttered something rude and staggered to the kitchen. I figured what the guy really wanted was for me to lose my temper and start swearing back, so I was determined not to give him the satisfaction.

I gathered what wits I could find in my sleepy skull and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

Nothing but breathing at the other end. I sighed. “You need help. I mean it. This is not the way a healthy man behaves. Get some therapy.” Then I hung up the phone and went back to bed.

Later that day my wife received a phone call from a friend of ours I’ll call K. It seemed that the night before he had been indulging in an illegal substance which caused him to 1) not notice what time he was calling us, and 2) fail to respond immediately when I answered the phone. Now he was calling to apologize. Of course, K. had not known about our harassing phone calls and had been astonished by my little sermon.

If this were fiction I would report that my impromptu intervention changed K.’s life and he henceforward foreswore any substances stronger than sarsaparilla soda, but I’m afraid that isn’t true. This proves, once again, that God doesn’t write endings as satisfying as we fictioneers. You could phone up and complain but I hear He screens his calls.