Joe Victim: A Thriller

I think about. If all goes well I’ll be out of here tomorrow anyway. It could be days or weeks before Adam brings me that sandwich. Any number of things could have changed in that time. He could die. I could be free. The nuclear bomb I told my lawyer about might happen. All I know is that right now I have to make this phone call. Nothing else matters.

“I understand,” I tell him. “But the phone call has to connect, and if I’m disconnected I get to ring back. What I’m talking about here is a phone conversation. If I ring and nobody answers, that’s not the deal.”

Adam slowly nods. “I’m a reasonable man,” he says. “I can go along with that.”

I turn my back to him. I phone my mom. It takes her a minute to answer. It’s as if in the time I was gone she went for a walk into the lounge and got lost.

“Hello?” she says.

“Mom, it’s me.”

“Joe?”

“Yes. Of course. Listen, Mom, I need you to—”

“It’s Joe,” Mom says, calling out to Walt.

“Joe? Ask him how he’s doing.”

“Joe, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing great,” I tell her. “Listen, Mom, I need you to do me a favor.”

“Of course, Joe. Anything.”

“He calling about the wedding?” Walt asks

“Are you, Joe? Calling to tell us how much you’re looking forward to that?”

“I just called two minutes ago to tell you that.”

“I know that, Joe. I’m not an idiot.”

“So is he?” Walt asks.

“An idiot?” Mom says to Walt.

“No, is he calling about the wedding?”

“I don’t know,” she says to him. “He won’t answer me.”

I lower my voice. “I’m not calling about the wedding again,” I tell her. “I need you to call my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend? Why would I do that?”

“Do you have her number?”

“Yes, of course I do. I wouldn’t be able to call her otherwise. Are you bringing her to the wedding? Oh, Joe, I’m so pleased! It’s time you found a nice woman. I was getting worried, you know. And your girlfriend reminds me of how I was back then. She’s very attractive, Joe. Of course I’ll call her and invite her along! What a wonderful idea!”

“Okay, great, Mom, that’s great, but I also need you to tell her I got her message.”

“What message?”

“She’ll know what I mean.”

“Hang on, Joe, let me write this down,” she says, and there’s a clunk as she sits the receiver on the table and shuffles off. Nothing for about a minute and I become increasingly concerned she’s either gotten lost or has fallen asleep or has got distracted by the TV. I twist my head and look at Adam who’s grinning at me. He taps his watch and winds his finger around in the air. Wrap it up.

Scuffling as the phone is picked back up. Mom is back.

“Joe? Is that you?”

It’s not Mom. It’s Walt. “How are you doing, Walt?”

“I’m doing fine. Weather report says it’s supposed to be fine all week now, but you know what weather reports are like—they’re like fucking your sister in an elevator.”

“What?”

“Wrong on many levels,” he says, and he starts to laugh.

“I don’t get it,” I tell him.

“It’s elevator humor,” he says. “It suggests having sex with your sister is okay on some levels. That’s what makes it great. I used to repair elevators. Didn’t you know that, Joe? That’s what I did for thirty years. Boy, we’d tell that joke all the time. Though it wasn’t always your sister. It could be your brother, or your dog or your aunt.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Just for a laugh. We didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No. I mean why would you say it about my aunt?”

“People always need elevators,” he says, “aunts and uncles too.” I wonder where the hell my mother is getting a pen from. The moon? “Buildings get bigger, elevator shafts get longer, more wear and tear. I wouldn’t want to be doing it these days, mind you. Too complex. Too much technology. Back then it was all about cables and pulleys, now it’s all about electronics. You gotta have an engineering degree in rocket science. There was this one time, ooh, let me think, twenty, maybe twenty-five years ago when Jesse, he was this neat kid who got his arm caught in one of the . . . Oh, wait, hang on,” he says, then his voice is muffled as he holds his hand over the receiver, and then he comes back on the line. “Your mother is back,” he says. “Don’t tell her the joke,” he says, then disappears with his joke and with his Jesse arm story.

“Joe? Are you still there? It’s your mother,” Mom says.

“I’m still here,” I tell her.

“Now what’s this number I’m ringing?”

“You have the number,” I tell her. “For my girlfriend.”

“Yes, of course, I know that. I just want you to repeat this message.”

“I need you to tell her that I got the message.”

“I. Got. The. Message,” she says, writing each word down. “No, Joe, what’s the message?”

“That is the message.”

“You’re saying the message is I got the message?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Does that mean you got the message or I got the message?”

“It means I got the message,” I tell her.

“What kind of message is that?”

“I don’t know, Mom, it just is what it is.”