She showed him the phone.
“What do you mean? She—‘she’—is still there.”
“The account is there, but the tweet is gone. I wonder what happened? Did your agent complain after all, do you think?”
“No, he was adamant that we should ignore her. Victoria—is there any way we can find out who this is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe some kind of IT person knows how to do it. But I wouldn’t worry about it. You gotta remember—you’re seeing this, but most people aren’t. And now it’s gone.”
“But if there’s a Twitter account, that could be connected to the letter and the phone calls.”
Victoria nods politely. Has Aileen briefed her? Does she also believe the calls are a figment of his drug-assisted imagination? It’s true, the caller ID once again showed no evidence of a call. And the next call, the one in which no one spoke, turned out to be a wrong number. He had asked Aileen to call back and the person, an elderly woman, had been quite huffy.
Finally, finally, the day ends with no more penis drama. Gerry has begun to think of the two hours between Victoria’s departure and Aileen’s arrival as his best hours. Even when the girls （women, sorry） are quiet, he feels their presence. To be alone is at once a luxury and a poverty. He craves it, he needs it, but he cannot afford it for more than a few hours right now. Victoria still comes and goes during her shift, but she feels more present these days, hovering.
And while Aileen appears to be avoiding him as much as possible—her work as a night nurse seems to have been chosen because it allows for quite a bit of napping time—he can feel her in the apartment, imagines he can hear her, wheezing like an old dog in her sleep.
The days are getting slightly longer, the sun setting at about six. An orange light suffuses the apartment, the kind of sunset that tempts a writer to do his worst work. Sunsets are for painters or photographers; writers should leave them be. Elmore Leonard also told writers never to begin with the weather, yet Dream Girl begins with the weather—
The phone.
He lets it ring three times before he picks up.
“Gerry? I’m so sorry.”
“You have to stop this stupid prank—”
“I never should have said that. About—you know. I got a little drunk last night. I miss you so.”
“I have your number on caller ID.” He doesn’t, but it will be on the other phones; he will tell Aileen to look for it the second she arrives.
“I can’t wait to see you, Gerry. It’s been far too long. I have such a wonderful idea. I shouldn’t say anything, but—well, I’ve figured out how you can repay me.”
“Repay you?”
“For my story. My lawyer said I could sue you for half of everything you’ve made since Dream Girl was published, but I don’t want to do anything that contentious. Also it sounded so tedious—forensic accounting, blah, blah, blah, and it’s really hard to separate Dream Girl from your net worth because it’s the foundation of your net worth, you know? I mean, if you’re worth ten million dollars, one could argue that I deserve five—”
“YOU DON’T EXIST. Even if you did—”
“Oh, I exist, Gerry. I exist. And I’ll see you very soon.” With that, she’s gone.
When Aileen comes to work, he asks her to check the caller ID.
“Someone did call,” she reports from the kitchen. “At six thirty-seven.”
“Is there a name?”
“Wipper.”
“What?”
“Wipper.”
“WHAT?”
“WIPPER.” She writes it down for him. W-Y-P-R.
“That’s the local NPR station.”
“Is it?”
“Bring me the number.”
“Would it kill you to say please?”
She walks back to the kitchen, returns with the phone, fumbling it in her meaty hands. “I think you just have to press redial—”
The phone rings three times and goes to voicemail. “Thank you for calling W YPR. Our offices are closed now.”
Technically, W YPR is part of Johns Hopkins, or used to be. There was definitely some sort of affiliation. Gerry thinks of the moment that Dream Girl came to him, the young woman who—
But he had not written about that young woman, he did not know that young woman, and he had never told the story to anyone.
Or had he? Had he told someone and forgotten? Was tonight’s conversation even real?
2015
“OUR NEXT QUESTION is from Gretchen in Baltimore,” the interviewer said.