Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,63

He’s about to log off when he sees he’s received a text from Lorna Bartell Adams. Just wanted to tell you…the top line begins. This is why he should keep his phone with him at all times; he’s forever playing catch-up. He clicks on the icon to read the rest of it. Just wanted to tell you that all is well here. We had a nice long talk on the drive home and Monday we’re setting up an appointment with the dean. Thank you again. XX Lorna

He considers answering this, but in the end he doesn’t. What would he say, anyhow? I’m surprised you even bothered writing since supposedly I am such a—

He pushes back from his desk and rises and goes to the living room. Afghan, phone, three empty beer cans, carryout menu, potato-chip bag. He puts everything in its rightful place. Not for the first time, it occurs to him that he really should take care of all this before he goes to bed every night. But somehow, at the end of an entire day of doing everything he was supposed to he just runs out of enthusiasm.

How come what went wrong with us ended up being MY fault? What on earth do you imagine I—

He gives his head a little shake. Move on, for Christ’s sake. Lorna is over and done with. All of them are—Zara too, and Adele, and finally Cass. He ought to feel liberated. He does feel liberated. Lorna so tediously self-righteous, Zara so obsessed with The Dance (as she called it), Adele with her precious endangered species. (“Are you sitting down?” she would ask before announcing the demise of some rare breed of butterfly. Even though she was right there in the room with him and could see for herself that he was indeed sitting down. “Are you ready for this?” she’d ask. Like someone laughing at her own joke, instructively, before beginning to tell it.) And Cass: Well, there’s a lot about Cass that he could find fault with, starting with the fact that she has been completely dishonest about what she was expecting from him. How was he to know what she expected? He’s not a mind reader!

He frowns down into the wastebasket where he’s just dropped the potato-chip bag. Then his phone rings, and he takes it from his pocket to check the screen. Unfamiliar number.

He answers. “Tech Hermit,” he says.

A woman asks, “Tech Hermit?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes,” he says.

“So, I have this dilemma?” she says. Her voice is young but not that young. She ought to have given up on the rising inflection by now. “Sometimes something just quits on me? Like this program I’m running? And then I get this note on my screen offering to report it for me?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Well, do I go ahead and say yes or is that just inviting trouble.”

Ironically, her one actual question has no question mark at the end.

“Why would that be inviting trouble?” Micah asks.

“Because they might steal my identity?”

“Excuse me?”

“My identity. It might be a plot to steal it.”

“Nah,” he says.

“No?”

“Not a chance.”

There’s a silence, as if she’s debating whether or not to believe him.

“You should be fine sending a report,” he tells her, “but don’t bother doing it if it’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

Anyhow, he very nearly adds, there are lots worse things than losing your identity. Right now he almost feels that losing his own identity would be a plus.

“Okay, thanks,” she says finally, and she hangs up.

Doesn’t ask if she owes him anything, not that he’d have said yes.

He takes the wastebasket to the kitchen and dumps it into the garbage container underneath the sink. Tomorrow is collection day, but he doesn’t have enough garbage of his own to fill a single bag, even.

His next call comes some time later, while he’s idly flipping through the Sun at the kitchen table. “It’s Arthur James,” a man says. “Do you remember me?”

Micah says, “Um…”

“You set