Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Why don’t you call them?” asked Ally Kravitz.

NoJacks, I said.

Onscreen, Emmanuel was addressing the scholars. He pointed east, then pointed north. Samuel leaned, seeming to protest. Emmanuel shrugged. The cops hadn’t moved.

“They’ve all got NoJacks?” Josh Berman said.

The ones who I know, I said.

“I fucken hate NoJacks.” “I hate NoJacks, too.” In the gym, we cursed NoJacks til Emmanuel revolved again.

Hands cupped at his mouthsides, he hollered to the cops. The mike on the camera barely picked it up; what it did get got garbled into frying sounds.

“STAND DOWN,” said the mike-cop, when Emmanuel finished.

Emmanuel hollered: more hisses and hums. This time the cops, when Emmanuel was finished, started to argue among themselves.

Emmanuel raised his hand, waiting for something.

The cameraman started to speak in a whisper: “The studio’s telling us that our microphone’s failing. The network apologizes… To catch you up: The boy at the front yelled out to officers that he intended to ‘lead his friends to the two-hill field’ and he asked that the officers please get out of his way so that ‘we won’t have to walk on your cars and dent them.’ Some ten seconds later, he seemed to change his mind, and he told the officers that because they ‘seem like nice men who probably have families and need to keep your jobs, which maybe you’ll lose if you don’t stand your ground, we’ll just walk around you while you stand your ground, and your cars won’t get—’ There they go.”

Emmanuel turned right and the scholars turned with him, and as all of them headed toward the top of the screen, away from the camera. The cops stayed still, slouching in the street, and one of them was actually scratching his head. They continued like that for about twenty seconds, til the cop who’d manned the mike turned and looked in the camera, then pointed it out for the others to see, and they all came charging, batons still gripped, bigger and bigger.

The camera angled downward, 90 degrees, and evergreen needles, tinily icicled, filled the whole frame before the screen blacked.

Cut to newsroom.

The pursed-lipped anchor, caught offguard, eyes squinted to papercuts, straightened his face out and started to talk. Who knows what he said? The scholars beat the cops, we were cheering our heads off, jumping up and down, cheering so loud that I could barely feel Botha’s celly vibrate, let alone hear it. Its screen read: UNKNOWN.

I hit the green button, shouted, Hold on!

I ran out to B-Hall to pretend to negotiate.

Persphere? I said.

“This is Roth,” said a man.

Really, I said.

“We exchanged letters, you and I, a little over a year ago.”

What did mine say? I said.

“Yours?” he said. He said, “Mostly, it talked about Operation Shylock —nice things — and then went on to tell a story about some boys who were sexually obsessed with Natalie Portman.”

What else did it say?

“Is this how you want to spend our three minutes? Verifying?”

I wrote an essay for class once where I talked about our letters, I said. Maybe the cops got hold of it and read it. And don’t sweat the three minutes: I’m the one who decides how long we talk — not the cops.

“No,” Roth said, “I decide. Two more minutes, I’m hanging up.”

You sure you’re Roth? You sound a little more patrician — a lot more patrician than—

“Patrician, he says, the boy who thinks cops want to read his essays.”

I didn’t mean it mean.

“Boychic, we’ve got very little time here, and what I want to tell you is you should let these kids go. This stunt you’re pulling’s sealed fame for you forever, or at least a few years, and now it’s time to give up peacefully. Everyone knows someone else killed the gym teacher — they’re playing that video left and right — so you won’t get pegged for anyone’s murder, and on top of that, they’re telling me you have ADHD, and I’m sure a good lawyer like your father can spin that into something bigger — temporary insanity, something like that; maybe the school nurse forgot to give you your meds, who knows? You’re not a hard case, though, not by any means, so even if they lock you up, it’ll be somewhere safe, and you’ll write your books, and hopefully they’ll outshine this moment and you’ll live it down. If you can’t live it down, you can always grow a beard and use a pseudonym. It’ll all work out if you end this now.”

Do you think you’re bad for the Jews? I said.

“ This conversation? Really? This one?”

Okay, I said.

“Okay what?”

I’m starting to think you’re actually Roth.

“So what do you want from me?”

Nothing, I said.

“So why’d you want to talk to me? Surely not just to hear what you already know, let alone in so dismayingly patrician a baritone. There must be something you’d like to discuss in the remaining ten seconds you’ve been alotted. Unless maybe you’re a stalker? I hope you’re not. I didn’t take you for a stalker when you sent me that letter — I wouldn’t have responded if I—”

I said, I’m really sorry I bothered you, Mr. Roth. I didn’t want to talk to you. I like your books too much to want to talk to you, and you have my word that I’ll do everything I can to forget what you sound like when you’re speaking.

“You didn’t want to talk to me.”

You’re hard to get a hold of. You bought me fifty-something minutes.

“You’re being serious, now.”

If I didn’t have a girlfriend who might have taken it wrong, I’d have asked them to get Natalie Portman on the phone.

“So I bought you some time. So what happens next?”

We’re past three minutes.

“Don’t be a wiseass. What happens next?”

Next I’ll talk to Persphere, or whatever he’s calling himself. Do you think his accent’s real?

“You’re asking the patrician-sounding Jew about accents?”

That was just an observation I made — I didn’t mean it mean.

“You said that already.”

Well it’s true, I said. I just thought you’d sound different, like…

“Like?”

It’s hard to describe now. Like Groucho Marx, I guess, but not as fast.

“Like a first-generation American Jew. Not shtetl, but tenement.”

Maybe, I said.

“Like my parents instead of ‘what’ said ‘vot.’”

That’s taking it too far. Forget Groucho Marx. I thought you’d sound hairier.

“Hairier?”

Much, much hairier. And more verklempt. Less amused and more willing to attack, less concerned about what he sounds like than what he says — like those guys with hairy shoulders who wear U-shirts cause it’s hot out and function trumps form.

“U-shirts,” he said.

Dago-T’s, I said.

“I know what a U-shirt is.”

Please stop being offended, Mr. Roth. You’re my favorite writer and what I’m telling you is I thought you’d sound like my father, who doesn’t, by the way, have hairy shoulders, but does wear U-shirts when it’s really muggy, and would wear them when it was muggy if he did have hairy shoulders. I thought you’d sound like my father, who I love, is what I’m saying.

“This being the lawyer, Judah Maccabee, goes to bat for civil liberties.”

Him.

“Who I don’t in fact — you’re telling me now — sound like.”

Not on the phone, but who cares, Mr. Roth? Who cares what you sound like on the phone? Who cares about anything you do off the page? You’re a writer.

“You’re a writer, too. Obviously you want us to care what you’re doing. The taking of hostages, if nothing else, demands that others care about what you’re doing.”