Phone calls from somewhere that should not exist
The two men moved with deliberation, their forks passing
through the food — Chinese for one, Mexican for the other — as they brought the
rice and seasoned meat to their mouths in measured, slow movements, hunched
over the tiny mock stone table in the main corridor of Lakeforest Mall. The
short one, whose features displayed a ruddy, overweight look, stared at the
meal without interest.
His companion, a tall black man with the shoulders of a
linebacker and a close-cropped buzz cut, dipped and drew at the same rate of
speed as if the time to consume the contents of the Styrofoam platter knew no
outward bounds.
Another man approached, a pair of paper cups in his hands,
the straws jutting upward. As he placed them before the men, he said, “Here you
go, guys.” Then he stiffened.
His phone buzzing from his pocket, Steve Hyatt stopped to
reach down and then switched it off to prevent the vibration from tickling his
thigh. Only later, after he’d finished feeding the ‘tards, did he look to see
who called, blinking as he saw the number.
“What the fuck?”
The call read from Area Code 666. Steve stared at it,
blinked again, then turned the phone upside down as if to fix the aberration.
The number did not change.
He spoke aloud. “Somebody’s fucking with me.” The men,
William and Demetri, did not respond, pursuing the earnest consumption of their
lunch in continued single-minded silence. Hyatt had long past caring about his
language in front of his charges, his supervisors indicating that, while it
fell into the area of a technical violation of established protocol, his
position as caregiver faced little effect or consequence as they would not
comprehend the language.
Tempted to call the number back just to see whether it went
to a live line, Hyatt dismissed the notion on its heels as he shrugged.
Probably a gimmick. Goddamn corporations would do anything these days to get
you to answer the phone.
“Hey, Steve.”
He looked from his cell to his new co-worker, Rachel
Brockmeyer. He pocketed his phone.
“Hey. Sup?”
“Hey, so what’s the deal with the schedule tomorrow? How we
gonna handle the day?”
“It’s all gonna be different. We’re gonna spend the whole
day carting them around to the voting places. You and me, that’s it.”
“Just the two of us?”
“Just like that old song, fam. We gonna be taking the entire
clientele –”
“Every client?”
Hyatt nodded. “Every one of them, every single one.”
“How many is that?”
“Few hundred.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck, indeed. We gotta pick ‘em up at all the designated
houses, then haul ‘em to the voting booths.”
“Then what?”
“Then we march ‘em to the booths, hand ‘em the written
instructions, and cross our fingers.”
“And you say no one’s caught on?”
“Not so far,” Hyatt leaned toward Brockmeyer’s quizzical
face, “Runs like clockwork.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“Look, stop worrying. I have been doing this for like six
years. Easy- peasy –”
“You’re making me queasy. Gotchu.”
That night, after they saw the clients to their rooms to
sleep, Hyatt retired to his within the halfway house, a Spartan affair that he
kept furnished to a minimum on purpose. Hyatt felt his phone vibrate in his
pocket. He knew what it would read even before he withdrew it. He pulled it
from his jeans anyway.
Area Code 666. The same number.
Continue reading the story in the anthology:
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