Andrew Lorenzen: OFF-SCRIPT • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Andrew V. Lorenzen
OFF-SCRIPT

Long before the fall, before the riots and the unrest, long before it all really began, I experienced a bout of insomnia while backpacking through Southern Asia and began to illegally phone bank voters in Florida in the wee hours of the night. This was when we had elections, and elections had phone banking. You would call a voter on their phone, usually their home phone, and remind them of the existence of a system of government wherein you exchanged money and votes for security and a pretty little flag. In doing so, you would remind them that they really ought to vote for the particular person you liked best, and after explaining when and how and why to vote for that person, some of them actually would. Others would curse at you, hang up on you, or make off-putting sexual remarks with varying levels of sincerity. This was called campaigning in a system of government called democracy in a place called the United States.

It was illegal to phone bank from outside of the country, but these laws were barely enforced and I was wealthy enough for my parents to pay a lawyer to ensure that in the unlikely event any law would actually be enforced, I would not be subject to such enforcement. So, on the nights when I had insomnia, I’d go down to the hotel bar, if the hotel had a bar and if the bar was open through the bowels of the night, and order a tall seven and seven with plenty of ice and dial voters in Florida to convince them to turn out for Senator Ratcliffe.

Senator Ratcliffe was the kind of politician that the country was once quite fond of—tall, handsome, and discreet with the war crimes—and he was running against another kind of politician that the country was increasingly quite fond of—tall, handsome, and indiscreet with the fascism. This was an unprecedented election within unprecedented times, and I believed it my duty, having been trained at the finest schools, to educate others on their failure to understand the stakes of their decision.

The Ratcliffe campaign, like all campaigns in those days, employed a particular script wherein one would greet the voter, feign interest and compassion in their lives, before a delicate yet forceful turn to the real business: telling these silly geese to go to their polling places and exercise their civic duty. It was essential to stick to the script—this was impressed upon all volunteers for the campaign—as the improvising skills of the college educated rarely engendered confidence. Yet before the script could begin, the conversation was often curtailed by the voter hanging up, either due to their realization that the inexorable decline of the country’s fortunes had long since been decided as a result of a decades-long investment in providing the stupidest, the most close-minded among us with the tools to share with the world the shallowness of their beliefs through broadcast television and the internet, thereby convincing others of the merit of their stupidity or, even more impressively, convincing those sharp enough to see the ridiculousness of their ideas that the days of intelligence and moral decency were long gone and they really ought to get with the program and mouth breathe with the rest of them, beginning a long death spiral of governance that would lead to previously unimaginable levels of suffering within a country used to inflicting such suffering on foreign lands rather than at home, or because they were busy and telemarketers were annoying.

In any event, I would sip my seven and seven, and say something like, “Hi there! Is this Sergio Rodriguez?” And I would wait a moment before adding, “Hello? This is Ricky. I’m calling with the presidential campaign for Senator Ratcliffe—” and before I could continue, the line would go dead, along with a small piece of me that once closed my eyes during the pledge of allegiance in primary school in conflation of its procedure with prayer due to the presence of the confounding words, “one nation under God.”

From there, I would click to the next person in the app and dial the number and patiently wait for them to hang up on me and then take another sip of my seven and seven and dial another voter and they would hang up and I would order another seven and seven and I presumed, naively, that some day I would die a quick and painless death. It was a rather unpleasant affair, but this was before I tried therapy and the combination of the calling and the drinking would eventually help me to fall asleep, sometimes right there at the hotel bar, my cheek sticking to the marble countertop through the adhesive properties of spilled soda.

But there was one voter who gave me a conversation to remember. Late one night in Manila, in a luxe five-star resort opaquely named “The Experience,” owned by an American conglomerate that otherwise produced breath mints and psychoactive painkillers, one puzzlingly insistent on shoving the color orange down each guest’s throat—orange walls, orange furniture, orange cocktail napkins—there was one woman who woke me up. And all these years later, after all that’s happened, I still remember Mrs. Flaherty. As it happened, I was calling for a Mr. Joseph Flaherty, who the app informed me was forty-six years old, with a primary residence in Boca Raton, a place of resplendent white beaches and people.

“Who’s this?” a woman’s voice inquired upon answering the call.

Not particularly caring who was talking, I launched into my script, “This is Ricky. I’m calling with the presidential campaign for Senator Ratcliffe. I wanted to ask you today if you’ll be supporting—”

“I’m going to have to ask you to start again,” she said.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, remembering to feign politeness. “Could you not hear me? The connection—”

“You’re not letting me finish. I’m going to have to ask you to start again because you don’t sound happy.”

At this, I was unable to find a proper response in the script.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Ricky,” I told her once more.

“Well, Ricky, I’m a happiness director.” She paused for a long moment, perhaps expecting this statement to possess an emotional impact. This was common in those days: to define oneself and all those around you by your employment and its ability to pay for expensive items, such as designer clothing and stocks and MRI scans, thereby contributing to the economic dominance of the American capitalist market. “It’s my job to make sure others are happy, you understand? So when I receive a call and the other person sounds so unhappy—”

“I sound unhappy?” I asked.

“Entirely,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Now, I do want to hear all you have to say. I cannot wait to hear all about…”

“Senator Ratcliffe.”

“Ah, Senator Ratcliffe. Such a lovely name. Rat-cliffe,” she said, luxuriating upon each syllable as I gestured to the orange smock-wearing, septuagenarian fellow American barkeep for another seven and seven. “I find names fascinating, don’t you? You can tell so much from a name, by how a person says their name. You can’t choose your name, but you can choose how you say it. The intonation. How you say a word is more important than the meaning of the word. Take the word: fuck. You know that word, Ricky?”

“Um, yes,” I said, struggling to suck my seven and seven through a suicidal paper straw.

“Naughty word. Curse word. Yet it doesn’t really mean anything by itself, does it? It all depends upon how you say it. I can say: FUCK! Like I’m angry, like that, you see. Or I can sigh and say: fuck. Like I’m exhausted and ready to give up. Or I can say: fuuuuuuck. Like I’m having the most terrific orgasm of my entire life. It’s all…context. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, Ricky, is that when you said even just your name, your very beautiful name which I’m sure your mother put so much thought into when she birthed you, I could tell you were not happy. And that made me very sad, Ricky. So I’d like to hear your whole speech again, your whole routine…But this time more happily. You understand? I want you to be happy for me, Ricky? Can you do that? Can you be happy for me?”

At no point during this monologue did I consider, even for a moment, hanging up. I was entirely enraptured, captivated, drunk. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be happy for her. “Yes,” I told her. “Yes, I can.”

“Go right ahead, my dear.”

“Hi! Is this—”

“Nope. Try again.”

“Hi! I’d! Like! To! Speak! To—”

“You sound as though you’ve been diagnosed with testicular cancer.”

“Hi! I’m Ricky! I sure would love to speak to you about Senator Ratcliffe! As a young person, I believe Senator Ratcliffe stands for me, and I—”

“No, no, no, no…This isn’t working. You’re not—”

At last, my frustration came to the surface. “You won’t even let me finish!”

“I’m not sure this is going to work.”

“What the hell even is a happiness director?” I asked her. This woman was no savior. She held no wisdom. She was merely some corporate stooge, like I would be within a matter of six months when I inevitably capitulated to the gravitational pull destroying the best minds of my generation—Deloitte, McKinsey, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She had a 401K, an HSA, and crippling anxiety. She was just another one of us. She was no one.

Yet she immediately provided clarity. “I direct the happiness. What part of this do you not follow?”

Her clarity was insufficient. I replied, “Well, that cleared it right the fuck up.”

“Language, Ricardo!”

“Ricky. Who even is this?”

“You don’t sound happy, my dove.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m not real happy at the moment,” I said, ripping the fucking carcass of the straw from my seven and seven and sipping straight from the glass like a goddamn animal. “Wait, dove?”

“Not happy? That’s a tragedy.”

I grew exasperated. “Maybe I should just hang up.”

But immediately, she lowered her voice and said, “Don’t go.”

“What?”

“Please.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t go.”

“Why?” I asked, quietly, casting a stray glance at the barkeep falling asleep mid-polishing a glass.

“Because I don’t want you to,” she said.

“And why…um…why should I care about that?” I said, keeping a professional distance. I had received an hour of training by the Ratcliffe campaign, after all. I was a man of integrity. I’d gone to university and been sober through significant stretches of it.

“Because that’s all any of us want, isn’t it?” she said. “To be wanted. If just for a moment. To be needed. Tell me, Ricky, does anyone in your life want you? Does anyone in your life need you?”

“Of course, I have people who—”

“Name them.”

“What?”

“Say their names,” she said.

“Um, I don’t have to tell you anything,” I said. Who did she think she was? A person? If I was to hang up the phone, the string between our two cans would be instantly snipped. She’d cease to have a voice. She’d cease to live. I possessed her life in my sticky hands—and like Schrödinger, I’d take it if I damn well pleased.

“Is your loneliness why you’re unhappy?”

“I’m not unhappy,” I said. In those days, I’d not yet discovered the depths of joy or despair. I plumbed my days in a state of merry ambiguity, cutting through this world like a lukewarm knife through nothing at all.

“Mhm,” she said.

“I’m not unhappy,” I said. “I just—”

“Don’t use that word,” she said, sighing into the phone with frustration.

“What word?”

“Just.”

“Why?”

“People say ‘just’ to downplay what they want. To make it seem smaller, more palatable, more proper. Nobody ‘just’ does anything. People do things. They shit. They fuck. They kill. Now, tell me what you are calling about, Ricky! Not ‘just’ what you’re calling about.”

I straightened my spine. I cleared my throat. “I want to talk to you about Senator Ratcliffe.”

“Why?”

I thought for a moment. I realized, with great fear, that I genuinely believed the words I was about to say. “Because he’s…a good man. I think he’d be a good presid—”

“You have no joy. Why would I care that you—”

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!” I bellowed, sending the barkeep’s glass flying from his hand and a hot wind through the dark void that separated me from this strange woman.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, RICKY?!” she bellowed right back.

“I asked you first!” I said, leaning upon my years of experience as captain of my college debate team.

“Hm, you do have me there,” she said. “Maybe I care about you very much, Rick. Maybe as I went about my day today, I had a feeling like someone was going to reach out to me. A stranger. A loner. A friend in need of a helping hand. And maybe I wanted to give you that helping hand. Maybe I’m the savior on your list of telephone numbers. Maybe I’ve just risen from the yellow pages like Christ from the cave to save sinners like you.”

“I don’t need your—”

“Or maybe you’re unlucky. Maybe I’m mad as a hatter! Maybe I’m a serial killer. Maybe I have a dead body in front of me right now…Maybe I’ve murdered my husband, Joseph Flaherty. Maybe he never made me very happy. So I killed him. Maybe we met in the second grade when I asked to borrow his yo-yo. Had our first kiss in the seventh grade. Rounded second base in the ninth. Home on prom night. Maybe we got married soon after that. Madly in love. Maybe I got pregnant and lost the baby. Our love faded. He drank. I slept around. Until one day, I awoke tired and bored and sad. Until one day, I awoke and opened up my keepsake box to find that old yo-yo from the second grade, and as he slept, I wrapped the string around his neck and pulled and pulled and pulled until he was…”

“Please stop,” I said. The tone in her voice was too somber, too clear. I sensed a truth somewhere. A truth I was not yet ready to know.

“No, you like this, don’t you? And maybe that’s why I’m doing this…Maybe I like the sound of your voice, Rocky. Maybe you woke something up in me when you called. Maybe I felt it in between my legs. ‘Hello, is this Joseph Flaherty?’ Maybe, maybe, maybe…Maybe I think it’s sexist you actually believed that. How dare you, really? To think of me like that…You’re imagining ripping off my clothes. You’re comparing me in your mind to the other women you’ve been with, the women you’ve seen on television, trying to decipher my cup size from the tenor of my voice. You don’t even know me. You’ve never even met me. And you never will, you sick puppy.”

“I wasn’t—” I said, now imagining her body.

“Or maybe this is all one big gag. Maybe I fashion myself an old Katharine Hepburn type. Maybe I’m just pulling your leg, seeing how far I can pull it before you start to scream in pain, before it pops off like an old Ken doll. Or maybe when you called, I decided to earnestly consider Senator Ralph. Maybe I’ve been shopping for snake oil all day, and your man sounds like he has the best. Maybe I’ve been waiting all my life for the right snake oil salesman. Maybe I’ve been waiting for the right volunteer to call and convince me to turn out to the polls—”

I returned to the script. “Well then, I’d like to remind you that your polling location is—”

“You sound dead inside.”

“Why do you have to keep—”

“WHY! That’s the question, isn’t it? Why? Why? Why? Why should a little old lady like me vote for Senator Ricky?”

I stared down at the melting ice of my empty seven and seven. Somewhere beyond this hotel was a real city with real people living real lives. There were young men and women dancing in clubs, wandering down dark and winding streets, colliding into one another, fighting, fucking, drowning in the rain. There was a world out there, and here I was: talking politics. “I am not the Senator,” I clarified.

“Why, Senator?” she continued.

“To reiterate: I am not the Senator.”

“WHY SENATOR?”

“Come on, I’m just a—”

“JUST.”

“Jesus Christ.” My Protestantism had long since lapsed, except for during the take-offs and landings of airplanes carrying me to distant lands, flinging oodles of pollution into the air that would someday choke the lungs of my great-grandchildren and for moments such as these, when I found what precious few social skills I had remaining insufficient to meet the herculean challenge of basic human conversation.

“He can’t help you now,” she said with cooing sarcasm. “Why should I vote for you?”

“Because….Because I told you to, dammit!”

“There we go! Now, we’re talking. Tell me who to vote for.”

“Senator Ratcliffe. Vote for Senator Ratcliffe.”

“Come on, Senator, make me. What are you going to do for me?”

“He’s running on a platform that advocates for—”

“No, no, no, don’t give me the nuts and bolts, give me the sky, Senator, the sky and all the pie we can eat.”

“He’s—”

“Who?”

“Senator Ratcliffe, he’s—”

“Who?”

I looked about my surroundings. The barkeep was preoccupied sweeping up the shards of broken glass scarcely visible against the burnt orange floor. Across the lobby, a German couple dressed in matching plaid shorts were checking in at the front desk and requesting an upgrade to a CityView Suite Supreme. Outside, the rain was falling harder, angry with us all.

I whispered into the phone, “I’m going to change things for you.”

She drew a long breath, sucking it through her teeth like hot soup. “Say it like you mean it.”

I glanced around, wary, and whispered once more, “I’m going to change things.”

“You sound more like things are going to change you.”

I slammed my fist down on the bar and sent my glass tottering to the ground. “I AM GOING TO CHANGE THINGS!” I yelled, ignoring the furtive glances of the German tourists and the exasperated expression of the barkeep.

“There we go! That’s our man! Now, that I can believe. How are you going to change things?”

“By…changing them,” I replied with great confidence.

“Because you know how.”

“Yeah. That’s right. I know how.”

“Because only you know how.”

“Only I know how.” And in this moment, I was certain of this fact. I was one-of-a-kind. None had studied as I had studied, suffered as I had suffered, cared as I had cared. I could change things. I was the man to change things. And damned was anyone who questioned that fact.

“Because you understand us, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“You’re one of us, ain’t you, Ralphie?”

“I’m one of you.”

“You’re a real one. Not like all those phonies. You’re one of us. And we’re good people, fine people, aren’t we?”

“The greatest there are.”

“The absolute greatest, aren’t we?”

“The greatest,” I said, my heart clogged with pride and plaques.

“See and you get that. You get us.”

“I get you.”

“You don’t look down at us, not like all those other ones, you talk to us like we’re the same.”

“We are the same.”

“Except you’re special.”

“That’s right, I’m special.”

“You’re the one we’ve chosen.”

“I’m the chosen one.”

“For president.”

“For president,” I said, ready for my inaugural address and war and infidelity scandal.

“God bless America.”

“God bless America,” I agreed.

There was a long silence on the line. I looked down, with a feeling nearly approximating guilt, as the barkeep swept up my broken glass. I caught my reflection in the mirrored bar—two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, and a gaping void where something was supposed to be. I was appropriately dressed, neither too formal nor informal, in the fashionable athleisure expected of me. My hair was styled as the trends demanded, kept current and neat and expensive. I wore one of the watches that signaled sophistication, a touch of money, yet not too much ostentation. I was a man like any other. I was wholly indistinguishable. If I rose from my chair and strangled this barkeep, this man from Tulsa or Harrisburg, this man with a family and a dalmatian waiting for him at home, if I strangled him to death and walked out the hotel door, the German couple and lobby clerk would have no ability to describe me to the police. They would shrug, perhaps scratch their heads, and say, “He looked about the same as anyone else.”

“Are you happy now, Ricky?” Mrs. Flaherty asked me.

And as I hung up the phone, staring down at the remaining shards of glass the bartender’s broom had missed, hearing the distant fall of rain beyond the sanitized jazz of the hotel lobby, I found myself shaking. I found my whole body shaking with fear. Something had broken, I’d realized. Something fundamental had broken, and it would never be repaired.

Andrew V. Lorenzen attained an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He was named a 2024 Marshall Scholar and is now pursuing graduate degrees at the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh. Lorenzen’s work has previously been awarded a Marvin Carlson Award and a Heermans-McCalmon Award at Cornell University and has been published in The Nation, Cleaver Magazine, L’Esprit Literary Review, The Miami Herald, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. To learn more about his writing, visit: www.andrewvincenzolorenzen.com