[Continued from part 1]
I left my cellphone in my car all day, this time on purpose. It needed charging soon, because the battery was low, and it needed cleaning even sooner, because it smelled of smoke. Yuck.
Later, as I was driving home after work, the phone went ping. The ping of a missed call. Or, in this case, the ping of 22 missed calls.
Missed call: Blocked ID
Missed call: Blocked ID
Missed call: Blocked ID
Missed call: Blocked ID
Missed call: Blocked ID
And so on, and so on…
22 calls in one afternoon, all from blocked numbers. Or the same blocked number. More calls than I’d usually get on that phone in a month.
But no voicemail. Just 22 calls, all hangups, all blocked.
The phone didn’t ring during the commute, and I scrubbed it clean when I got home.
At dinner with Roberta that evening, I was telling her the tale of my lost-then-found cellphone when I took the first call. We had just started debating whether “prostitutional” should be a word (because, presumably, we get to decide these things) when the phone lit up and started vibrating. It had been set on the table between us as a visual aid to the story. A prop, now turned actor. Method actor in fact.
Incoming call: Blocked ID
Normally I wouldn’t answer a phone at dinner, because that’s only not rude to people half my age. But Roberta said if I didn’t answer it, she would.
Me: Hello?
Him: Can I speak to Amanda?
Me: Amanda’s not here. She’d found my phone and was using it briefly, but she is not available at this number.
Him: Oh. … Is Amanda there?
Me: This isn’t Amanda’s phone. You’ve called the wrong number.
Him: *click*
He didn’t actually say click, he just hung up. Or if he did say click he fooled me and I hung up on him. Whichever the case, he called right back. We repeated our little comedy of errors, more comfortable with our lines now that we’d had a rehearsal, and this time I got through to him.
It was Roberta who found the photographs. Looking at the phone once we’d resumed our “prostitutional” debate, she pressed the camera button on the side.
The screen filled with boobies.
Roberta: Your camera is full of naked photos.
Me: It is? Let me see.
Roberta: No, I’m still looking. Did you take these?
Me: No, of course not.
Roberta: I choose to not believe you. Ooh look, it’s her bing-bing.
Me: You’re a child.
Roberta: Says the pimp.
Me: I’m not a pimp.
Roberta: You’re taking calls for a hooker, so you’re a pimp.
Me: It’s not like I’m booking her.
Roberta: Never said you were a good one.
In all, there were almost 50 photos of Amanda on the phone. Well, presumably Amanda. They were all pretty zoomed in. Boobs and knees and arms and feet and lots and lots and lots of vaginas.
In retrospect it was pretty obvious the photos were taken to send via SMS. Sexting is so very trendy, according to the scandalized scandalmongers on TV. But I didn’t think to look at the text messages yet. I was probably light headed from all those vaginas. When a guy gets up in the morning, he has a pretty good idea about how many vaginas he’s going to see today. Is this a zero vagina day, or a one vagina day? Believe me, a forty vagina day is unusual, even for a Friday.
The photos weren’t as surprising as the text messages I found the next day, though.
[To be continued]
