Dead Man's Cell Phone (6 page)

DWIGHT

(No longer whispering)
Jean!

 

JEAN

(To Dwight)
I'm on the phone!

(To the phone)
I don't know anything about a living will—no—I'm sorry. I have to go.

I hope you have a pleasant day in spite of the bad news.

Good-bye.

DWIGHT

Who was that?

 

JEAN

A business colleague.

 

DWIGHT

I don't think you want to get mixed up in that.

 

JEAN

Oh, Dwight, I'll be all right.

 

DWIGHT

I forbid you to talk to Gordon's colleagues.

 

JEAN

You
forbid
me?

 

DWIGHT

Get rid of the phone. Give it up. It's bad luck.

 

JEAN

It brought me to you, didn't it?

 

DWIGHT

It's not good for you. Life is for the living. Me. You. Living. Life, life, life!

If you answer that phone, Jean, if you answer that phone—

 

JEAN

What?

DWIGHT

I will!—

it will make me sad.

 

JEAN

I have to answer it, Dwight.

Sometimes it seems like you didn't even love your own brother.

(To the phone)
Hello?
Jean speaking.
(To Dwight)
It's Hermia.
She needs a ride home.

 

HERMIA

Give me another. Don't worry, I can drive home after all, Jean.

 

JEAN

You think so?

 

HERMIA

If I drive with my face. Haw haw haw! Oh, God, I sound like Gordon.

 

JEAN

You must have a lot on your mind. Do you want to talk?

 

HERMIA

Yes, in fact, I would. Lately I've been thinking of the last time I had sex with Gordon. Over the last ten years, when Gordon and I would have sex, I would pretend that I was someone else. I've heard that a lot of women, in order to come, pretend that their lover is someone else. Like a robber or Zorba the Greek or a rapist or something like that. Do you ever do that?

 

JEAN

No.

 

HERMIA

But you know what Jean? I pretended that
I
was someone else, and that Gordon was Gordon, but he was cheating on me with me—
I
was the other woman. And it would turn me on to know that Gordon's wife—me—was in the next room, that I—the mistress—had to be quiet, so that I—the wife—wouldn't hear me. You and I both know that Gordon had affairs.

 

JEAN

Well—

 

HERMIA

So the last time I had sex with Gordon I wish I could say that I wasn't pretending. That he was really in me, and I was really in him. But I was pretending to be a co-worker of Gordon's. He brought her to dinner once. That night, she was wearing a thong under a white pantsuit. (I never wear a thong. It's like having a tampon in your asshole, don't you think?) Anyway, that last time, I imagined myself in this white pantsuit, and his hands under my thong, ripping it off. I pictured what Gordon was seeing—and I picture me, looking back at Gordon. And there is more and
more desire, like two mirrors, facing each other—it's amazing what the mind can do.

 

After I met you, I was convinced that you and Gordon were having an affair. So after dinner, I was—you know—and I pretended to be you—and it worked. Isn't that a riot?

 

JEAN

That's—um—

 

HERMIA

I wouldn't normally tell you that but I've had a lot to drink at this point.

 

JEAN

You should know that I didn't have a sexual relationship with your husband.

 

HERMIA

Then why do you have his fucking phone?

 

JEAN

I was the last one with him.

 

HERMIA

And why was that, Jean?

 

JEAN

A coincidence.

 

HERMIA

Gordon didn't have coincidences. He had accidents. There's a difference.

Give that to me.

Oops—missed the call!

Is his picture of the Pope still on it? From a business trip to Rome. Those mobs at the Vatican, waving their cell phones, stealing an image of the Pope's dead face, and Gordon among them. I can still hear him laughing, I have the Pope in my pocket. There it is. Dead Pope. Oh, I feel sick.

I'm going to bury it. Like the Egyptians.

 

JEAN

No.

HERMIA

Yes, in the ground, with Gordon. There was this Belgian man very recently in the news and the undertakers forgot to remove the cell phone from the coffin and it
rang
during the funeral! Just went on ringing! And the family is suing for negligence Jean—for
negligesh
—you have to
bury
it, see—to
bury
it—very deep so you cannot hear the sound.

Are you ever in a very quiet room all alone and you feel as though you can hear a cell phone ringing and you look everywhere and
you cannot see one but there are so many ringing in the world that you must hear some dim echo. Nothing is really silent anymore—and after a death—an almost silence—you have to bury it bury it very deep.

 

JEAN

I'm sorry, Hermia, but I can't let you do that. Gordon wanted me to have his phone.

HERMIA

Do you know what it's like marrying the wrong man, Jean? And now—now—even if he
was
the wrong man, still, he was
the
man—and I should have spent my life trying to love him instead of wishing he were someone else.

 

What did Charles Dickens say? That we drive alone in our separate carriages never to truly know each other and then the book shuts and then we die? Something like that?

 

JEAN

I don't know what Charles Dickens said.

 

HERMIA

What good are you, Jean. You don't even know your ass from your Dickens. Oh, God! Two separate carriages and then you die!

JEAN

Hermia. There's something you should know. Gordon wrote you a letter before he died. There were different drafts, on napkins,
all crumpled up. The waiter must have thrown them out, after the ambulance came, but I read one of the drafts.

 

HERMIA

What did it say?

 

JEAN

I forget exactly. But I can paraphrase. It said, Dear Hermia. I know we haven't always connected, every second of the day. Husbands and wives seldom do. The joy between husband and wife is elusive, but it is strong. It endures countless moments of silent betrayal, navigates complicated labyrinths of emotional retreats. I know that sometimes you were somewhere else when we made love. I was, too. But in those moments of climax, when the darkness descended, and our fantasies dissolved into the air under the quickening heat of our desire—then,
then,
we were in that room together. And that is all that matters. Love, Gordon.

 

HERMIA

Gordon knew that?

 

JEAN

I guess he did.

 

HERMIA

Well, how about that.

You've given me a great gift, Jean.

 

JEAN

I'm glad.

 

HERMIA

What can I give you?

 

JEAN

Nothing.

 

HERMIA

You gave me back ten years of my marriage. You see, after I learned that Gordon's “business trips to Rome” equaled him, trafficking organs, I couldn't bring myself to—. You know—people never write into
Cosmo
about how sexual revulsion can be caused by moral revulsion—they just tell you to change positions.

 

JEAN

Organs?

 

HERMIA

Oh, yes, Gordon and his organs—

that's funny Gordon rhymes with organs, how is it I've never noticed that—

Gordon, organ/organ, Gordon, same letters too!

O, R, G—there's no D—

and God in the middle—oh! I feel sick.

 

JEAN

Gordon—sold organs?

 

HERMIA

I thought you were in in-coming.

 

JEAN

I was.

 

HERMIA

And you didn't know what was in the packages?

 

JEAN

No—I guess I didn't.

 

HERMIA

That's funny! Well, I'm sorry to ruin your illusions about Gordon. I was never supposed to know—I told my friends he was in waste management. I remember one sad case. Gordon convinced a Brazilian man to give his kidney to a woman in Israel. Gordon paid him five thousand dollars cash. Gordon probably made one hundred thousand dollars in the transaction. He bought me a yellow diamond. (I think they look like something you'd find in a candy machine, but they're very rare.) So the man returned to Brazil, kidney-less. And then his money was stolen from him at the airport in Rio. Can you imagine? He wrote these sad letters to our home. He would draw pictures of his lost kidney. It looked like a broken heart.

 

JEAN

Oh!

Hello—

They said they have a kidney from Brazil. Go to South Africa. To the airport. I'll be wearing a red raincoat. And hung up.

 

I have to go to South Africa.

 

HERMIA

What?

 

JEAN

I'll make up for Gordon's mistakes.

 

HERMIA

Too late, Jean. The kidneys, the corneas, the skin—they're the rings on my fingers and the fixtures in our bathrooms. What's done is done.

 

JEAN

Someone is
waiting
for a kidney, Hermia!
Tell Dwight I'll call him from Johannesburg.

 

HERMIA

What?
Jean! Do you own a gun?

 

JEAN

Hello.

 

STRANGER

Hello. I am right behind you.

Don't look at me.

Place the money on the lost luggage counter. Then hang up, and place your phone on the lost luggage, as though it is afterthought. Then check your watch, look distracted, look up at departure screen, and get back on a plane to your own country.

 

JEAN

Actually, we're in a bit of a pickle. In our country we can only give our organs away for love. I mean I'm not saying our country is great or anything because at the moment—well, you know—but in terms of organ laws—it has to be love. It's a strange law, right, because how can you measure love? I'm not sure you
can
measure love.

 

In any case, if you're willing to give away your kidney for love, then we're still in business. If not—

 

I am willing to give my kidney away instead of yours.

 

STRANGER

What?

 

JEAN

That's right. It was so good of you to offer. I'm sorry I have no money to give you. I did make something for you though, just a token, it's a lamp, in the shape of a kidney, it says, I was willing to give you away so that someone else shall live—so that when you turn it on—