Buzz

Site Admin Joined: 22 Jul 2006 Posts: 25

"Buzz" is the first story I ever had published and (so far) the only one written in second person. It's short, weird, and plotless. "Buzz" originally appeared in the March/April 1998 issue of the magazine "69 Flavors of Paranoia".

Buzz

James Viscosi

You all hate the beeper. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Especially when it goes off at a movie or at a party or, God forbid, during sex.

That’s why you all like it when it’s Beverly’s turn to take the thing. Beverly never seems to want to give it up. If it weren’t company policy that call be rotational, she’d probably keep it all the time. That would suit the rest of you just fine.

Beverly has the worst luck, too. Every time she has the beeper, stuff goes wrong. The computers crash, circuit breakers blow, cables mysteriously work themselves loose. Over the course of a typical week of call Beverly progresses from her usual prim bright-eyed self to a haggard, sleep-deprived wreck. Granted, supporting all these people is busy work, but, jeez, you worry about her sometimes. She seems to be working herself to death. And if she dies, who’s going to take the beeper when you want to get away on a holiday weekend?

You can remember when she hated the pager just as much as the rest of you do. She called it by its unaffectionate nickname, “Screaming Mimi,” and joked about flushing it down the toilet or baking it into a pie. That was before her husband ran out on her, though. Left her for a chick (you aren’t a bunch of sexists, but “chick” is the only way to describe her) in his dental practice, a big-breasted young hygienist in starched white pants. Kent over in legal used to go to Bev’s hubbie to get his teeth cleaned and his vivid description of the girl’s bodily gyrations lives in male office legend.

Anyway, the chick and Beverly’s former husband long ago departed for warmer climes. Since then Beverly has become this workaholic creature who never dates, never takes vacations, never evinces any particular interest in anything that takes place outside the hallowed white halls of the computer department. Sad, really. The rest of you have divided into opposing camps about it. The larger faction is made up of those of you who believe that because she has no life, she might as well bury herself in her (and your) work. The other consists of a few diehards who still try to fix her up with various male relatives, as well as one skinny fellow who keeps trying to get her to go out with him. (You keep telling him he might as well try to date a two-by-four. Everyone knows Beverly is as sexually inactive as a laudanum-snorting consumptive Victorian nun.)

One Monday, after a particularly busy weekend, Beverly doesn’t show up for work. She doesn’t call in, either. Things are in such disarray in the department that none of you give it much thought. You’re all too busy putting the system back together after three hard drive failures and a blown power supply on the server. By the end of the day you have a verdict on what happened: Sabotage. Lengthy meetings ensue. None of you get home before eight that night, and none of you spare a thought for Beverly.

Not until she also fails to show up on Tuesday, anyway.

Your supervisor tries to call her but the line is busy. She continues to call throughout the morning, with nothing but busy signals. The phone company says the line is working properly, it’s just in use, so she keeps calling and finally gets through just a little before noon. By now you’re all crowded around her telephone, listening to it on speaker. Someone picks up immediately; you can all hear shallow, ragged breathing.

Your supervisor says, “Beverly?”

Click.

Well, now someone has to go to Beverly’s house and see what on earth is going on. You’re one of the lucky ones who gets sent. (Poor lovesick Herb, who actually wants to go, is told to get back to work.) Since you’ve got a van, you’re nominated to drive. Only two of you are going so you’re not sure what the van has to do with anything, but you’ll get mileage out of the deal so who cares?

It’s a fifteen-minute drive up the highway and a ten-minute odyssey through the incestuous subdivision road structure before you finally locate the ranch Beverly used to share with her husband. Her car is in the drive. The two of you get out and go push the doorbell, but it doesn’t appear to work, so you knock. There’s no answer.

You go around back, speculating about what’s going on. Maybe somebody broke in Sunday night and tied her up. Maybe she’s drunk. Maybe she flipped out and is running around the house speaking some made-up language. Maybe she finally worked herself to death.

There’s a partially-open sliding door on the deck. A cat, presumably Beverly’s, is just inside, sitting on the kitchen linoleum and gnawing at its left back foot. It runs under the table as you enter. You’re about to call Beverly’s name when you hear someone moaning from up the hall. Feeling like interlopers in a porno movie, you creep to the bedroom. The door is ajar. Beverly is on the bed, naked. Her feet are facing you, so you can see exactly what she’s doing. She has the telephone in her left hand and the beeper in her right. She’s holding the little black plastic box right between her thighs. As you watch she pushes the redial button on the phone. A moment later the light on the beeper flashes and it vibrates for the allotted five seconds.

Beverly groans and bites her lip.

At this point your companion barges in without knocking. You stay in the hallway until the screams subside.

A half-hour later, the whole story is out: Beverly has been sabotaging equipment, starting small and working up to this weekend’s disaster. At first she’d been doing it to reaffirm her own importance to the company, but as it escalated it became an addiction or something. Her abuse of the beeper was an accident the first time, she says, sobbing with shame and fright; she was driving and fumbling with it and it slipped between her legs just as it was going off. She’s not a pervert, she says, really she’s not.

You aren’t surprised she was using the beeper as a sex toy; she’s too repressed to buy a real vibrator, too straitlaced to fool around. It’s really kind of pathetic, and you feel sorry for her, in a gleeful, office-gossip kind of way.

The company decides to press charges. The police come to take Beverly away and your companion rides with them. You take the beeper (properly disinfected, of course) and follow them to the station.

Along the way you grow curious. You put the beeper between your legs and call it on the cellular phone. It vibrates enthusiastically against your crotch.

Hm, you think.

That doesn’t feel half-bad.