Do Not Call Read online

  Weird coincidence.

  Xavier shushes the guests.

  Gladys fixates on her phone.

  Ayelet disregards the rudeness:

  “I just want to say thank you all for coming to our housewarming party. I know we don’t know most of you, yet, and many of you weren’t invited, but we appreciate your presence in our home and hope to become friends anyway. I want to congratulate my wonderful husband, Connor, the father of our gestating child, on his plum job and searing memoir.”

  The guests clap.

  Half are still distracted by notifications.

  It drives Ayelet nuts.

  “In the two years I’ve known Connor, he has completed and defended a dissertation, while living on a stipend fit for a squirrel—”

  Oops. His North Berkshire CC salary is only 28K—

  “My husband has also done incredible activist work, giving free lectures and leading workshops on bullying-prevention strategies and tactics. In Connor, the North Berkshire CC family has a wonderfully committed scholar and activist who’ll immeasurably enrich campus life, and who’ll be enriched by it—”

  The guests applaud and raise their glasses, until an angry voice neutralizes the good vibes:

  “Cut the shit.”

  Gladys. Her pale face incinerates. Transforms to the molten lava color of Ayelet’s rotary phone. Guests looking up from their phones affect the same anger. The others wallow in cluelessness.

  How dare this bitch ruin Ayelet’s toast!

  Like an ostrich with rabies, Gladys steps to Connor and jabs her finger. A hairsbreadth separates her fingernail from the tip of his nose:

  “I STAND WITH FRANK.”

  A frenzy of pings, blips and vibrations in the house. The whole party gets them now. Even the party crashers. What the fuck is happening?

  “Frank who, Gladys?” Connor asks. He displays inhuman calmness. Connor is used to people messing with him for no reason. “Enlighten me. What is Frank against?”

  “Frank told his story to HACKTIVATE, the Hacker Collective,” Gladys says. “They published it on Twitter. I’ll read his testimony: ‘Hello. My name is Frank. And I am not afraid anymore. Connor Yard says in his book that Eric Rice held him down in the boys’ locker room and cut his balls off with a scalpel, because Connor failed to earn the balls he was born with. Well, Connor lies. Bald-faced and through his teeth. The truth is that Connor Yard restrained me, Frank Profeta, held me captive in the boys’ locker room, accused me of not earning the balls I was born with, uttered insults to my Italian heritage, and castrated me with a scalpel. My name is Frank. I will no longer live in fear. Please stand with me.’ ”

  Laughing, Ayelet sprays her lemon seltzer far and wide. What an obvious hoax. Connor wrote a memoir about bullying. Naturally, bullies retaliated. Shit like this comes with the job.

  “Gladys, this is foolishness,” Connor says. “I’ve never heard of Frank Profeta. There’s a scar where they reattached my scrotum. I’ll show you if you’d like.”

  “Don’t dare!” Gladys says. “Indecent exposure is on a continuum of aggressive behaviors with—”

  Xavier strides forward:

  “Gladys, please. I hired a P.I. to fact-check Connor’s memoir. My guy reviewed police records. Hospital records. Connor’s account stands up. What he wrote is capital T truth.”

  Ayelet raises an eyebrow. It stays raised. A private investigator? She had no idea of the scrutiny her husband was under. Her breath gets away from her, but she regains control of it. Her baby kicks.

  Gladys rejects Xavier’s assurance. So do the guests. One-after-another, they drop wine glasses and beer bottles on the ebonized hardwood floor and crush the broken glass on their way out. Guests in flip flops cut their toes crushing glass and couldn’t care less.

  My new floor.

  Gladys plants the group on the front lawn and leads chants:

  “We Stand with Frank!”

  “Berkshire CC No Racists for Me!”

  “This is What Democracy Looks Like!”

  Ayelet picks at leftover mac & cheese balls, artisan quesadilla bites and peanut spring rolls.

  Conor hits the red medicine—pinot noir.

  Xavier creates a Twitter hashtag to combat the hoax.

  Jordan fetches the Swiffer and pushes the glass pieces together.

  Just as the chants dissipate, a brick shatters the middle living room window and strikes the base of Jordan’s neck as she bends to pick up the broken glass. To keep from falling and cutting up her whole body, she sacrifices her hands. The shards slice her fingers and shred her palms.

  A solo chant accompanies the brick:

  “CON-NOR YARD PER-PE-TRATOR!”

  “CON-NOR YARD PER-PE-TRATOR!”

  “CON-NOR YARD PER-PE-TRAITOR!”

  Chapter 3

  “Daydreaming.”

  The Stalker whispers the word. It cuts his daydream short. He snaps back to the present moment and the drizzle that mars it.

  The North Berkshire house is wired for audio and video. The Stalker created a fake contracting business, won the bid and picked the team that renovated it. So tonight he listened in as police took statements and EMTs treated the yoga prof. He creeped along the side of the house and eavesdropped on a detective’s chat with Gladys. She professed ignorance regarding her brick attack.

  The North Berkshire PD stationed a rookie cop in front.

  Inside, husband and wife vacuumed the bloody glass and washed the floor. Connor passed out seated upright on the leather sofa. Ayelet beached herself on the bed.

  This is a major success.

  The Stalker disrupted the housewarming party, pitted the town against the target, sunk the target’s spirits and harmed the relationship between the target and his boss. Back at the Annex in D.C., Maisie, Bud and Arun hollered congratulations. They told the Stalker to get his car in the woods and come home.

  “I’m not ready,” he said. “I need to study the dead man while he’s alive.”

  The Stalker spins his wheels in the backyard.

  Such a gifted man needs to be challenged; this hippy shithole hardly keeps him awake.

  The overgrown Christmas trees in the woods are stupid. The aged hippies on Main Street are stupider. The four stupidest words in the English language are “North Berkshire Community College.”

  And the local stupidity is extreme. When the Stalker caught his black fleece sweatpants on the fence, Gladys and the idiots called him a bear. His bear walk won raves at the Annex. Maisie texted surveillance camera gifs.

  A good laugh on the job is important.

  But his team shouldn’t make it a hobby.

  The Program’s record is 99/99. Test targets have fallen from Venezuela to Yemen to Iran. Each one was eliminated in a week’s time. No conventional assassin has achieved such a record of success. That’s why the Stalker is one of the youngest regulars on the Georgetown circuit. He has discussed foreign policy with Barack and Michelle, who flinched at his zealous patriotism, as well as a dozen Republican senators, who, he must admit, seemed deathly allergic to nuance and complexity.

  The Stalker plays in the Big Leagues. Where The Powers That Be make the Big Decisions. And I got there by Doing the Work.

  That’s why he submits himself, tonight, to the backwardness of North Berkshire.

  He spies on Ayelet. Not quite Sleeping Beauty. Undeterred by the brick attack, the pregnant hippo left the bedroom window open. She masturbated herself to sleep in ten minutes; usually it takes fifteen.

  Party prep exhausted her. The disturbance and walkout stressed her. The brick attack scared her.

  But not enough…

  “Tomorrow, dial it up on Ayelet,” he texts Maisie.

  Via the dining room window, the Stalker spies on the Phony.

  Connor’s demon, insomnia, haunts at this hour. Tonight, though, the Phony chased his demon away with a 1.5 liter bottle of pinot noir. He had to. His fraudulence was called out. The Phony faced consequences for his action
s.

  The target is a malignant narcissist. He’s grown skillful in the dark art of skirting justice. The stalker is so tempted to climb in and slit the phony’s throat.

  Couldn’t be easier tonight, considering the exposed throat. The Stalker wouldn’t have to bend his knees or back. Killing Connor would avenge injustice and prevent suffering. Damn shame that the rules of the game prohibit it. Maisie would see the deed and dissolve in a fit. Jasper, the Boss, would be told. The Stalker would face censure and potentially lose control of the Program.

  No. We’re committed to our work. Unlike Connor, we play by the rules.

  So the Stalker studies his sleeping targets. For a long moment. No daydreams, no interr—

  CLINK.

  He startles.

  RATTLE.

  He reaches for his weapon.

  THUD.

  He pivots and aims at a teenage boy on his knees. Three more THUDS. Fuckers hopped the chain link side fence. Teenage hands fly high at the gleam of the gun in the moonlight. They freeze.

  “Don’t shoot, man.”

  Shaggy hair. Baggy clothes. Working class. One boy humps a backpack; he wears it on his front.

  The Stalker puts his finger to his lips.

  The first Fence Hopper asks, “Guy, yo, you pervin’ out back here?”

  “I’m a concerned citizen investigating a crime,” the Stalker whispers. Low pitch. “Why are you here?”

  “Mofucka in there, Colin Yard, hurt people bad. HACKTIVATE tweeted at me.”

  Hmm…

  Maisie, at the Annex, getting too ambitious, trying to do too much.

  “Got Molotov cocktails, yo,” says the backpack holder. His long fingernail taps glass. He tilts the bag and liquid swishes.

  Throw a firebomb in the master bedroom and Ayelet’ll die and lose the Stalker’s baby. Throw one in the dining room, with the right velocity, and Connor will burn. To be sure, Connor deserves to burn, but he’s already scheduled to die this week, in an emotionally torturous fashion, his whole fraudulent life imploding in a planned demolition.

  Nope. Firebombing the house feels extreme and reckless. These kids are fools who would actually get caught. In a heartbeat they would blame the Stalker.

  He nods toward the master bedroom. “Wifey signed a deal with Showtime,” he says. “If she gets hurt, it’ll rain heat on you.”

  The kids’ passion wanes. He doubts they had it in them. But who knows? They gaze on his rain-soaked black-clad Adonis body. They exude wonder and fear. They’re scared shitless of him.

  “If Connor’s guilty as charged,” the Stalker says, “spread the word. Rally the community. Rise up. Take his job. Take his family. Do this”—he indicates the Molotov cocktail—“burn him, in a civilized way. So no good people like you end up rotting in prison.”

  The argument convinces the kids. The Stalker’s zeal scares them. They tell him to keep the bottles. They hop the fence and run.

  The moon wanes. Birds warm-up the membranes that vibrate to produce songs. The Stalker checks on Ayelet and Connor one last time. She snores lightly. He swims in alcoholic unconsciousness.

  I’m done.

  To keep his unborn son safe, the Stalker reaches in and closes the bedroom window. Then he drains the bottles in the bushes and scales the backyard fence.

  He falls flat on his heels. The impact aches. He feels depleted. What good is his elite strength training if exposure to a bad guy like Connor runs him down?

  Quarter mile south. One mile east. That’s the trek.

  Behind the fence, a line of ageless trees, two-to-three deep. Mere feet past them, the dropoff to the lake. Steep decline, dirt and rock bearded by vines and roots. The size of the lake unnerves him. So does the uneven surface of the dry terrain.

  Roots, rocks, liquor bottles, even needles. Always a risk of twisting an ankle or tumbling to the water. Bears among the roots. Snapping turtles on the lake bottom.

  Fuck this. The Stalker will go the other way. Avoid the lake.

  Walk north, cut east a good mile, bisect the road, travel south to the car.

  His phone vibrates like mad but he ignores it. He chances upon a hiking trail, which deviates a bit from the edge of the lake, but decides to try it.

  Smooth trail. Heavily-traveled. Moonlit.

  He’s fine here.

  His boots keep to the path but his mind strays. On an obsessive loop, he reviews the week’s self-improvement schedule:

  Tuesday: plastic surgery consultation/Dr. Palmay; Mandarin lesson/Susie

  Wednesday: cosmetic dentistry/Dr. Tepel; gestalt therapy/Nick

  Thursday: performance enhancement/Bill; Mandarin lesson/Susie

  Friday: cognitive enhancement/Cara

  Saturday: sex coaching/Denise; off-book weapons training/Rino

  Sunday: mindfulness practice/Genpo; swagger coaching/Da Marquis

  (Flying in from Paris, Da Marquis promises to “potentiate” the Stalker’s “alpha male magnetism.”)

  An average week in The Way of Transformation. Nothing special. Following this regimen is how a man earns the balls he’s born with.

  Day gets restless and breaks free. Birds riot in song form. It occurs to the Stalker that he was distracted. He should have encountered the road a half hour ago. He has no idea where he is.

  Apparently, emotional connection to a target hacks away at IQ.

  He finally consults his phone. Maisie texted him thirty-six times. What he’s more interested in, though, is latitude and longitude.

  The stalker is right where he started.

  He looks straight ahead: humongous Christmas trees and Connor’s spiked wooden fence.

  Frustration boils over. With all his strength, The Stalker punches his thigh. He considers hopping the fence, kicking in the back door and decapitating Connor.

  To get it over with.

  And to be sure.

  Chapter 4

  Ayelet dreams of Marcello, her lover, freak among freaks: supersoldier physique, Roman god’s prowess, endangered animal’s libido. Marcello satiates a primal hunger in her. Every square inch of her body, inside and out, craves him. Funny how these cravings compel her to screw the only man around, Connor. Of course, she fantasizes about Marcello during the act. Then the freak fucks her in her dreams.

  She awakens pooled in sweat and secretions. So disappointed it was only a wet dream, so heartbroken at reality’s intrusion, so annoyed by the stuffiness of the room.

  She thought she left the window open…

  The bad facts of Ayelet’s current situation infiltrate her mind like the morning sun infiltrates the bedroom.

  Labor Day was ruined. North Berkshire hates her. An asshole—Gladys, anyone?—attacked the house and sent Jordan to the hospital.

  Baby kicks Mommy’s belly good morning.

  “Good morning to you, too,” she says and rubs the kicked flesh.

  She texts Marcello and teases him with the story of last night.

  Connor runs in to kiss Ayelet goodbye.

  “Good luck…” she says.

  She brews coffee and re-lives her wet dream:

  Pregnant lady tied to the bed-post, blindfolded and dripping oil. Marcello hovers, caresses and whispers. Like always, he says and does the right things. Equally important, he avoids saying and doing the wrong things. Nothing else to it. He coaxes her to the ultimate destination. Orgasm of body, mind and soul. Ayelet’s whole world contracts and writhes in orgasm.

  But she’s awake now, making coffee.

  She met the freak eight months ago.

  Isla, an old friend from the law firm, took her bridesmaids on a cruise. As the ship navigated the Bermuda Triangle, a chiseled slab of Mediterranean gorgeousness approached Ayelet. Dark eyes, dark hair, tan skin. Sculpted face, chiseled body. His conversation made Ayelet so hot she excused herself. Marcello asked her to his cabin. She wiggled her ringfinger. “Call your husband,” he said. “Ask his permission. I’ll speak to him if you’d like.”

  She called b
ut kept the phone.

  Connor said, “Why not, babe? You only live once.”

  She was outraged. She wanted Connor to flip out. Instead, he was happy for her. He liked that his wife was desired. So she went for it and forgot about Isla and the other bridesmaids.

  Connor picked her up at the pier. They got stuck in traffic. Fucked right there and did it every day for a week. She conceived ten days after the cruise, give or take. Ayelet’s sure it’s not Marcello’s.

  Her lover happens to be the polar opposite of her husband, the yang to Connor’s yin. If you mashed them together into one person… Damn. Marcello often travels to New York on State Department business. A text in June led to a call led to a date. Connor, pissy, told her to go. She appreciated his reluctance but went anyway.

  The rest is the stuff dreams—wet dreams—are made of.

  Like always, Ayelet compartmentalizes this mad lust for her lover and begins the day.

  She splashes milk in her coffee, sets her breakfast on the coffee table and nestles in the sofa and its pillows. She eats her Greek yogurt but bringing the spoon to her mouth fatigues her arms. The new sofa comforts her. Excessively. Sleep pulls her back in with the force of a black hole. Resistance is…impossible.

  She ships off to dreamland.

  Marcello reappears. Ready to pose for the cover photo of a romance novel. Shoulders, chest, arms. Unbelievable. He’s so wide with muscles and dexterous below the belt. As she told her girlfriends, Marcello isn’t her husband’s match down there. But what he does with his gifts, well, that’s unmatched.

  He casts his spell. Returns Ayelet to her destination, until a ringing sound pierces the bubble of her dreamworld and distracts her from her pleasure. Marcello hears it and covers her ears—

  Doesn’t work.

  Ayelet opens her eyes.