3
Emmy
Concourse B, La Guardia Airport
Two hours later
"This will never be discussed, is that clear?" I scowled.
"Yes, ma'am. Do you want my number?"
"No!" I thought of my phone issues and general computer issues. "Yes. Maybe. And don't call me ma'am. It makes me feel ancient."
The kid grinned. His braces had blue elastics.
"As long as you know I will never, ever do that again," I reiterated and winced. "But maybe I can call you to ask questions?" God, I sounded pathetic.
He nodded and handed me a business card.
"You have a business card?" I looked down.
"Sure. I'm a YouTuber when I'm not mining bitcoin. Gotta have those for cons and shit."
"Cons?"
"Conferences? Conventions?"
This day was shaping up to be the most surreal of my twenty-eight-year-long life. I read his name. "Xanderr? What kind of a name is that?"
"It's my YouTuber name. You can call me Al."
"As in the Paul Simon song?" What the hell was I going to do? I couldn't call anyone. All my phone numbers were in my contacts. I couldn't remember a single one.
"As in short for Alex? Alexander? My real name." He raised his eyebrows. "Who's Paul Simon?"
"Never mind." I shook my head. "Sure, sorry."
"Well, I don't tell anyone my real name. But I like you, Mad Emmy."
"Just Emmy." I glanced at the phone in my hand. It was now unlocked with the passcode disabled.
"Cool. So, I gotta jet, yeah?" He pulled on a cherry red cap with the peak as straight as a ruler and yanked it sideways on his head. "Good luck with the owner of that phone. My spidey senses say you're gonna need it."
"Thank you, I think."
Al gave me a peace sign and turned, lumbering away down the concourse with his pants hanging low and his high tops undone.
I grinned at his retreating figure in spite of my dilemma.
Al had put the phone back on Airplane Mode after unlocking it so I could think about what to do. As long as it was on Airplane Mode it couldn’t be tracked. Not sure what that accomplished for me except the owner of the phone wouldn't immediately assume it had been stolen and cancel it. He might think it was in his luggage somewhere.
Who was I kidding?
I glanced around the busy concourse. I needed a pay phone, but of course those probably didn’t exist anymore.
A twenty-minute walk turned up nothing, so I ended up using the phone at the information desk. I typed in the digits for my own number. My fingers were sweaty. Why was I so nervous? It was an honest mistake.
My call connected and began to ring, making my heart pound. Not straight to voicemail. So my phone was on. Maybe no one had taken mine, and it was still sitting there at the charging station.
No, I would have seen it. The only way I could have taken the wrong one was if it was the only one there. Finally my voicemail clicked on, and I heard my voice asking the caller to leave a message.
It beeped. "Um . . ." I was leaving myself a message. Seriously? "Um . . . This is my phone."
I glanced up at the information agent, an older African-American gentleman who was looking at me askance. "I mean . . . I'm calling my own phone to leave a message in case you, whoever you are, took it, or whatever. Um . . . God, this is stupid," I finished on a mumble and thrust the mouthpiece toward the information agent. His name tag read Phillip.
Phillip took it slowly and hung it up, his eyebrows raised. "Sounds like you got yourself into a bit of a pickle. Why don't you go on into the wireless store over there and get you a new one. They can keep your number these days, you know."
"I know. But I can't." My shoulders slumped. "I can't afford it right now, and anyway all my contacts and photos and all that stuff is on my phone, not backed up and . . ."
A thought struck me. Oh shit! I leaned across the counter and grabbed the phone set back and with shaking fingers dialed my number again. It rang, and I drummed my fingers impatiently.
"Please don't cancel your phone," I blurted as soon as I heard the beep. "Listen . . . I can't be without a phone and . . . I may have yours? I mean if you took mine, then I'm pretty sure I took yours. By accident. Please. I know you don't know me." My mind raced to come up with a solution. "I'm in New York now. I don't know where you live or where you were going, but if there's a chance you were arriving in Charleston, I'll be back there in three days. We could meet and swap phones back?" I blew out a breath. "I . . . please?" Swallowing, my cheeks beating with heat from my predicament, I tried again. "If . . . you don't mind I can make a couple of calls with your phone and you can use mine, I would be forever grateful. It's just . . . if you get a call or a text message from someone called David, can you pretend to be me? I mean on text, not on a call obviously, and say . . . oh jeez. God, I'm babbling. Can you just call me back if you get this? On this number, I'll wait a little while."
Phillip raised his eyebrows at me again but shrugged.
"Or on your phone," I continued. "Which I'm pretty sure I have. And I'm sure you want it back. Okay . . . okay, bye."
I handed the phone back.
"Well," said Phillip. "That was awkward."
I leaned down and banged my head with a solid thunk on the counter.
Mortified. That's what I was. Mortified and hopeless. What the hell was I going to do? I took a few steps and leaned my back against a pillar then slowly sank down to the ground. I needed to sit for a few minutes and think.
"Miss?" I jumped and turned my head to see Phillip. "Phone call for you, I think."
"You think?"
"You didn't leave him your name, so I'm assuming the red-haired hippie girl is you?"
"I'm not a hippy!" I snorted indignantly, getting up. "Wait, how the hell does he know what I look like?"
Phillip shrugged. "I suggest you ask him. And I suggest you hurry. He doesn't sound like the most patient person."
I followed Phillip to the counter. He handed me the phone while attending to another customer.
Taking it, I took a deep breath and held it to my ear. I heard muffled talking, as if his hand was covering the microphone. A man and a woman's voice.
I cleared my throat. "H-Hello?"
"Hold on," I heard through the muffled sound. Then, "Thank Christ," a male voice said loudly.
I jerked the phone away as my eardrum sang.
"Who is this?" the voice barked.
What the hell?
I cautiously brought the phone back to my ear. "If you can refrain from yelling—"
"Sorry. I'm sorry. Who is this, please?" The male voice had a British flatness to the enunciation and sounded as if the act of apologizing caused him immense pain. A vision of slate gray eyes and strong hands flashed in my mind. Oh, no.
At least he immediately apologized, which was unexpected. Also his accent was not purely British. He'd been in America for a while by the sound of it.
"Hello? Hello? Christ," he snapped. "Hello?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm here."
"Do you have my phone?"
"Do you have mine?" I asked, indignance crawling up my throat.
There was a long sigh, and I realized my error.
"Of course you do," I mumbled, embarrassed at my stupidity. "That's why . . . you, uh, got my message and called me here, on this phone."
"Riiiight. So I don't mean to be an arse, but what the hell is going on?"
I pulled his phone out of my purse. "It's still on Airplane Mode. I'll turn that off if you want to call it and check. But I'm assuming it's yours. And I'm sorry. I was late for my flight, so I only realized once I was on the plane with no time to come back."
"Uh huh." He sounded anything but understanding. "Turn Airplane Mode off. I'll send myself a text."
I tapped the airplane symbol and watched service bars come back to life. "So can I ask how on earth you managed to take my phone?" I couldn't help asking.
"Took your phone? Lady, I picked up the only phone left charging, which I assumed was mine since it was where I plugged it in. So if anyone took the wrong phone first it was you."
The phone in my hand beeped. I looked down.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Who the hell doesn't recognize their own cell phone?
My mouth dropped open.
I angrily typed back: Spoiled, suit-wearing monkeys who think screens magically fix themselves.
A puff of air, suspiciously like a short laugh sounded over the line. "Great point," he said, his voice a purr. "My apologies."
"Accepted. And . . . I'm sorry too," I said gruffly.
"Listen, we need to make a plan. I'm . . . I'm late." Feminine laughter sounded in the background again. "And for some lunatic reason you all but begged me not to cancel my phone." Clearly he was late for a date of some kind. An irrational feeling of jealousy made me frown as I wondered what type of woman this enigmatic, apologetic, temper-filled, silver-eyed, man was attracted to. Then I shook my head.
"I know, I'm sorry. I can't be left without a phone. I'm in New York City. I can't afford a new phone right now, and I didn't back mine up to the cloud. I'm home in three days, then I can mail your phone to you, and you can do the same?"
"Three days? You must be out of your mind. I'm in the middle of a deal to sell my business."
"Where are you?" I pressed on, determined to make this work. "I mean what city?"
"Charleston, South Carolina."
"That's where I live!"
"Yeah, well, you're not here now, are you, and I don't plan on staying here longer than I have to." He followed this statement with an inhalation of breath that sounded as if he'd surprised himself with his admission.
"What's wrong with Charleston?"
"It's fine. Nothing. So-"
"For real. Be specific. Why don't you like Charleston?" Stunning architecture, restaurants to die for, beaches . . . he obviously didn't appreciate the same things I did.
"That's a question I don't even discuss with my shrink."
"You have a shrink?"
"No. But I probably should have one, given that I'm sharing my secrets with a virtual stranger."
I laughed unexpectedly. "By the way, I am not a hippie." I looked up at Phillip who was regarding me with one eyebrow raised.
"He told you that?"
"He did tell me, and I did not appreciate it."
"So what's your name, Hippie Chick?"
"Emmy," I answered automatically, surprised he wasn't hurriedly ending the call for his busy schedule as he'd been ready to do moments before. "And yours?"
"Emmy," he repeated, my name sounding like caramel. "Short for?"
"Not even my shrink knows that."
He laughed, deep and smoky, and my blood warmed.
"You don't have a shrink," he said.
"I could have a shrink," I answered indignantly, though God knew why. I was smirking as we bantered. Holy shit, were we . . . flirting?
"You don't," he answered smoothly. "Besides, now that I have your phone, I could probably find out more about you than anyone alive. Even your shrink."
My stomach dropped. "You wouldn't."
"Why? What are you hiding?"
I swallowed, my cheeks hot. I looked down at his phone. "I guess since I have yours, I could do the same."
"Good luck with that, I have a code. A security detail you probably should have had on yours too."
"Good thing I bypassed that code then, isn't it?"
"That's funny."
"And serious." I opened his phone and mulled his apps. "Ugh." I couldn't help the grunt of disgust. "You have a smorgasbord of dating apps. Figures."
"Lucky guess, Hippie Chick."
"Emmy," I corrected, but somehow I wasn't as annoyed as I’d expected. I pulled open a stock ticker app to prove to him I was looking at his phone. "Why are you watching Delta Industries? Own shares of them, do you? Whoa, quite a lot of shares by the looks of it."
"Mother fucker. You're serious."
I bobbed my head back at his tone. "You have a foul mouth."
"Who the hell are you? Is this a joke?" His voice was cold. Memories of his ice-chip eyes and growl like a biting arctic wind at the airport flooded back to me.
"Excuse me?" I was genuinely confused. "Listen, Dr. Jekyll, I'm not sure what crawled inside your bespoke suit and into your crack, but you have my phone too!"
"You've bypassed my security code. So either you're a hacker holding my phone hostage, and probably employed by my competitor in the midst of a multimillion-dollar deal, or you're lying. And you're not lying, are you?"
I swallowed. I guess I hadn't really thought the whole code breaking someone's phone thing through.
"Consider that phone burned," he said and the line went dead.
I stood for a few seconds then pulled the white handset from my ear. And stared at it like I expected it to apologize. Then I handed it back to Phillip. My blood pressure rose with my anger, but I had no direction for it. He hadn't even told me his name. As if it would help me somehow, I went to his email. If I was in trouble I may as well earn it.
A ton of emails from someone called Carson. Whatever. I wasn't going to read them. I just needed my nemesis' name.
Tmontgomery @ and some long ass, important sounding extension. I didn't even look to see what the T stood for. I selected and copied.
New email.
To: tmontgomery
From: tmontgomery
Mr. Montgomery,
You are a grade A prick. Now I am in your email (you asked for it). If you cancel your phone I will leak all of your financial information.
Regards,
Hippie Chick
I hit send. Then immediately felt the kind of remorse one feels after doing something really, really bad. Or really, really stupid. Immediately, I pulled up the text app and found the message he'd sent from my number.
Sorry about the email. Please, please, don't cancel your phone. I'm in New York. As it is I haven't even left the airport yet. I need to get a cab out to Far Rockaway and need access to a phone for safety reasons, and I can't afford a new one right now. I'll bring it back to you, I swear. I'll explain how I got into your phone as long as you don't cancel it.
Dots came up to show he was typing a response. Then they disappeared.
I held my breath, but nothing happened.
"Shit," I said.
"Are you quite done here?" I looked up to see Phillip again. "It's probably time you moved on," he said. "I think you're scaring people away."
I pouted at him. "Offense taken," I responded and hefted up my purse. "But thanks for the use of the phone."
He nodded and turned to a lady who was holding an armful of enormous Toblerone bars, wandering toward the information desk and looking really lost.
"She doesn't look scared," I told him.
"Bye." He widened his eyes and wiggled his fingers at me.
"Fine." I rolled my eyes, headed toward baggage claim to get my bag, then out to the taxi stand.
I clutched Suit Monkey's phone in my hand the whole time. It was warm and noisy outside, with cars honking to get the attention of their waiting passengers. The line for taxis moved fast. My cab driver was monosyllabic, and as I sat in the backseat, I decided to at least add my number into the phone as a contact. I started typing my name, but then if he texted or called me and my own name popped up it would be weird.
I decided on
First Name: Suit
Last Name: Monkey
Company: who has Emmy's phone held hostage
Address: Douchbag Industries
Save. For some reason that made me feel better.
Then I called ahead while I still had use of a phone that hadn't been disconnected.