AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That party,” Jordi says. “So much trouble.”
“No,” I say quickly. “Please. Let me use the phone.”
The man, Jordi, pushes his hair back from his face and gives me a long, confused look. “The phone?”
“Yes.” I nod emphatically and take a step forward. “The phone. I need to use it.”
“Really?”
I nod again, my chest tightening.
The woman rubs her belly in a slow circle and frowns at me. Then she asks, “Did you get the ice cream I sent over? With Amy.”
I glance at her. “Excuse me?”
She raises her eyebrows. “And they sayIhave placenta brain.”
Jordi has ducked beneath the plywood counter. There’s rustling, the sound of metal knocking together, a creaking, and then he pops back up, a gray hard plastic case a little smaller than a briefcase in his hand.
“Got it.”
He drops the case on the counter. It’s scratched and covered in dust. My eyes widen as he flips the latches and opens it up.
Inside there’s gray plastic with vents holding a bricklike black phone. It’s a long rectangle with a tiny plastic screen, large white buttons, and a black phone cord like landlines had in the nineties. There are cords and plugs and instructions on the plastic in Japanese. The hard plastic on the phone is cracked and the edges have melted and warped.
“The phone,” Jordi says as if he’s flourishing a national treasure.
I lean forward. There’s an old musty smell rising from the case. I lift out the black plastic phone. It’s heavy. Bricklike in both weight and looks. And broken. Clearly broken. One of the cords is frayed, the metal connector is bent, and the phone looks like someone left it in an oven for fifty minutes while a cake baked.
But just to be sure, I ask, “Does it work?”
Jordi frowns. “It hasn’t worked since 2002.”
Since 2002? It hasn’t worked in decades?
I clutch the cold, sticky plastic phone in my hand. “This is the only phone on the island?”
Both of them nod, watching me like I’m the one who’s lost my mind.
“But how do you contact anyone?”
My fingers start to ache from how tightly I’m clutching the defunct phone.
“We do it when the mail plane comes,” the woman says, giving me a funny look, “just like always. Do you need some water? Or Coca-Cola? I saved a bottle from our last batch in case I craved it, but you can have it. I think you need it. You don’t look very good, Becca.”
For a moment I’m too focused on the fact the only contact these people have with the outside world is through a mail plane. Then I register the last thing she said.
“What did you call me?”
The woman and Jordi exchange a look.
“Becca?”
I shake my head. “No. That’s not my name.”
“I’ll get that Coke,” the woman says, then she turns and takes quick steps through another bead curtain, back into what must be the storage room.
Jordi scratches the stubble on his chin, then he leans his elbows on the plywood countertop. “You don’t want to be called Becca anymore?”
