Listening

Today, I watched a video about how facebook may be listening to our conversations.

Something similar happened to me a couple of months ago.  I watched a youtube video about WGT, a gothic / industrial metal festival in Germany.  People interviewed each other in German. Even though I didn't understand a word, I was enthralled with it.
The next day, when I turned on Netflix to watch a show with some mumbly-mouthed actors, I clicked on the subtitles option.  To my surprise, German was listed as my first subtitle option instead of the usual first option, English.  It made me wonder if someone had been listening in on my phone, and also what privacy loss I'd agreed to.
It inspired me to write a story about someone else who listened.  This is one of my only writing pieces without anything supernatural happening.  Maybe I'm growing as a writer, or maybe I was just bored. In any case, let me know what you think.

Listening

 Astrea Taylor 

All rights reserved

People are boring. Most conversations revolve around weather or tv shows. Sometimes I catch someone talking to themselves or singing a little song. Those are my favorites, especially when they say something silly.

“Come on babycakes. You got this!”

That was Charice Clairmont, in Austin, Texas.

But that’s not why I’m listening. I’m listening because I can.

The level of inscrutiny at my job was amazing. Of course, I’d gotten it through family connections. My dad and the CEO grew up together, and it’s only natural to take care of one’s own. But being VP of Customer Clarity at Clarity Cellular didn’t have many perks besides this – listening. Listening to the lives of all of those around. 

Everyone signs their rights away when they sign their contracts. They all know it. They all hope no one takes advantage of it. But of course, we did.

When I’d first gotten the job, I was told I didn’t even have to show up to get paid. So, I didn’t. I shopped, took walks in the woods, and ate lunch at Cherries or Tudor’s.

I got lonely, though. Something was missing. I felt stuck. The world can be a vacuous place when you don’t have another rich best friend. And my husband, Chris, still had to work.

I suppose he got tired of me moping around the house and waiting for him to get home. He suggested I show up to work one or two days a week to take my mind off my ‘existential drama.’ I reluctantly agreed.  After all, I was a little curious, and apparently, I had my own office.

On my first day of work (technically), I got up early, slid into a pencil skirt and a pink crème blouse, and drove my BMW to work. I walked around my big, beige office. For six long hours, I ordered office furniture (an ivory sofa and pink puffy pillows) and opened company emails. I looked out the window at the other highrise skyscrapers. I drank coffee made by the department assistant and took an online training. But it didn’t help. I still felt empty.

I went to see a sound engineer I bumped into on the elevator. Josh swiveled in his fancy black leather chair before showing me around the areas I was supposedly in charge of. Everything was so foreign – the people, the reports, the work…

Our last stop was the soundproof research room. On the wall hung a computer screen that was bigger than my television. Josh controlled a mouse on the desk before it and a panel appeared.

“And then he said I offended him.” A woman’s voice came over the speakers.  “Can you believe it?”

“Well, I’m glad you told him the truth,” another woman said. 

I glanced at Josh. “Is this a real phone call?”

He nodded.

“Why do you have access to this? I mean, is it legal?”

 “Of course.” He clicked on a tab and the phone number showed up along with a name and a map. “You just entered the world of Ms. Keisha Drake. Looks like she goes to college at Harvard.”

I leaned forward, my palms on the desk. I watched the sound waves bounce along as their conversation continued. My fingers inched toward the mouse. I clicked the same button he had, the one marked Random. The call switched.

“…from the Nashville Memorial Hospital, please give us a call back…”

According to the information on the screen, the call came from that hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.

Click.

“…got into the cookie jar again. He’s supposed to be on a diet…”

Mary Baxter, in Davis, Ohio.

Josh grinned. “I’ll leave you to it.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out the software. That first day, I listened to so many conversations, it made my head spin. I no longer felt bored or without purpose. I felt filled with energy. It was almost as if I had a new personality.

Chris saw it too, later that night. He walked in from the garage and set down his briefcase. “Someone had a good day at work.”

I nodded and embraced him. He was right. Working did help me. 

I went back to work the next day, and the day after that. I was never on time, but I usually brought lattes for Josh and the other underlings. After a little morning chitchat, I went to the room and listened to more conversations. I laughed at jokes and shook my head at some of the stories. I even listened in on my friends, and on Chris’ calls. It was nervewracking, and my heart beat so fast. I kept thinking they’d hear me breathing, or know I was there somewhere. But they never did. All was silent from my end.

I did catch some juicy gossip.

“Can you believe Heather is pregnant?” Marissa had asked Beth.

But that was it. And at least they didn’t speak ill of me. Not that I heard, anyway.

By the second week, I’d gone into work almost every day. There was something about listening that gave me objectivity, like seeing a therapist who told you you weren’t crazy. It was a relief somehow. It cured me of my emptiness. Perhaps it filled me with something else. Contentment? Relief by comparison? I don’t know. 

In any case, I clicked around the program until I knew all the ins and outs. All except one button, that is –TR5-87. Every time I listened to it, it was different – a highway, footsteps, a muffled converation, dishes clanking. . . I wondered if it was a test program that was glitching.

And then, I heard it. The unmistakable rasp of a woman enthralled in pleasure. Her heavy breathing, gasps, and whimperings came across the line like electricity.

I stiffened. The slap of body slamming against body jolted me. My body responded with an increased heartbeat. To my surprise, my muscles clenched.

A man groaned. “Fuck. Yes, yes!”

A cold shaft of ice pierced my heart. My hand scrabbled for the mouse. It couldn’t be – not him. I clicked around the program, hands shaking, until I saw the number. But even before I saw the name, I knew who it was.

Chris.

A map said he was in the Clairmont Hotel. I covered my mouth with my hand as tears spiked my eyes.

They were done now. He joked about baseball, of all things. He didn’t even like baseball! But that was his number, and that was his name on the far corner of the program.

I swallowed hard and shut off the system. I needed to get out. The walls were too close, the air too tight. I’d been working too much. I ambled out of the research room toward my office.

Josh approached me in the hallway. “You okay?”

I leveled my head forward and didn’t acnowledge him. I couldn’t make human contact. I’d break down right there, in front of other people.

I grabbed my purse and keys, maintaining my façade until I was in the parking garage. But once my car door shut, it was over. Something else took over. Something angry.

I barely knew what I was doing, but I started up the BMW and drove straight for the Clairmont. I sped through yellow lights and cut corners, and even edged through pedestrians once. I had to get to the hotel. I had to see it with my eyes.

Eleven minutes later, I pulled into the valet loop and parked. I ran inside. I started at the bank of elevators, willing it to be untrue. As I waited, my tears fell on the gold and red-patterend carpet.

Thirty minutes later, when the elevator doors opened and Chris walked out with a coworker, something inside me died.

“Liz!” Chris dropped his coworker’s hand and rushed to me. “What…”

“Goodbye.” I turned to walk out of the hotel. He yelled something behind me. He even grabbed my arm.

“I can explain!”

I pulled my arm back. I wasn’t listening to him.

Chris moved out that week while I was at work. I holed up in my office, shades drawn, drinking black coffee and staring at the walls. Even when Josh knocked on my door and tried to cheer me up with a gif on his phone, I barely cracked a smile.

After Chris had cleared out half of the house, I thought about never going back to work. I could mope around all day lamenting the piano, or his book collection. But I knew I had to get out. I couldn’t stand to be in the house. I kept hearing Chris’ voice, kept seeing his face. Kept hearing that rasp of his coworker.

I spent a few days shopping for clothes for the next season. After all, if I was going to be a single divorcee, I needed new clothes.

Eventually, I did go back to work. I spent another day of solitude in my office, ordering new accoutrements.

The next day, I wandered back to the research room. I ran my hand over the desk and gazed at the silent, black screen. Something about the room seeemd off, as if it were bigger or colder than before. I thought about the stupid TR5-87 button. If it hadn’t been for that, I never would’ve found out about Chris. But my life wouldn’t have been any better. I’d be living a lie, and that seemed worse.

Sleeping alone was cold and cruel. I felt unsafe, as if a burgular would break in at any moment. On impulse, I bought a condo and made arrangements for my things to be moved ASAP. It made me feel a little better. But there was still something missing.

I knew I needed to to go back into the research room. Listening was the only thing that made me feel normal.

When everyone else had left for the night, I turned on the screens and clicked the Random button.

“I miss you too. It’s so lonely out here in Seattle. I can’t seem to make any friends. The people here are . . . different.”

“I can’t wait for you to move back.”

Gerie Glass. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

I wiped the tears from my lower lashes. Not that anyone would see them. Just because.

One tear is a slippery slope. If I gave in, I’d have ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, or maybe ten thousand.

I clicked the Random button again. I didn’t dare listen in to Chris’ phone line. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I just listened to stangers, trying to make the best of their worlds, listening for the hope in their voices. 

After a week of listening, something changed within me. I started to feel positive emotions again, that life could be wonderful again. Josh was so nice. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. His intense brown eyes said it all, from his strange habit of smiling at me to the way he subtly glanced at my decolletage. I didn’t act on it. It was prohibited in the company policy to date. But it was delicious nonetheless.

Maybe it was Josh, or maybe it was time that healed me, but six weeks after I uncovered Chris, I found the courage to push the TR5-87 button again. Listening to conversations was comforting, and this was too. The sound of being jostled in a purse or pocket as someone walked down a crowded street in Manhattan was reassuring. I’d hear snippets of talk, or little courtesies, like the man who said, “excuse me” just about every block, or the woman who sang a little song completely in meows. People could be charming after all. Those were the ones I stayed with, the ones that healed me.

But something still gnawed at my brain. I knew there had to be more people cheating, and I had the power to discover it. I could be a sort of undercover Jane, or a superhero. The masked woman tells the truth again!

I scanned the numbers and listened to the ambient sounds. Whenever I heard the distinctive slurp and slap of sex, something lit up inside me. I opened my laptop and looked them up on Facebook. It was easy to tell if they were married. All I had to do next is use the software to ping their significant other’s phone. The first eighteen times, they were in the same location.

Until, one time, they weren’t.

Two weeks into my adventure, I heard a woman moaning. I glanced at her information.

Elissa Elliot, Hotel Verdant, in Kissimme, Florida.

She was married to Mark Elliot. I opened another tab on the screen and searched for Mark’s location. My eyes widened when I saw he was in a ski resort in Colorado.

I’d finally found a cheater.

I hadn’t actually planned what I’d do in this situation. I glanced around the room.

What should I do? Should I call him? Or call her? What would I say? “Hello, this is the sex police…”

I picked up my phone with sweating hands. I blocked my number, my fingers fluttering over the keys as I typed his number in and then a text.

Your wife is at Hotel Verdant with some guy.

Three seconds later, a response popped up.

Who is this?

I glanced around the room at the soundproof walls.

A friend.

From the speakers, I heard Elissa laugh, and a man chuckled too. Then I heard the slip of clothing as someone got dressed.

When I left the room and slid into my BMW, adrenaline jolted my system. I’d done it.

That night, I slept in my condo like the dead.

Since then, I’ve revealed ten cheaters, reported twenty-five drug deals to the police, sent five emails to people desperately in need of singing coaching, and saved one woman from domestic abuse. I may not be much, but I’m making a difference. One call at a time. All I have to do is listen.