Four New Messages Read Free Page A

figuring he could talk drug distribution with the best—while his other references tended toward the suspiciously familial: his cousin who’d developed a dating website and was too lazy busy getting laid to pick up the phone, another cousin who did the ordering for but did not own as Mono had stated Trenton’s North Triangle Liquors—though when it came to education he demurred: granting himself only a B.A. if cum laude, supplemented vainly by a Dean’s Award in English.
    Despite this, he’d become inured to rejection: Never called back by that Suburban Poverty Task Force that needed someone with a liberal arts background to disorganize their archives, bend paperclips into helicopters and swans. Refused by that talent management agency requiring a front office rep. (he was overqualified, they qualified). A limousine driver, a limo dispatcher (ditto). Each being the juniormost position each business offered.
    Monday punctually at noon the phone rang and Mono answered and a voice said, Mr. Monomian (the pronunciation was passable), I’m calling from Skilling Militainment Solutions.
    Mr. Skilling, Mono said.
    There is no Skilling. This is O. J. Muggs, recruiter, ret. capt. Marines.
    Mono, sitting up in bed, said, Sir.
    I’m afraid we can’t offer you the position.
    You can’t? The position? But I haven’t even been interviewed.
    You won’t be. This does not constitute an interview. Please say yes, indicating your understanding.
    No I don’t understand.
    Don’t fool yourself, son. Not even civilians are exempt from civility. Security isn’t just armed convoys, it’s also a sound reputation.
    What’s unsound about my reputation?
    What you do in private is your business, until it becomes public, and then it’s your employer’s business, especially if your employer’s employed by the government of the United States. War’s all about image—and effective chaplaincy and counterinsurgency.
    Come again?
    You need to clear your profile, son.
    My profile, what about it?
    Your presence, you need to clean your presence.
    I’m not following, and Mono canvassed his apartment, wondering whether the man had a camera focused on him or was just intuitive.
    The internet, Muggs said, are you aware of your internet?
    Mono was not aware of his internet. He’d never made a habit of googling himself—it was too depressing a venture.
    Previously his life had passed undetected by bots. His life too modest for hits, too meek for the concerns of blogpostings and tweets.
    Mono had always taken such paucity personally—virtual presence being, to him, presence nonetheless.
    Whenever he searched there were only two results, two matches found: the first listing his name along with others of his class from Princeton High, the second aggregating what had to be all the names of all Jersey high school graduates ever to redirect them to wealth management services and medical tourism sites.
    But now still abed, after ending the phonecall, tugging his computer close and keying in monomian —typeable with two fingers, every letter but one kept to the right of the keyboard—he found a third.
    The blog was called Emission.
    The link was that optimistic bright blue that after Mono clicked would turn to the drab abused and nameless color of vomit.
    The post’s heading, R ICHARD M ONOMIAN .
    Mono withheld his vomit.
    He scrolled to the end and the post was signed with that single name, Em, timestamped midday the day before.
    But just as he was about to read the whole post from the top his computer emitted a pop—his father was messaging him over chat:
    Greetings Diran!
    That was Mono’s birthname, before Richard.
    Why are you not returning my calls?
    Mono messaged:
    cant talk now dad, then deleted.
    Mono messaged:
    its rich dad, then deleted again.
    His father messaged:
    Diran it is my hope you are not ignoring me.
    Mono clicked the chatbox shut, blocked his father from chatting.
    He read on:
    Friday night @ party with RICHARD MONOMIAN. He