Toward the end of the week, she was interviewing a volunteer from the Center for Eating Disorders — a vomit jockey! — when it dawned on her that whoever was stalking her phone lines was probably someone she had turned down for a job. Someone with a motive and an intimate understanding of telecommunications. She was sure of it! Only who?
The detective Dora spoke with epitomized the too-little-too-late stories she’d heard about on the news. She told him about the misprinted ad for the videophone in the Korean newspaper and the menacing stranger who had been harassing her ever since.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sparks,” said the detective, “but you yourself admit to having initiated contact with this person.”
“I don’t know how he did that,” explained Dora. “I was trying to call my husband.”
“Be that as it may...” he said. “We need more to go on than a few wrong numbers. Nine times out of ten nothing bad comes of something like this.”
In spite of the detective’s reassurance, she was unable to escape the feeling that the odds were somehow stacked against her.
Dora could no longer sleep without the aid of the little blue pills. Overcome by exhaustion, she was forced to take a leave of absence. Mostly she lay in bed writing letters to people she would have usually telephoned. Although Frank was dead set against her using drugs, he agreed to allow her to finish out the prescription. By then they would have an unlisted number and everything would be back to normal.
Eileen’s first day on the job was a Saturday, the same day, coincidentally, that Dora finished her pills. It had been days since she had heard from the voice. Maybe he had tired of her. She looked in the bathroom mirror and saw that her eyes were underscored with dark circles. A little sunlight would do her good. She sheathed the letter opener in her bathrobe pocket and ventured outside to collect the mail. Among the catalogs and coupon books was a postcard from Marcy. In less than thirty words her friend detailed how well George filled out a Speedo, and then asked if Dora would pick up her mail. Buoyed with a sense of purpose. Dora showered, shaved her armpits, and slipped into her favorite sundress. Once on the road she rolled down the windows and put on a tape that she and Frank liked to listen to when they were feeling romantic. She turned the volume up so loud she could hardly hear herself think.
She was lip-synching the words to “Stand by Me” when her cell phone started ringing. At first she thought it was part of the song, a secondary instrument orbiting the periphery of the main melody — a tambourine maybe. However, when the song ended the phone was still ringing. Without thinking, Dora ejected the tape and took the call on the speaker.
“You naughty girl.” The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was invasive, godlike. “Driving under the influence.”
“Leave me alone!” cried Dora. She tried to hang up but the phone would not disconnect.
“Dora, sweetie, I’m worried about you. You sound out of sorts. Are you sure those pills you’ve been popping aren’t affecting your judgment?”
“What do you want from me?”
“I’m calling on behalf of the annual Red Cross blood drive. Of course, you’d have to sober up before we could accept a donation.”
“I don’t... under... stand.”
“Blood, Dora,” said the voice. “Vampire’s burden. You never know when someone you love might need it.”
Unable to endure another second of the sadistic baritone, she ripped the phone out of the center console and threw the uprooted unit out the window. She swung a U-turn into the oncoming lane, setting off a chorus of angry horns, and floored the accelerator for home.
Dora ran over the mailbox pulling into the driveway, and staggered to the front door like a wounded game animal. Once inside, she engaged the dead bolt and peeked through a slat in the shutters, expecting the oxidized flanks of a van or a long, low-slung sedan to creep by the front of the house. She was certain she had been followed, but the street was empty. Trembling in fear, she realized she’d left the letter opener on the passenger seat. Who was she kidding? If the voice wanted her dead, she was dead. He knew her every move. She had even considered the possibility that it was her own husband. But that was crazy. This was real life, not a talk show. Frank loved her.
Half crazed, Dora filled a coffee cup with gin, ran a cold bath, and went from room to room yanking the phones, wires and all, out of the wall. One by one she committed them to the bathtub, silencing each one. By the time she went after the cordless, water had overflowed the coral-pink fiberglass tub and was spreading across the bathroom floor. Not finding the receiver in its cradle, she ransacked the guest room, scattering Eileen’s meager possessions with the force of a tornado. Frank’s convict sister had spent nearly every night for the past week mumbling into the AWOL cordless.
By the time Frank got home, the overflow water from the bathtub had transformed the carpel in their bedroom and the entire upstairs hall into a stain-resistant marshland. Dora could hear her husband swearing as he slogged up the last few steps and peered into the guest room where she lay in a quivering heap among the unfolded clothes and thumb-worn People magazines, bawling her eyes out.
“Jesus, Dora!” Frank shouted. “The house is sinking. Call a plumber... Do something!”
Dora looked into his eyes. “It’s you, isn’t it, Frank?”
Frank shook his head as if to say, You poor creature. And like that he was gone.
Dora crawled after him. The carpet squished under her hands and knees. As she reached the bathroom door the sound of running water halted abruptly and she could hear Frank cursing under his breath. When she peeked inside, he was staring at the bathtub. With a flick of his hand he sent a tube of dandruff shampoo gliding across the silvery surface like a toy battleship. He must have sensed her presence because he spoke without turning his head. “For Christ’s sake, Dora!” he said, submerging his arm to the elbow in an attempt to retrieve the drowned telephones. “Have you lost your mind?”
Dora was looking at the TV in the living room when Eileen walked in wearing her uniform from Hot Dog on a Stick. She smelled of corn-dog batter and deep-fryer grease. Frank was upstairs shouting into the cordless. Dora didn’t dare ask where he had found it.
“What’s going on?” Eileen wanted to know.
Even as Dora explained what had happened she was not convinced any of it was real. The last two weeks had been like living in a nightmare.
For half an hour, Frank had called every carpet cleaner in the yellow pages hoping to find someone to vacuum up the water before the floorboards started to rot. Apparently everyone had gone home for the night. Frank had ordered Dora to stay on the couch and not to move. Eileen patted her on the head and went upstairs to help clean up the mess with bath towels, bedsheets, and anything else absorbent they could find.
That night Dora lay awake well past midnight, haunted by the cold godlike voice that had possessed her car. She craved the dreamless oblivion of the little blue pills but the prescription bottle was empty. She’d checked it twice. She had even read the warning labels on every product in the medicine cabinet looking for something that “may cause drowsiness,” but the strongest thing she could find was a crinkled tube of fungicide that had made her lips go numb.
Dora could hear Eileen’s laughter warbling in the thin-walled confines of the guest room. She slipped out of bed and tiptoed down the hall. The damp carpet was cold beneath her bare feet. Despite Frank’s efforts it still squished when she walked. Soon she was standing outside the guest-room door, her need for the little blue pills as deeply felt as the nerve endings prickling beneath the surface of her skin. The door was slightly ajar. Eileen was lying on the bed, the cordless pressed to one ear. “I already told you who it was,” she said. “Don’t even joke like that. It’s not funny.” She buried her face in the pillow and cackled like a witch.