The Dead Man

Chapter 1: Overture

She’s never been obsessed before. This is her first time and it’s kind of interesting. It’s like watching some psychopath in a movie, stalking someone, plotting to kill them, except that the psychopath is her. In Canada it’s not so bad — she can’t call Jake from Toronto because he’d see the area code and guess it was her. So it’s only in his country, in Israel (where she’ll be in ninety minutes) that it happens. There she won’t be able to walk by a pay phone without having to wrestle down the desire to do again what she has already done numerous times: Dial his number and then keep silent on the end of the line — an ominous, threatening silence. And then hear the anger mount in his voice as he says, “Hello? Hello? Hello?” And then, when he gets no answer,  he’ll slam down the phone with a bang so loud that it hurts her ear. When Jake’s wife answers the phone, though, it’s not anger; it’s fear. Instead of her voice getting stronger and more violent like Jake’s, Fran’s gets smaller and thinner (“Hello? Hello? Hello?”) till at the end there’s almost nothing left of it. It’s a high and squeaky-scared voice, like a mouse or a little girl. On one of the last times, though, instead of going squeaky-scared on her third hello, Fran gathered all her remaining strength and called out “Jake!” in a loud, frightened voice — calling him, Eve knew, from the phone on the kitchen counter to Jake’s study upstairs.  Then Eve hung up fast before Jake could come on the line, and stood in front of the orange pay phone on a Tel Aviv street corner, her knees trembling and her hands sweaty.

Eve looks out of the airplane window. It didn’t start out like this — as a form of stalking, or harassment, or whatever this would be considered under Canadian law. It started out just as a phone call because she missed him. She loved him and wanted to hear his voice again. But he told her not to call or write him anymore. He said this had to end once and for all — this relationship of theirs, their love, was destroying his marriage. So Eve wasn’t allowed to call him after that. But she needed him still. She needed to hear his voice just one more time. His beautiful, deep voice. Even anonymously, if that was the only way. So she started phoning...