THE PHONE
Immanuel Mifsud
The phone.
I can’t find the handset; most probably I left it in the bathroom. Maura called the moment I was going to shower. So I must have left it there.
It’s not in the bathroom.
The phone is unrelenting.
The big con of today’s (cordless) phones: you never know where you left the handset.
Ah yes, it must be on my desk. I was writing this poem at four am about this poem I was writing one morning around four am; I was totally immersed in it when suddenly the phone rang.
The phone keeps ringing. I meander through piles of books lying all over the place, towards my study.
– Hello.
– Who is it?
– I thought you left. Was just checking you’re still there.
– Who are you?
– Does it really matter?
– Oh yes it does. Who is it?
– But does it really matter?
– Are you some freak?
– I might be one of your characters. One of those you blog about.
– You read my journal?
– Do I?
– Do you?
– So I wanted to check you are still there. I looked up your name in the directory and called.
– In the phone directory? Is my name there?
– Well the online version has it.
– The online version?
– Yes of course the online version. I looked up your name and your number came up.
– And what do you want?
– Nothing. I want nothing. I simply wanted to check you are still there.
– What’s your business?
– I read your last chapter, the one you uploaded yesterday, the one describing your elopement. I wanted to check if you went away for real.
– I went away for real?
– Yes I thought you did. I read your last chapter online an hour ago.
– Why should I follow my characters? It’s fiction. I thought it was clear.
– I know but...
– Listen I don’t intend to discuss with you over the phone. You can always...
– I did already. I discussed the soliloquy in your comments section. I even proposed an alternative version.
The man on the phone proposed this alternative version. He explained it to me over the phone, while I was reading pretty much the same thing on the comments he wrote on my journal. Interesting comments, interesting alternative version.
Friday 12th September 2025
Dear Manda, I read the last part of the fiction. You want to know something? It sucks.
Friday 12th September 2025
Dear Manda, never mind what the guy above wrote. The last part is the most intriguing so far.
Saturday 13th September 2025
Dear Manda, do you think your last chapter sucks? Don’t you think that a writer, especially one of your stature, should not stoop so low as to have people – some evidently stupid – tainting their work with banal comments?
Saturday 13th September 2025
Well, some twenty years ago, when online publication was still at its dawn, no one would have written you about your last chapter. But this is 2025, and what philosophers even earlier on in the last century wrote about readerly and writerly texts, and what they wrote about the death of authors, is now being actuated. I hope you are not dead though!
Saturday 13th September 2025
Hi Manda, did you read well my alternative version of the ending? What do you think?
The phone.
I dig through a pile of books which have accumulated on my desk, trying to haul out the handset. I remember I left the hand set on my reclining chair; that’s where I sat when I was talking to a guy about the last chapter of my fiction which I uploaded a couple of days ago or so.
It’s not there. Ah yes, it must be on the table out in the garden where I was continuing the poem I was writing at four am about this poem I was writing one morning around four am.
I spill the coffee I left in the cup to get the handset.
– Hi.
– Manda baby, I thought you weren’t home.
– Where else would I be?
– On your way to…
– Yeah right. So, what news?
– Great news. The publishers would like to print the whole thing. They’ve had some requests to get a hard copy of the fiction. How many chapters do you still have to upload to finish it?
– Three.
– So you should have it uploaded within two months, right?
– Three.
– Ok, there needs to be some editing of course; it seems they have already identified an editor for you.
I light up a cigarette.
– Listen, Jake I really don’t see it.
– See what?
– Why this obsession with having a soft and a hard copy of the fiction.
I sit down on the reclining chair. I hear my agent blabbing about this and that, contracts, contacts and tours. And book signing sessions of course. I really am not sure about this. All this seems so passé. And yet…
Published in Creative Nonfiction vol 31 (2007)
