Other Choices, Other Rooms

Blond hair, lux­u­ri­ous­ly plump with heavy fist-sized curls, draped over her 16-but­ton silk gloved hand.  Grace was a tall young woman at five foot sev­en inch­es and taller still in her for­mal heels, which stretched the receiver’s coiled cord to its lim­it between her ear and the telephone’s base atop her office desk. The phone was a can­dle­stick mod­el, a late one, prob­a­bly from the for­ties.  It was like­ly to have been one of the last mod­els built before mod­ern cra­dle-style tele­phones with rotary dials con­nect­ed to elec­tron­ic switch­boards became the standard.

At 23, the rain­bow-col­ored inno­cence of Grace’s youth was just begin­ning to fade into the shades of gray that are adult real­i­ty.  She found her­self enam­ored of the ele­gant nos­tal­gia of the thing.   It implied a sim­pler time.  It sug­gest­ed a time when you real­ly knew the per­son on the oth­er end of the line. They were Shirley, the oper­a­tor, and you could just pick up the trans­mit­ter cup and say, “Hey Shirley, can you con­nect me to Gale down at Stuckey’s?”

And Shirley would say, “I’d love to Grace, but I heard Gale is out at the Simpson’s right now work­ing on their sep­tic pump. They say Beanie, you know, Charlotte’s lit­tle dog, dropped a stuffed bear into the thing, and it gummed up the whole sys­tem!  Anyway, I’ll see if I can get Tammy, and she can get Scooter for ya since Gale’s busy. Hang on, hun…”

It was just one line, and it would con­nect you to a per­son, who would con­nect you to anoth­er per­son.  They were peo­ple and a part of your life, not just num­bers amongst a sea of dig­its in the Rolodex of your dai­ly cycle.

This par­tic­u­lar mod­el did not bear the cus­tom­ary bells mount­ed on the dark oak base.  Instead, there was a sin­gle glow­ing orb that pulsed a black­ish pur­ple in time with the device’s sig­nal, which no one would describe as “ring­ing,” not that any­one would ever get the chance to hear it but her. If any­one ever asked her about the phone, she would tell them that it was just a repli­ca. If she depressed the deep laven­der but­ton in the cen­ter of the base, light would shine out of the receiv­er on its post.

“See,” Grace would say, “It’s my very clever desk lamp,” and she would smile that charm­ing half-grin of hers before chang­ing the subject.

It was evening, and Grace used one fin­ger of her opera gloves to swipe dust par­ti­cles off the glassy pol­ish of her office’s mahogany desk.  She watched the light pulse and wait­ed for the con­nec­tion.  After five min­utes of the telephone’s strange war­bling pulse, she placed the trans­mit­ter cup gen­tly on her desk­top, allow­ing her to hear the telephone’s strange elec­tric throb while return­ing to the door to ensure all three locks were engaged. 

The men who had deliv­ered the tele­phone to her office spent sev­er­al hours edu­cat­ing her on the need for absolute secre­cy relat­ed to this project.  They had the most seri­ous looks on their faces. They expound­ed on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve, the dig­ni­ty of duty, and also its bur­den.  It was both exhil­a­rat­ing and fright­en­ing to be invit­ed into some­thing like this. 

Dulles’ boys had said she shouldn’t be ner­vous when they deliv­ered and installed the equip­ment.  It was not unusu­al for the agency to ask peo­ple in her posi­tion to serve their coun­try in this way, they told her.  They inti­mat­ed she shouldn’t be sur­prised to find sev­er­al of her peers in sim­i­lar roles, though she would nev­er know if or which.  Her career gave her access to many of the most promi­nent peo­ple in the world.  Her secu­ri­ty clear­ance in any Western coun­try was nev­er in ques­tion.  On the con­trary, peo­ple from jour­nal­ists to roy­al­ty begged her to vis­it for pho­to-ops and pro­mo­tions, for the con­tact high of the bour­geoisie in the face of true elegance. 

The tele­phone con­tin­ued its strange war­bling pulse. The crescen­do­ing mmm­mmwaaar­rrrp, mmmmwwwaaaar­rrp, felt alien, dis­qui­et­ing in the silence of the evening in her office.  Grace bus­ied her­self pulling the floor-length cur­tains closed.

The gen­tle­men from the agency had replaced her for­mer drap­ery with much thick­er tapes­tries that drug the floor upon release from their flan­nelette. They had informed her that new­ly devel­oped tech­nolo­gies, like “a direc­tion­al microphone”—a device they described as look­ing like a space-satel­lite dish, but hand-held—could pick up whis­pered con­ver­sa­tions from hun­dreds of feet away, poten­tial­ly allow­ing unwant­ed par­ties to eaves­drop on her con­ver­sa­tions even in her cor­ner office all the way up on the 23^rd floor of the Sinclair Oil Building.  The new drapes were thick­er, vel­veteen, and squishy, like sheets of vel­vet sewn over a thick cot­ton stuff­ing.  These were sup­posed to block sound waves from vibrat­ing through the glass windows. 

Personally, she was thrilled. The new cur­tains were equal­ly good at block­ing the light.  If she pulled them dur­ing the day­time, her office dropped into instant mid­night, which she appre­ci­at­ed on those days when the migraine was so bad that all she could do was recline on the deep brown leather of the office sofa with an icepack over her face.

An ant’s voice crack­led from the ear­piece on her desk. Grace raced across the room and picked up in time to hear, “Yes, I dropped the Benz off.” A young woman’s voice, low and purring yet lack­ing inflec­tion, broke from the receiv­er with light hum­ming sta­t­ic around the edges of the vow­els.  Lights in the room dimmed to ten per­cent of their for­mer illu­mi­na­tion, leav­ing only the faintest deep-grey visibility. 

Grace retreat­ed from the desk a few wob­bly steps, then sank to the couch with slow cau­tion, grip­ping its arm and smooth­ing her long gown behind her knees on the way down.  The trans­mit­ter cup, for­got­ten, dan­gled from its cord over the edge of her desk, swing­ing in a slow pen­du­lum arch. Her trem­bling right hand lift­ed to rest light­ly against her tem­ple, and she respond­ed, “Hello, Mercedes. Have you seen the Black Swan?” Grace pushed the words out in a breathy grunt.

“She is not yet born, Grace,” Mercedes’ voice returned in a crack­ling preda­to­ry purr.

Having com­plet­ed iden­ti­ty con­fir­ma­tion, Grace continued.

“It’s about Max, Mercy.  He’s hav­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions.  They’re oth­er people’s night­mares… pasts… futures… mem­o­ries of events from else­where.  He’s catch­ing flot­sam and jet­sam from the foam.”

“You have to tell him about the hos­pi­tal,” Mercedes qui­et­ly rumbled.

“I can’t Mercy. He won’t under­stand.  He has entire­ly lost his iden­ti­ty. I mean every­thing.  He’s cog­nizant… cogent… coher­ent but blank.  He knows him­self.  He knows his pref­er­ences, tastes, plea­sures, pains, inter­ests… It appears he has all of his for­mer intel­lec­tu­al capa­bil­i­ties… maybe latent; we haven’t test­ed them yet.  But he has no knowl­edge of any­thing relat­ed to iden­ti­ty.  No name.  No past…. It would be odd, don’t you think? To know every­thing about your­self but have no idea how you came to be that way?” Grace explained.

“You must tell him about the hos­pi­tal,” Mercedes repeated.

“I can’t, Mercedes! He won’t understand!”

“Why will he not under­stand?” Mercedes’ voice hint­ed at inflec­tion with the question.

“Because he thinks he’s Jack,” Grace finished.

“Why would he think such a thing, Grace?”

“Because I told him he was Jack.” Grace was lean­ing over on the couch now, her head rest­ing on the arm. She pushed the heel of her hand hard against her eye sock­et, com­press­ing the spiky throbs behind her eye.

“Why would you tell Max that he was Jack, Grace?” Mercedes’ voice now con­tained a def­i­nite edge of exas­per­a­tion, low and warm in the mid­dle but crack­ling around its son­ic edges.

“Because he told me to,” Grace whis­pered cheerfully.

“Who told you to tell Max he was Jack, Grace?” Mercedes respond­ed, unable to hide her frustration.

“Jack did.” 

There was a long pause as all sound died from the air behind the vel­vet shrouds.

“When did Jack tell you to tell Max he was Jack, Grace?”

“I am sor­ry, Mercedes.  I do not remem­ber,” came Grace’s exhaust­ed response.

“You must tell him about the hos­pi­tal.  He must know about the hos­pi­tal before he finds out about Gina’s Girls,” Mercedes ordered.

“Who told you he needs to know about the hos­pi­tal?” Grace mir­rored Mercedes’ question.

“You did,” Mercedes returned with­out hesitation.

“When did I tell you he need­ed to know about the hospital?”

“I am sor­ry, Grace. I do not remem­ber”, said Mercedes flatly.

In late October of 1986, at a small mid­west­ern hos­pi­tal, a young blond LPN named Godiya Lambro hung up the guest phone on the wall of the staff lounge.  She wob­bled unsta­bly to the reclin­er in the cor­ner.  She was a tall girl, and when she flopped back into the chair, it thumped hard against the wall.  When she was awak­ened by her boss the next morn­ing, she received the first and only dis­ci­pli­nary arti­cle to ever dark­en her pro­fes­sion­al profile.

On November 13, 1954, Grace arose in a state vague­ly a mil­lion times worse than the worst hang­over she had ever had to find a note scrib­bled on the back of a lob­by enve­lope slipped under her office door. The note from her boyfriend Oleg read:  “What kind of girl doesn’t show up for her own birth­day party?”

In the back of her fuzzy mind, Grace dis­ap­point­ed­ly won­dered why no one ever answered her call.