Other Minds and Other Stories, page 1
OTHER MINDS AND OTHER STORIES
by
Bennett Sims
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COPYRIGHT © 2023 by Bennett Sims
ISBN PRINT: 9781953387356
ISBN EBOOK: 9781953387363
Library of Congress Control Number available upon request.
COVER DESIGN: Eric Obenauf; AUTHOR PHOTO: Carmen Maria Machado
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Versions of these stories appeared in the following publications: ‘La “mummia di Grottarossa”’ in The Iowa Review; ‘Unknown’ in The Kenyon Review, as well as in the Pushcart Prize Anthology; ‘Pecking Order’ in Ploughshares; ‘Portonaccio Sarcophagus’ in The Georgia Review; ‘Afterlives’ in Tiny Nightmares; ‘Minds of Winter,’ ‘Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,’ and ‘A Nightmare’ in Conjunctions; ‘The Postcard’ in Socrates on the Beach; ‘Medusa’ in BOMB.
For Liz
OTHER MINDS AND OTHER STORIES
La ‘mummia di Grottarossa’
IN the basement of the Palazzo Massimo museum in Rome, there is a vault called The Strong Box. Beyond the numismatic collection and the vitrines of golden jewelry, in the middle of the rearmost room, a display case exhibits the blackened body of a mummified Roman girl. She was embalmed in the second century AD and left undiscovered until 1964. She lies in a glass box, her arms at her sides. Today, living children crowd around this coffin, taking photos with their phones. Compared with her, the hundred statues on the floors above them bore them. Old white stone, marble that was never mortal. They ignore the inorganic Aphrodites, Antinouses, Medusas. They can tell that this girl, despite the two millennia condensed in her, is closer to them in time. Like them, she once lived inside it. Now she has passed beyond it. She can teach them things the statues cannot. Her dark body is like the negative of their bodies. Seen from the side, the mummy is as stiff and straight as a minus sign: that hyphen that haunts all negatives, all knowledges lying beyond the zero on the number line. At the entrance to The Strong Box, on the threshold of the -2nd floor of the museum, the wall text that is her epitaph promises many treasures: The numismatic collection. The historical medals. The ancient jewelry, it reads. And other preciousness.
Unknown
At the mall a woman asked to use his phone.
Excuse me, he heard from behind. He had just bought A’s birthday gift, a new phone from the AT&T store. He was passing through the gauntlet of kiosks on his way to the mall’s exit, and he assumed that one of the stalls’ sales clerks was calling out to him, inviting him to sample cologne. He ignored the voice and kept walking. But the voice followed after. Excuse me, sir. Sir. Please, sir.
When he turned there was a small older woman holding up a heavy purse in both hands. She thanked him and made eye contact. Trapped, he waited for her to ask for money. May I borrow your phone, she asked instead. I need to make a call. It’s an emergency. He hesitated. If it was an emergency, why was she asking a stranger, rather than a security guard, or the clerk at the AT&T store? He felt certain it was a scam. But when he revolved the scenario in his mind, he couldn’t make out what the nature of the scam would be. The worst she could do, it seemed, was take the phone and run, or fling it to the ground.
Please, she said. It’s important. I was supposed to call five minutes ago, and I’m already late. It’s an emergency, she repeated, and she gestured vaguely in the direction of the AT&T store, where a young boy and girl were peering through the shop window. Neither turned to look back, and it wasn’t clear whether they were with her, or whether the emergency concerned them. He considered lying, claiming that his battery had died, but something in her gaze seemed to anticipate the lie, and he felt this path blocked by guilt. It’s no trouble, he told her. He took out his phone and tapped the passcode into the lock screen. He swiped open his settings and disabled Bluetooth, then opened his email and logged out. He handed her the phone. Oh, thank you, sir. She held it in one hand while she dug through her purse with the other. From the bottom of her bag she withdrew a second phone—a newer model, the same model, in fact, that he had just bought for A, not at all an inexpensive phone—and began tapping at it deftly. He felt instant alarm. He still didn’t understand the scam, or where the danger might lie, but he did not like the sight of this woman’s phone. Wait, he told her. Why don’t you make the call on your own phone? She was glancing from her screen to his, typing something. Without stopping or looking up she answered: I have no data. I need to find the number. All the politeness and gratitude had drained out of her voice. When she had finished typing, she smiled and stepped aside, holding his phone to her ear. He told himself to remain calm. There were hundreds of witnesses around them. It wasn’t as if she could run away with his phone. And even if she did, what did it matter? It was only a phone. He could go back to the store and buy a new phone.
While waiting for her friend or whoever to answer, she hunched over, hugging her purse to her chest, in the posture of someone cramped into a phone booth. He maintained enough space between them to respect her privacy, but he was still close enough to eavesdrop, and when at last she spoke, he pretended to scan the crowd while straining to listen. He could only pick out snatches. She was whispering angrily. You’ll never find me, he thought he heard her say. Never. Her tone—though low—was vehement. She continued in this vein, her voice rarely rising above a murmur. Whoever was on the other end of the line must have been listening in complete silence, for there were no pauses in her monologue. She seemed to be gloating. I escaped, he thought he heard her say, or, It’s too late. You’ll just have to find someone else, he thought he heard her say. Finally she hung up and handed him his phone. Thank you so much, sir, she said. You are my savior. Thank you.
She walked off in the direction of the food court. He turned to the shop window, but the children were no longer there. Perhaps they were waiting in the food court to meet her, or maybe they had already left with their real mother. He opened the phone to check the recent calls. There were none. The last number dialed was A’s, from earlier that day. Either the woman had deleted her call from the list—was this possible?—or she had not called anyone at all. Had simply delivered her monologue to a dead phone. When he glanced back at the food court, the woman was gone. He couldn’t find her anywhere in the crowd.
Back home, while preparing her birthday dinner, he told A about the woman. He recited what he could remember of her monologue. When he’d finished she asked who he thought the woman could have been talking to. It sounds like a stalker, A said, a jealous lover. Maybe she didn’t want to call from her own phone because she was used to being tracked. Or maybe, he suggested, it was a debt collector. Or a probation officer. In any case, A said, a happy story. With a happy ending. She got away.
After dinner he gave A her presents: the phone, and tickets to a play that weekend. They sat on the couch together, and she transferred the SIM card from her old phone to the new one. He helped her link the device to his Find My Phone program, in case she ever lost it, and while she set up her other applications he took out his own phone. The object seemed compromised in his hand. He couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that the woman had done something to it. It felt changed, charmed. He opened its browser and searched Lending strangers your phone. He skimmed an article and read the most alarming passages aloud to A. In one scam, he read, a stranger will ask to use your phone and pretend to dial a number or text their friend. In reality they’ll be opening your payment applications and transferring funds to themselves. You don’t have any payment applications, do you? she asked. He shook his head. I won’t install any either, she said. In another scam, he continued, the stranger will call their own phone to harvest your number for identity theft. Sometimes they’ll even call a criminal enterprise—a drug dealer, for instance—so that your number will be on file in their records: later they’ll try to use this information to blackmail you. Somehow I don’t think that’s what she was doing, she said. No, he agreed, it didn’t sound like she was talking to a drug dealer. Why not just take her at her word? she asked. He nodded. But when he tried to imagine who the woman could have been talking to, no one came to mind. What had made A so certain it was a lover? He imagined himself on the other end of the line, listening quietly to that monologue. How he would never find her. How he
Later that night, while they were reading in bed, A’s new phone kept vibrating on the nightstand. She would reach for it, tap at its screen, set it aside. A minute later it would vibrate again with a new text message. Now she had placed her book down and was holding the phone in her hand, as if to muffle the buzzing with her flesh. When it vibrated again she swiped it open and tapped a short reply. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the blue and gray bubbles of a text thread, but he couldn’t make out the name of the contact or what she was typing. Her expression betrayed nothing. She set her phone back down on the nightstand. What’s the news, he asked, without looking up from his book. No news, she said. Birthday wishes. She did not say who from, and he resisted the urge to ask. He was gripped by the image of a strange man, a handsome man, on the other end of the phone: alone at a restaurant table somewhere, sending messages to her. He didn’t know where the thought had come from. Whenever she texted in bed—never very often—she usually told him who it was, and it was usually one of the women she worked with. That was probably who it was now. There was no man. The woman in the mall—all this talk of stalkers and lovers—must have put the idea into his head. He was jealous of a phantom. He tried to focus on his book, but her phone vibrated again, buzzing against the hard wood of the nightstand, and the sound of it sawed through his concentration. He willed himself to ignore it, his chest tightening at every noise. She tapped at the screen. He still couldn’t see the contact name, could just make out gray bubbles popping into view, surfacing from an unknown source. With each new bubble the phone buzzed in her palm. Can you maybe put it on silent, he asked. She touched his shoulder and kissed his forehead. I’m sorry. She silenced the phone and placed it in her nightstand drawer.
At the same moment his own phone vibrated on the nightstand beside him. Unknown, the screen read. He declined the call. Who was it, she asked. It’s an Unknown, he said. He had learned to ignore unlisted numbers. If it were a real person, they would leave a voice message. It was almost never a real person, just a computer text-to-speech program. The recordings followed a similar script: he was notified that he had committed some oversight or crime—he had defaulted on a debt, there was a warrant out for his arrest—and he was given a number to call back at once. This is an emergency, the thin urgent robotic voice would insist. The scam was structured like an anxiety dream. The voice of authority enveloping you, with its spotlight of guilt, to remind you of something you should never have forgotten: the final exam you hadn’t studied for; the meeting you were already late to. And then the way you simply accept whatever identity the nightmare assigns you, like an actor possessed by a role. He imagined that some people must respond to these robocalls as he did to his anxiety dreams: the credulity, the panic, the waves of shame. The scam must work part of the time—people must actually call the number and divulge their personal information—or else the calls would stop.
I thought you had blocked unlisted numbers, she reminded him. He regarded the phone with puzzlement. She was right. Now he could remember: about a month ago he had begun receiving several Unknown calls a day, and he had called AT&T for help. They had looked up his account and blocked unlisted numbers for him. He hadn’t received any Unknown calls since, not until tonight. That’s right, he told her, I did. So how did an unlisted number get through? He thought he heard suspicion in her voice. He opened the phone and checked the recent calls. The Unknown usually had a strange area code, from a state he had never visited. If he searched the number online, he could find message boards full of other people who had also received calls from it, offering each other advice, warning each other not to answer. But when he checked the missed calls log now, there was no number. It just read Unknown. The caller had not left a voice message either. His first thought was of the woman in the mall. Who had she dialed today? If they were determined to find her, they might call him back. They might even be determined enough to mask their number, to circumvent blocking software.
I don’t know, he answered finally, they must have some kind of… program. Just put it on silent, she suggested. He switched his phone to Do Not Disturb and put it away. She took her phone from the drawer and continued tapping at its screen. He reached for his book, pretending to read.
It wasn’t until his lunch break the next day that he remembered to deactivate Do Not Disturb. When he did, his screen cascaded with alerts for missed calls and new voice messages. Most were for work, one from A. But one was another missed call from Unknown, no number listed, and this time they had left a voice message. It was half a minute long. Normally he would delete it without listening, but today he pressed Play and pressed the phone to his ear. He heard A’s voice. It sounds like a stalker, he heard her say, a jealous lover. Or maybe, he heard himself say, it was a debt collector. Or a probation officer. In any case, he heard her say, a happy story. With a happy ending. She got away.
He played the recording back. Their voices were distant and echoey, and it was clear what had happened: his phone’s microphone must have recorded their conversation during dinner last night. His phone had been lying on the kitchen counter, where it would have been able to pick up both their voices. He supposed it was possible that there had been a malfunction: the microphone could have turned on spontaneously, and the resulting recording could have been mistakenly saved to his voicemail. It didn’t seem likely. But the other explanations seemed even less likely, and more disturbing. Because what if the woman at the mall were responsible? What if, while pretending to talk, she had actually downloaded spyware onto his phone, some kind of eavesdropping program? Maybe she could remotely access his microphone now to listen in on him, and maybe she had sent him this recording as a threat, in advance of future blackmail. Or maybe it was not the woman who was responsible, but whoever she’d been talking to. She had called them from his number, after all, and now this person—whoever they were—might be training their powers of detection and surveillance on his phone, instead of hers. They could have hijacked his phone in their quest to find her and ended up finding him. Wasn’t that what she had said to them? You’ll just have to find someone else? She could have passed them on to him, the way you pass on a curse, setting into motion a chain of displacements. Now the Unknown would just substitute his phone in her place, calling again and again until he called back from someone else’s number.
He pictured a debt collector. He pictured a probation officer. But the more he listened to the recording, the more likely it seemed that A had been right. This was something that a stalker, a jealous lover, might do. When the woman had called them from his phone, and his unfamiliar number had flashed across their screen, he could imagine their reaction. First the confusion, and then—when they heard her voice—the rage. So, they would think, he thought, this must be her new lover’s number. Such a person would likely go on calling that number indefinitely. Hacking the microphone. Leaving menacing messages. The moment he handed the woman his phone, he realized, it had become entangled in her story. It was no longer his private property, just a prop in this other drama. Far from stealing his identity from his phone, she had contaminated it with her own.
He played the recording back. A happy story, he heard A say. With a happy ending. She got away. If the recording had been made by the woman’s stalker, the message it was meant to send would be clear. She may think she has gotten away, but they were still listening.
He opened his phone’s browser and searched Microphone remote listening. He searched Microphone malfunction. He spent the rest of his lunch break reading about security breaches.
That night he played the recording for A. Creepy, she said. He deleted it. He told her about an article he had read at lunch. Apparently there was a bug in their phones’ conference call feature: if someone dialed your number, then quickly added their own number to the conference call, your microphone would activate while your phone was still ringing. Then the caller could listen in for as long as it took you to answer or to decline the call. The article warned readers to check their phones: if they had any mysterious missed calls, someone might have already exploited the bug. That must have been what happened, he told her. That Unknown call. Who would do that, she asked. Anyone could do it, he said. He watched over her as she disabled the conference call feature on her phone.
