One year after our separation, I was still adrift. I had to meet this stranger even if just to soak in the last vestiges of voluntary amnesia. I pushed past the families with their duffel bags holding everything they owned. I fought against a deluge of passengers swarming into the train. I waded through a billion strangers to find one, remembering the end, teleporting from one emotion to another. “You’re picking on peanuts in the kung pao chicken,” she’d said. “Ivory chopsticks just won’t do.” I knew she was trying to reach me, trying to mend our broken satellites. But I hardened my will, convinced myself she was petty, self-absorbed, projecting my frustrations onto her, fighting campaign after campaign for my tawdry pride. If I could go back and rebuild the tracks, send the subway along a different route, everything would unwind and disentangle. The destination would be clear.
But that was when I felt a sharp sting in my brain and winced. I raised my head, realized I’d caught motion blindness. I blinked and Sue Lian was gone. I blinked again and the stranger was gone. I blinked one last time and the entire world evaporated, Beijing an empty train station with decrepit tracks.
All I had left were moments.
Searching for Normalcy
I.
My obsession was listening to other people’s phone calls. I spent my mornings thinking about all the things that would never be, life being that series of conversations over coffee and Coke and phone booths. Past subway rails and empty picnic tables and torn school books. All the other stuff was filler, never the fulfillment of one’s ravenous lust that consumed like a Neanderthal run amok. I stood and listened to people screaming into their cell phones, lonely whispers outside phone booths, pressing my ear against a glass box or waiting in line for unwanted calls. I didn’t try to remember names, a Jake or a Jenny or a Jane. Heard a girlfriend asking a boyfriend why he no longer loved her and a boyfriend asking a girlfriend why she no longer loved him. I traveled from street to street, waiting next to obsolescent phone booths, collecting what people said, a connoisseur of eclectic conversations.
It all began on a day I woke up late because I’d received a phone call telling me an old friend had passed away. My wife of four years was sleeping in a separate room. In the morning, I slept through the alarm, eventually got up and showered. Even though my wife had been out of a job for a year, she was gone, her bed neatly set up. There was a phone call. I picked up expecting my boss. Someone asked for my wife.
“She’s not here. Who’s this?”
He remained silent. Then hung up.
Later, during dinner, I remembered a time as a teenager when I’d gone to a friend’s house. As her parents ate, they didn’t say a single word. The mother served the food; the father read the newspaper. It was an act that played out every night, same time, same place without variance. I swore I would never be like them. But here I was — my wife reading some obscure cookbook; me, mute. When we’d met, we were like two sailboats in a fleet of ocean liners, our sails torn asunder, anchored together by the stratifying mishaps of ritualized tedium. Routine was the breeze that drove us forward, cynicism tethering our hulls together. Even after thousands of conversations, I was struck by how little we actually knew each other. The poverty of dialogue and the inability of our words to sate either of our appetites for companionship left us famished and lonely. It was hard for me to filter through the present coldness to one that had once smiled, lit up at the sight of me.
The following day, I went on a business trip for three days. When I came home, there was a note that read Goodbye. I never spoke to her again.
I tried to lose myself in work. As a marketing guy, I dealt with people every day, selling them things they didn’t want or need. I’d tell them the exact same lines in the exact same way with the exact same pose and the exact same smile. People would lie to me and we both knew they were lying but it was okay. It was all within the rules, the boundaries of pleasant deception.
One day, while wandering through the city, a phone began ringing. I blinked, saw it was a pay phone. Not sure who it was for, I picked up.
“I’m gonna rape your fucking ass and cut off your legs and tie you up and bitch fuck you all day,” a coarse female voice said to me.
I stared blankly, shifting awkwardly. “Excuse me… Do you know this is a public payphone?”
“Of course I do, you fuck. You think I don’t know that?”
“But you don’t know me.”
“I’m watching you right now.”
I hung up and immediately left. For two days, I gave into all my conspiratorial paranoia and isolated myself, refusing to pick up the phone or step outside. Only when it was over did I realize something: I felt alive.
And it began. I noticed that in the moments when a person thought nobody else was around and they were completely alone on the phone — a few minutes, thirty seconds, an hour — I heard something in their voice. Honey, I’m going to be home a little later. No, don’t wait for me. The inflection, the subtle drop, the quivering in the throat, the unconscious hair sweep. Meaning under meaning, watching from afar, confirming something even if it was a vulgar reality, bare and viciously raw. It was pure in an adulterated way.
Sometimes, people would dial the wrong number and reach me at home. Instead of hanging up, I asked questions, encouraged them to talk. Obsessed with their own drama, some would tell me things about their lives, describing things minuscule as grand, their self-absorbed pain being the most traumatic. They never asked me any questions, almost like I wasn’t there, just a broken mirror hanging invisibly in front of them.
Watching people, trying to partake in their phone calls, I wanted to know if they knew what I did. I wanted to hear the truth in their voices. At work, I couldn’t focus anymore. I’d be given assignments to contact this person or that, and then I’d hear them talk in the same jovial bonhomie that meant nothing. What was the point of talking if everyone said the same thing but knew it meant nothing? So I stopped speaking. People would talk to me and I wouldn’t answer them. They’d be confused, upset. They’d ask if I was sick, ask me to respond, a desperation in their tone. Occasionally, I could hear a residue of truth, a trace that reminded me they were real. But most times, it was only frustration and false morality. It wasn’t long before I left my job. Left my home. Left my career. My family. I grew tired of not hearing them.
II.
I was on a long street with cars, some with headlights on even though it was day. Business suits and suitcases blended into the massive billboards selling trends and beliefs, acolytes and disciples of the corporate church that gave you something to live and die for.
Standing next to the phone booth, I was eating a piece of a bagel someone had thrown away. A man in a blue business suit furtively entered the booth. He had half a mustache, curled oily hair, a suave veneer about him that meandered between confidence and fear. He didn’t close the door, just took out a bunch of quarters and dialed random numbers. I could hear voices on the other side asking, Hello? Hello? HELLO???? He didn’t answer, just stood there, listening. He repeated this about forty times. Men, women, children. Some cursed. Others hung up, terrified by the silence. When he used up all his coins, he came out, ready to leave.
I approached.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“What were you just doing?” I demanded back.
“What is it to you?”
“I just saw what you did.”