"Phonebook man." The voice was low and insinuating.
She dropped the receiver, screaming.
It was then that she noticed the note. It was taped to the broom closet next to the refrigerator. The note was attached low to the door, below her line of vision, and it was scrawled in a childish hand.
"Gone to pick up Erin. Be back for lunch."
It was unsigned, but she knew who it was from. She ran to the bedroom, grabbed her keys, and sped out to the car. The car bumped over the curb on the way out into the street, but Nina didn't care. She threw the car into drive and took off toward the school.
She should have known better. She should have known he wouldn't leave her alone. The car sped through a yellow light at the intersection. She would pick up Erin and go straight to the police station. He was still around somewhere, between home and school; they should be able to catch him.
But where had he called from?
Someone else's house, probably. He was now torturing some other poor soul.
She swung the car into the school parking lot just as the kindergarten classes were letting out. Hordes of small children streamed out of the school doors. She left the keys in the car and dashed across the asphalt toward the kids. She scanned the stream of faces, looking for Erin (what was she wearing today? red?), and finally saw her, chatting happily to a friend.
She ran over and picked up her daughter, ecstatic with relief.
Erin dropped the phonebook she'd been holding.
Nina stared at her in disbelief. "Where did you get that?" she demanded.
"The phonebook man gave it to me." Erin looked at her innocently.
"Where is he now?"
Erin pointed up the street, where the children were starting to walk home. Nina could see nothing, only a sea of heads and colored shirts, bobbing, skipping, running, walking.
"He said for you to stop bugging him about the phone-books. He can only give you two." Erin pointed to the book on the ground. "That's your second one. He said he's not coming by anymore. That's it."
That's it.
Nina held her daughter tight and looked up the street, her eyes searching. She thought she saw, over the children's heads, a shock of brown hair above a clean-shaven nondescript face. But it disappeared almost immediately, and she could not find it again.
The children moved forward in a tide, walking in groups of two or three or more, talking, laughing, giggling.
Somewhere up ahead, the phonebook man walked alone.
Estoppel
"Estoppel" is a legal term that means "it is what it says it is." It applies primarily to pornography, allowing prosecutors to more easily prove in court that a magazine is "obscene" or "pornographic" if it is specifically advertised as such. I learned about estoppel in a Communications Law course, and since I was bored in class that day, I thought up this story instead of paying attention to the lecture.
Side note: There's a reference in here to the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Known to mainstream audiences primarily for appearing in and scoring the Burt Lancaster/Tony Curtis film The Sweet Smell of Success, the quintet featured a cellist named Fred Katz who, in addition to being a truly spectacular jazz musician, went on to write the music for Ken Nordine's acclaimed Word Jazz albums, the music for the Oscar-winning cartoon "Gerald McBoing Boing," and music for the Roger Gorman cult classic Little Shop of Horrors. At the time I wrote this story, Fred Katz was my anthropology professor at Gal State Fullerton.
Most people assume I am mute without asking. I never tell them otherwise. If anyone does ask, I simply hand them one of the "mute cards" I had printed up for just such a reason and which I always carry with me. "Peace!" the cards say. "Smile. I am a Deaf Mute."
Most people also assume I am a derelict. I dress in old, filthy, raggedy clothes, I seldom bathe, and I never cut my hair or trim my beard. I have noticed, over a period of years, that people do not ordinarily talk to derelicts, and I became one for that reason.
I have done everything possible to minimize my human contacts and to keep people from speaking to me or addressing me in any way.
I have not uttered a single intelligible word since 1960.
I know that, for all intents and purposes, lama mute, but I have never been able or willing to make it official. I have refrained from saying the words. I should have proclaimed, "I am mute," years ago. But that would be permanent. It would be irreversible.
I guess I've been afraid.
To be honest, there is very little of which I am not afraid. I have spent half of my life being afraid. For nearly a decade, I was afraid to write anything down. I would neither speak nor write. What if, I thought, it happened with writing as well as speaking?
But those years, those ten long years of almost total isolation, were sheer and utter hell. I did not realize how important communication was to me until it was denied. And after a decade of such isolation, I literally could not take it anymore. It was driving me mad. So one night, my blood running high with adrenaline and bottled courage, I decided to take the chance. I locked the door of my motel room, shut the curtains, sat down in front of the desk, and wrote on a blank sheet of paper: "I am black."
My hand did not change color as I finished the last arm of the k. Neither did my other hand. I rushed to the mirror: neither had my face. God, the joy, the sheer exquisite rapture with which that simple sentence filled me! I danced around the room like a madman. I wrote all night.
I still write prolifically to this day and have actually had several fiction pieces published in assorted literary magazines under various pseudonyms. I have six unpublished novels sitting in my desk drawer.
But I am not a snob. I write anything and to anyone. Once a day, I make it a point to write to a business and complain about one of their products. You'd be surprised at the responses I get. I've received free movie passes, free hamburger coupons, several rebate checks, and a huge amount of apologetic letters.
And of course I have several pen pals. They are the closest thing I have to friends. My best friend, Phil, is a convict in San Quentin. He murdered his brother-in-law and was sentenced to life imprisonment. I would never want to meet the man on the street, but I have found through his letters that he can be a deeply sensitive individual. Out of all my pen pals, he best understands what it is like to be isolated, alienated, alone. I also write to a middle-aged woman named Joan, in France; a young single girl named Nikol, in Belgium; and a small boy named Rufus, in Washington, D.C.
I have not told any of them the truth.
But how can I? I do not really know what "the truth" is myself.
The first experience occurred when I was twelve. At least, that's the first instance I remember. We were playing, my cousin Jobe and I, in the unplowed and untended field in back of my grandmother's farm. We had just finished a furious game of freeze-ball tag and were running like crazy through what seemed like acres of grass, racing to the barn. The grass was tall, almost above my head, and I had to keep straining my neck and jumping up to see where I was going.
I did not see the rock I tripped over.
I must have blacked out for a few seconds, because I found myself lying on the ground, staring at an endless forest of grass stalks. I stood up, stunned and hurt, and started walking toward the barn where I knew Jobe was waiting, a self-satisfied winner's smile on his face.
I must have hit my head harder than I thought, because I kept walking and walking, and still did not reach the clearing and the barn. Instead, the grass kept getting thicker and taller, and soon I was lost in it. I did not even know in which direction I was traveling.