Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

One of his ex’s major gripes was that he’d spent too much time down in their basement with his “mad scientist’s projects.” Fran also claimed he was kind of a control freak. Ed knew he was guilty on both counts. He certainly liked to be in control of things.

He just wished he had a bit more control of his bladder right now. And he wished every other man in Nordstrom hadn’t suddenly decided to use the restroom the same time as him. Both stalls were occupied with two customers waiting; and both urinals were in use — with a guy and his toddler son in line ahead of him. It was a pee-shy sufferer’s nightmare.

Ed would have preferred a stall. But things naturally moved faster at the two urinals. The dad and son didn’t waste any time. So, reluctantly, Ed took one of the urinals.

At least he didn’t have to pee standing next to anyone. But he felt pressured to hurry up and go while he was still there alone. He played a mind game that sometimes helped him get started, reciting in his head: “You’re a two, you’re a four, you’re a six, urinate...” But it didn’t work. He heard all this activity behind him as toilets flushed and the guys waiting for the stalls took their turns. The two other guys washed their hands and left. There was a hush. Then, by some Christmas miracle, Ed started to pee.

“I’m serious, I’ve been invited to five Christmas parties this weekend!” someone announced as he breezed into the men’s room. The guy was right behind Ed when he spoke.

Ed was so startled, he stopped peeing in mid-stream.

The man stepped up to the urinal beside Ed’s. He spoke so loud, his voice seemed to echo off the bathroom tiles. “The way I figure, I’ll just Uber the whole night, because I’ll be so wasted by the last party...”

Ed stole a glance at the man. He wondered who the hell this clown was talking to. Was there someone in back of them?

No. The guy was on his goddamn phone.

This is why I hate people , thought Ed. He still needed to pee, but he’d temporarily gone bone dry.

“Well, Lloyd’s is B-Y-O-B, but I’m not bringing anything. I won’t be there very long,” the guy said — over the loud drone of his stream hitting the plastic pad for the urinal cake. Obviously, he had no pee-shy issues. With his baseball cap on backwards, he looked like a cocky jerk. He was in his late thirties and had a slight resemblance to Jason Priestley — if someone had taken a bicycle pump to Jason Priestley and inflated him. Ed figured he was a jock gone to seed.

Ed heard a woman murmur something on the other end of the line.

He gave up trying to pee. He couldn’t take any more of this.

“Oh, yeah?” the guy said into his phone. “Well, three guesses how I feel about that.”

Ed zipped up and flushed. “SERIOUSLY?” he said loudly. “DOES THE WOMAN YOU’RE TALKING TO KNOW YOU’RE PISSING IN A PUBLIC RESTROOM RIGHT NOW?”

Rude Jason Priestley squinted at him. “What’s your problem, man?”

“You are! You’re my problem! I’m trying to take a pee here, and you’re carrying on a phone conversation! Could you be any ruder?” Ed swiveled around and saw some twenty-something guy had just stepped into the restroom. The young man stared at him as if he were completely insane.

“No, it’s nobody,” Rude Jason said into his phone. “Some crazy guy here in Nordstrom. No, I’m not in the restroom. I’m in Men’s Shoes...” He headed for the door.

“HE DIDN’T FLUSH AND HE DIDN’T WASH HIS HANDS AFTER HE PEED!” Ed announced loudly, so the guy’s girlfriend could hear.

With the phone to his ear, Jason flipped him off as he left the restroom.

Ed was livid. He still needed to pee, but knew he couldn’t. And both stalls were still occupied. Besides, he didn’t want to hang around the men’s room any longer than he had to. He hated confrontations. And nowadays, the least little conflict could end up in a mass shooting. Rude Jason could be lying in wait for him outside the restroom.

So Ed made a beeline from the men’s room to the exit doors.

All the way home on the light rail, he was seething. He couldn’t help notice how everyone around him was wrapped up in their mobile devices. It was a crowded car, and he found only two other people — a couple — who weren’t focused on their phones. But they had their phones in their hands. Before Ed got off at his stop on Capitol Hill, he saw those last two holdouts start to check their mobile devices, too.

Walking home, he realized practically everyone he passed on the street — couples, people walking alone, people in groups — they were all on their phones. Ed felt like he was in some kind of Orwellian nightmare. He was the only person in the vicinity not on a phone or wearing some kind of head-phone device. Most of these people seemed ready to walk right into him if he didn’t step aside. People with dogs were the worst. They were supposed to love their dogs, yet during the one time they did something for their pet, they were on the phone, ignoring the poor animal — and taking up the entire sidewalk, too.

He figured maybe this was a Seattle thing — especially in his neighborhood, populated with so many young tech types. Or was it like this everywhere?

As an inventor, he used to think cell phones were a modern age marvel. But when they first started to get popular in the nineties, Ed noticed the people who used them seemed like self-important assholes. Look at me, I have a cell phone , they seemed to say. He remembered the ones in his local video store, browsing the new releases and chatting loudly on their mobile devices — annoying everyone else in the store.

For a while, people on cell phones were like smokers. They were annoying, but they were a minority. Now everyone had a phone. There was no escaping them. Even when people weren’t supposed to use their phones — at the movies, while driving their cars, in locker rooms or bathrooms — they still used them anyway. It was like the rules didn’t apply to them.

As far as Ed was concerned, cell phones should have stayed something that people used only for emergencies. They shouldn’t have become a way of life.

He wished he could invent some device to discourage people from using their phones, at least in situations where it was inappropriate. Maybe he could come up with a remote control mechanism that would scramble the phone signal. But would that really stop all the rude, phone-obsessed people out there?

“Ed, you’re certifiable,” claimed his friend, George. Another divorced retiree from the railroads, George was one of those gray-haired ponytail guys. They’d been best friends for twenty years. George lived on a houseboat on Lake Union.

It was late February, and George sat on a step-stool in Ed’s paneled basement “lab.” After weeks of trial, error and experimentation, Ed was ready to test his cell phone “Intruder,” a small gadget he’d fashioned to look like a remote keyless device for a car. Ed made himself the Guinea pig. He had four different brands and models of phones on the table in front of him. On each one, he would call his home number (Ed still had a landline — with an answering machine from the nineties). And while Ed was on the phone, George would click the device at him. Then they’d see what happened.

“I don’t feel good about this,” George said, frowning at the gizmo in his hand. “When did you come up with this little gem? Three in the morning? Nothing good ever happens after midnight, my friend. You were probably half-asleep when you put this together. I know it’s just supposed to scramble the signal, but what if something goes wrong?”

“That’s why we’re doing this — to make sure nothing goes wrong when I actually use it,” Ed explained. He picked up the Samsung. “And I do my best work after midnight. Remember, you’re sworn to secrecy about this. I really appreciate it, buddy. Afterwards, I’ll take you out for pizza and beers — on me.”