Read Dead Man's Cell Phone for Free Online

the last one with him.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    And why was that, Jean?
    Â 
    JEAN
    A coincidence.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    Gordon didn’t have coincidences. He had accidents. There’s a difference.

    The phone rings.
    Give that to me.
    She rips the phone out of Jean’s hands.
    Oops—missed the call!
    Is his picture of the Pope still on it? From a business trip to Rome. Those mobs at the Vatican, waving their cell phones, stealing an image of the Pope’s dead face, and Gordon among them. I can still hear him laughing, I have the Pope in my pocket. There it is. Dead Pope. Oh, I feel sick.
    The phone rings again.
    I’m going to bury it. Like the Egyptians.
    Â 
    JEAN
    No.
    Jean gestures for the phone. The phone keeps ringing.
    HERMIA
    Yes, in the ground, with Gordon. There was this Belgian man very recently in the news and the undertakers forgot to remove the cell phone from the coffin and it rang during the funeral! Just went on ringing! And the family is suing for negligence Jean—for negligesh —you have to bury it, see—to bury it—very deep so you cannot hear the sound.
    The phone stops ringing.
    Are you ever in a very quiet room all alone and you feel as though you can hear a cell phone ringing and you look everywhere and
you cannot see one but there are so many ringing in the world that you must hear some dim echo. Nothing is really silent anymore—and after a death—an almost silence—you have to bury it bury it very deep.
    Â 
    JEAN
    I’m sorry, Hermia, but I can’t let you do that. Gordon wanted me to have his phone.
    Hermia hands Jean the phone.
    HERMIA
    Do you know what it’s like marrying the wrong man, Jean? And now—now—even if he was the wrong man, still, he was the man—and I should have spent my life trying to love him instead of wishing he were someone else.
    Â 
    What did Charles Dickens say? That we drive alone in our separate carriages never to truly know each other and then the book shuts and then we die? Something like that?
    Â 
    JEAN
    I don’t know what Charles Dickens said.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    What good are you, Jean. You don’t even know your ass from your Dickens. Oh, God! Two separate carriages and then you die!
    Hermia weeps.
    JEAN
    Hermia. There’s something you should know. Gordon wrote you a letter before he died. There were different drafts, on napkins,
all crumpled up. The waiter must have thrown them out, after the ambulance came, but I read one of the drafts.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    What did it say?
    Â 
    JEAN
    I forget exactly. But I can paraphrase. It said, Dear Hermia. I know we haven’t always connected, every second of the day. Husbands and wives seldom do. The joy between husband and wife is elusive, but it is strong. It endures countless moments of silent betrayal, navigates complicated labyrinths of emotional retreats. I know that sometimes you were somewhere else when we made love. I was, too. But in those moments of climax, when the darkness descended, and our fantasies dissolved into the air under the quickening heat of our desire—then, then, we were in that room together. And that is all that matters. Love, Gordon.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    Gordon knew that?
    Â 
    JEAN
    I guess he did.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    Well, how about that.
    Years of her marriage come back to her with a new light shining on them.
    You’ve given me a great gift, Jean.

    Â 
    JEAN
    I’m glad.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    What can I give you?
    Â 
    JEAN
    Nothing.
    Â 
    HERMIA
    You gave me back ten years of my marriage. You see, after I learned that Gordon’s “business trips to Rome” equaled him, trafficking organs, I couldn’t bring myself to—. You know—people never write into Cosmo about how sexual revulsion can be caused by moral revulsion—they just tell you to change positions.
    Â 
    JEAN
    Organs?
    Â 
    HERMIA
    Oh, yes, Gordon and his organs—
    that’s funny Gordon rhymes with organs, how is it I’ve never