“I am wearing a suit made entirely out of aluminum foil that covers me from head to foot, leaving only eye holes and a mouth hole. I wear this suit to deflect radio transmissions from the National Security Agency, which is beaming commands to me through the steel plate in my head. In addition, I have roped my cat to my head, with its feet tied together so that it forms a turban and can’t scratch; its intermittent yowling also helps block the transmissions.

“I have a friend here,” I continued: “Would you like to know what she’s wearing?”

“Um, well, I—”

“My friend,” I plowed on, “is dressed up like a martini. She is wearing close-fitting white clothes, and around her neck is a clear plastic cone shaped like the bowl of a martini glass. Her head is bald—she shaves it—and she has painted it up like an olive, green with a red spot on the top. Instead of that arrow-through-the-head prop, she has a sword through the head.”

There was a distraught silence at the other end of the line.

“Now here’s my fantasy,” I said. “I—”

Click.

The telephone rang.

The last time anyone at the telephone company asked me, I told them to change my listing from S. Wright to Susan Wright. Previous to this change, I had gotten about one wrong number a week. After the change, the wrong numbers mostly went away and were replaced by obscene callers who addressed me familiarly by my first name, and heavy breathers.

The telephone rang again and I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Well, Susan, you cunt, so you’re at home for a change.”

An obscene caller with a wrong number—truly the best of both worlds. Also, obviously, a man with a grievance. Although I’d never heard the voice before in my life, for a fleeting moment I considered apologizing anyway. Fortunately, he wasn’t expecting a reply, and he pressed on:

“You fucking whore, why aren’t you out sniffing the streets for men to fuck, getting down on your knees to suck their cocks, isn’t that what you like, you bitch? You couldn’t be bothered to fuck me when we were together. I don’t know why I call you a whore, I’ve met plenty of whores who are better than you.”

I was getting so caught up in this random call that I almost asked indignantly where he’d been meeting all these whores, but he raced on.

“Well, you’d better watch out, because some night you’re going to be crawling around offering your twat to be fucked and I’m going to come up behind you in a dark alley and rape you with the barrel of my gun. What do you think of that, scumbag?”