Click on the Line

6 2 3

by joyceholt

by joyceholt

The first call came from Pennsylvania, so the caller ID said. The voice sounded southeast Asian, by the slant of the R's and L's and the absence of articles. "Your computeh causing pobwems on intehnet. I help you fix it."

I was in the mood to play, so I put concern and apology in my tone. "Oh my, is it really? I'm so sorry!"

"You turn on computeh," the young man said. "I help you fix it."

"Okay, I'll do that. Which computer is it?"

"Computer connected to internet."

"Well, I have two. Which one is it?"

"Internet computer. You turn it on."

"Which one, though? I have an Atari and a Radio Shack TRS-80."

He sounded baffled, mumbled a few questions, then gave up. I'd been correct about his age. Too young ever to have heard about those dinosaurs from the 1980's, unless he actually worked in the computer industry as he claimed.

He must have thought me a promising sucker and passed my number to someone else. Before long I got a call -- supposedly from Michigan. Same spiel. Same flavor of accent. Same young voice.

I gave him the same concerned query. Atari or TRS-80?

The gambit worked again. Before long the caller hung up in confusion.

An hour later the phone rang again. From Utah.

I groaned at the interruption. I'm trying to do some writing here, guys! How long would they keep this up?

I decided to change tacks. Partway into the new guy's first sentence, I broke in. "Where are you?" He kept trying to get back to his pitch, but I took over the conversation. Before long he was arguing that he really was calling from Knoxville, Tennessee (huh?), that English truly was his first language, that his family came from New York. I mused aloud about his accent. "Not Japanese. Not from India. Southeast Asia, I'd say. Probably--um--Cambodia."

He wanted to talk about my computer. I rambled on about languages, and asked him questions in German, French, and Norwegian.

Twice my caller complained that I was wasting his time.

"Who made the phone call?" I asked. "I know what you're doing, trying to steal personal information or plant a virus." Which, of course, he denied.

"You called me to waste my time, so now I'm going to talk your ear off until you give up and end the call."

My husband could easily tell from my end of the conversation what was going on. He held up his portable phone, mouthed three letters.

I nodded approval, and he went off to a different room.

My caller complained again how I was wasting his time, and warned that tomorrow I'd get a thousand calls from his office

Just then the line clicked and my husband came on. "Ma'am? This is the FBI."

"At last!" I cried, hamming it up.

"Thanks for keeping him on the line," my husband added. "We're ready to enter the building."

The line from Tennessee-Cambodia went dead.