Every once in a while there’d be a short in the wiring circuits and even if the operator remembered to flip the muting switch, you could still hear her voice over the active line. Dorothy had learned her lesson about the wire glitches the hard way and was now extra-careful to flip the muting switch and cover her mouthpiece when talking to the other girls in the switchboard room. Wooster’s very own mayor had overheard her say the f-word, and that’d gotten her suspended for two weeks without pay. Vivian never said the f-word, but she said all the other ones, and was careful to keep her hand over the mouthpiece when she talked to the other girls in the room.

Vivian frowned at the board for a moment, back to thinking of that cheese standing alone. She could see it. A wedge of holey Swiss cheese lit up by a stage spotlight, all by itself in the middle of her dining room table. Alone cheese. Spinster cheese. Suddenly one of the board’s lights blinked before her. She quickly plugged the rear key cord into the jack, flipped the switch, and adjusted her own mouthpiece.

“Number, please.”

Vivian was a little bothered by the cheese standing alone in its spotlight, so she connected the call and flipped the mute switch. If she hadn’t been distracted, she’d have listened in.

“You can learn a lot that way,” she’d told Edward on one of their first dates.

Even though they weren’t supposed to, Vivian and the other girls who sat at the switchboards of Ohio Bell on East Liberty Street listened in on the telephone calls. Each and every day they plugged their cords into the jacks, flipped their switches, and leaned into their headsets to find out what was going on around Wooster. You might say they were the ears of the town. If it were up to Vivian they’d be a lot more than just that.

She’d tell you she had a real sharp understanding of people and their personalities, and listening in at Bell only helped that along. She could tell you plenty about situations based on just a few details. For example, when Ray Barnes telephoned his mother from New York City to say he had a big surprise in store for her, Vivian knew that big surprise was a new fiancée, and she also knew that Mrs. Barnes wasn’t going to like that one bit. Probably with good reason, if she were honest with you; that fiancée was likely a no-good slut. The good girls went to New York City from the small towns, not the other way around.

Ruth Craven had listened in the day Ray Barnes’s mother called her sister in Mansfield to complain about the “fast New York City girl Raymond brought home,” and how she was corrupting her “poor, innocent boy.” “The Negro music he listens to now!” Ruth was good enough to tell the other switchboard girls all about it, and remind them about what Vivian had said. Some of them liked to tease her when she talked about knowing people, but they all looked at her with just a little more respect after that call.