BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

::AUTUMN 2000

21 :: listeners ::

[posted 2/16/01]

Freya chews her sandwich (turkey on sourdough, chipotle spread). Jakob had called her a few days ago: —Are you working on Friday? he’d asked. When she said she would be, he responded: —I’ll be in the neighborhood; I’ve got a few errands to run? But anyway, I was wondering if you’d maybe want to meet up for lunch? She’d agreed, and here they are. They’ve just sat down, next to a guy nattering away on his cell phone, offering affirmatives. (—Uh-huh, he says. —Right.)

Jakob looks up from his plate, meets her eye and smiles — for one moment looks like he’ll begin to start a conversation — then looks back down at the plate again. He’d found calling her up this time difficult, because he felt that requesting to meet with her one on one, without Fletcher’s mediating presence, would finally cause him to begin tipping his hand and revealing his intentions. He’s not fully ready to do this yet. He’s trying for a subtle approach. He doesn’t know that Freya’s been aware of his intentions for some time now, that she sees him approaching as clearly as she would if he were an elephant on a plain. (What he thinks of as subtlety strikes her as timidity — if he’s an elephant, she must look a whole lot like a mouse. She doesn’t tremendously mind this: it’s a pleasant change from appreciation of the nice tits variety. Or the chest-stares that she gets with some regularity. Walking down the street at night and having guys drive past and blow their horns at her. Someone screaming hey, mama from the window.)

Jakob looks up again, gives it a second try, this time gets a sentence out. —So, he says. How’s life at the record store?

Freya swallows her bite of sandwich. —Not bad, she says. —I mean, yeah, it’s a job. The guy with the cell phone is still going on: —Yes. Yes. That’s already gone through. Freya watches Jakob nod sympathetically, but he doesn’t seem to have anything to add. She realizes she hasn’t given him very much to go on yet. —I’m sorry, she says, —that wasn’t a very good answer. I’m just having a little trouble focusing. She points with her eyes over to the guy with the phone, who is performing useless little karate-chop variations with his hands to accompany what he’s saying into the phone. —Yes. The paperwork on that went through yesterday. I’m absolutely, yes; yeah, I handed it to him myself.

Jakob smiles, mouths a silent "ah" of comprehension.

Freya leans in so she can whisper across the table. Jakob leans in too, close to her now, and some chemical system telegraphs a flurried excitement all throughout him. —I just, Freya says, —I just don’t get those things. I can’t imagine feeling so . . . self-important as all that. You know?

Jakob contemplates his response for a second and Freya’s eyes get wide. —Oh my God, she says. —You don’t have one, do you?

Jakob smiles. —No, he says, no, I don’t.

—Thank God, Freya says. —For a minute I was thinking I was just sitting here insulting you. "Cell phone users are such assholes, blah blah blah." That’s totally something I would do.

—My students, on the other hand, Jakob says. —They love ‘em. I have to, like, make an announcement at the beginning of class to get people to turn ‘em off. Otherwise I’m in the middle of trying to teach something and, all of a sudden, it’s like "Turkey In The Straw" starts going.

—Oh my God, Freya says. —I would flip. I, seriously, I would have to kill somebody. She looks around as if searching for a victim. —Where is that guy, anyway? (He’s up and headed for the door, still speaking into his tiny appliance.) —We don’t even let people use them in the store.

—Yeah, Jakob says. —I saw the sign. (No Cell Phones In The Store Ever!!, Sharpie-markered onto a square of cardboard.) —Why is that, anyway?

—Because I would have to kill, Freya says.

Jakob makes a meek-looking face. —Oh, he says. After a moment: —I actually don’t mind them too much. I find it kind of interesting to see where they’re appearing and what people use them for and stuff. It kind of fits in with this project I’m working on.

—What kind of project?

—Oh, he says. —It’s going to make me sound like a big dork.

—Give, she says.

—Well, Jakob says. —I’ve been thinking for a while about doing this science fiction thing. Um, a novel. It’s kind of based, a little bit, on how we live in this world that’s like blanketed with communications and transmissions and stuff. I’ve got this novel idea that sort of imagines that that trend will continue until you can just pull any kind of information you want right out of the air if you’ve got the right sort of receiver.

—Wow, Freya says. —That’s pretty interesting.

—Yeah, it’s got like, telepathy in it, too, that kind of dork stuff. Blame it on too much Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid.

—No, no, Freya says. —It actually sounds really cool.

—It’s not too much more than a pile of notes at this point, Jakob says.

Freya snaps her fingers. —You know what you should hear? she says. —If you haven’t already?

—What?

—This guy Scanner. Jakob shakes his head, to indicate I don’t know him. —It’s this guy, an electronic musician from London, he goes around with some kind of handheld device, a scanner, I guess it’s called, and he listens in to these cell phone conversations. And he records them and uses them in his music as a kind of, I don’t know, a kind of texture, I guess.

—Wow, Jakob says. —Um, I need to hear that. It really sounds like it would fit in well with what I’m working on.

—I think we have a copy of some of his stuff in at the store, Freya says. —You should come back with me when we’re through here and check it out.

For just a second he stares at her with an admiration that borders on awe. He’s always been impressed by people with wide musical knowledge, and this moment illuminates exactly why: they have access to the perspectives of all different sorts of people, and they have the ability to sift through their index of active minds in order to find a worldview or an aesthetic appropriate to the moment. He looks at her and he sees a listener, a personality capable of shift and contradiction, a polymorphing receiver, able to pick up on any band of the world’s billion transmissions. And that flurry of excitement towards her surges within him again. It is a feeling that he can not quite identify yet with a single word.