Joshua Ferris - To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

She sat down and Googled the passage. It returned no exact matches.

“Not from the Bible at all,” she said. “Looks to me like somebody’s fucking with you.”

“Somebody is fucking with me,” I said.

“Now that,” she said, “is a Jewish thing.”

At 11:34 a.m. that morning, I wrote Seir Design:

I’ve been waiting since Friday for you to reply to my email. I assume that people making their living in the IT sector check their email with great regularity, since people in every sector check their email with great regularity. It’s upsetting that you have failed to respond. This is an urgent matter. Someone has stolen my identity. With your help. As far as I can tell, YOU have stolen my identity. Please be advised that if I do not hear from you, I will report you to the Better Business Bureau.

Please reply ASAP.

“The Better Business Bureau,” said Connie. “The kids on Facebook are going to love that one.”

“Do you have another suggestion?” I asked.

Fifteen minutes later, I wrote again:

Is this Chuck Hagarty, aka “Anonymous,” the guy into me for eight grand in bridgework? One man should not have this kind of power over other people’s lives. But as you have so expertly demonstrated in the past, that’s how things work on the Internet, eh, Chuck?

“Betsy’s done with Mr. Perkins.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m coming.”

Please explain the quote from the Bible and why it’s on my bio page. I don’t appreciate being associated with any system of belief. I’m an atheist. I don’t want people thinking I run some kind of evangelical operation here. A mouth is a mouth. I will treat it to the best of my ability, no matter what variety of religious horseshit might later come flying out of it. I consider that bio a personal attack on my character. Have it removed or you will hear from my lawyer.

“Dr. O’Rourke?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Perkins is waiting for you.”

This was Betsy. “I know about Mr. Perkins, Betsy. I will be with Mr. Perkins as soon as possible, but as you can see, I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“What I see is you on the Internet,” she said. “I didn’t know the Internet was more important than Mr. Perkins.”

“I will seat Mr. Perkins’s veneer when I’m good and ready, Betsy. Please mind your own business.”

After seating and shading Mr. Perkins’s veneer:

I don’t need these kinds of distractions when I’m trying to seat and shade a difficult veneer. Maybe you’re dealing with an emergency. I could imagine a scenario in which your kid’s sick and you need to run him to the doctor. But come on. You know as well as I do that you’d have your phone with you, and probably your computer, and you’d be fully operational in the waiting room, because you’re no longer able to sit in the waiting room and not check your email no matter how sick your kid is. I know, I have a waiting room, I see it happen all the time. Even in the emergency room, you’d be texting and emailing and tweeting about how your kid was in the emergency room and how worried you were. So odds are you have read my email and you’re just choosing not to reply. Which is unacceptable. I’m on the Internet all day long and I’m not even in IT.

My relationship with the Internet was like the one I had with the:). I hated the:) and hated to be the object of other people’s:), their:-) and their:>. I hated:-)) the most because it reminded me of my double chin. Then there was:(and:-(and;-) as well as;) and *-), which I didn’t even understand, although it was not as mystifying as D:< or >:O or:-&. These simplifications of speech, designed by idiots, resulted in hieroglyphics of such compounded complexity that they flew far above my intelligence. Then came the animated ones, the plump yellow emoticons with eyelashes and red tongues suggestively winking at me from the screen, being sexy, making me want to have sex with them. Every time I read an email with a live emoticon, I’d feel the astringent sexual frustration ever threatening my workaday equipoise, and the temptation to yank off in the Thunderbox while staring down at the iPad was broken only by the hygienic demands of a mouth professional. I swore never to use the emoticon ever… until one day, offhandedly and without much thought, I used my first:) and, shortly thereafter, in spite of my initial resistance,) became a regular staple of my daily correspondence with colleagues, patients, and strangers, and featured prominently in my postings in Red Sox chat rooms and on message boards. I was defenseless against the world’s laziest and most loathsome impulses, defenseless against the erosion of principle in the face of technology. Soon I was incorporating:(and;) and;(too, and, after that, the live emoticons, and now, without any intention of ever reducing the enormity of my human emotions to these shallow shortcuts, to this typographical juvenilia, I went around all day reducing them and reducing them, endowing emoticons with, and requiring them to carry, the subtle quivering burdens of my inner life… and I was still unsure how and when it happened. Even as I stood indignantly hating the emoticon for its facile attempts to capture real emotion, I was using it constantly. It wouldn’t have caused me such grief if my repulsion and eventual capitulation to the emoticon had not mirrored my larger struggle with the Internet itself. I tried my best to fend off the Internet’s insidious seduction, until at last all I did — at chairside, on the F train, supine upon the slopes of Central Park — was gaze into my me-machine and lose myself on the Internet.

Which is to say that, after emailing Seir Design, and even as Mr. Perkins was waiting, I took a moment to surf the Internet, clicking when I found something worthy of clicking on… Taliban Assault—… Rebel Gains—… Weak Ec—… Red Sox Kick Into High Gear… South Sudan Declares—… Adele Debuts—… Bangla—… BoSox Making Big July Impression… Prosecutors Seek—… Insure again—… Hot Girls Showing Off There Legs in Heels… Like Us on—… Protect Your—… Free Shipp—

“Dr. O’Rourke?”

It was Connie. “Yes?”

“Abby says something’s off with Mr. Perkins’s veneer.”

“Why can’t Abby come and tell me that herself?” I asked. “Why can’t Abby tell me anything?”

“You intimidate her,” she said.

“Intimidate her? We sit across from each other all day long!”

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” she said.

I went and tended to Mr. Perkins. There was nothing wrong with his veneer.

You want to know the irony here? My staff has been telling me that my desire to avoid the privacy risks and the ugliness of the Internet and blah blah blah could never be endangered by a little shop-around-the-corner website that told people when we were open and how to reach us. But guess what? My privacy concerns look pretty damned justified right now on account of a little shop-around-the-corner website! That you made! So how about you fucking respond!

“Dr. O’Rourke?”

It was Betsy. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to intrude on your schedule like this,” she said. “I can see how busy you are. I just wanted to let you know that I am done with Mrs. Deiderhofer.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Betsy?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry I was short with you earlier. I’m on edge.”

“Why are you on edge?”

“Have you forgotten about that website? Have you forgotten that my identity has been stolen?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Let’s not blow things out of proportion.”

“Why aren’t you more disturbed?” I asked. “They went to the trouble of finding your high-school-yearbook picture.”

“I have never minded that picture.”