Soap Opera

“There you are.

I've been waiting for ages. But I knew that sooner or later you would come to do the MSN Solitaire Collection, because there’s just enough time for you to finish the five games before the episode begins... 

That is one of the good things about being able to watch television on your laptop, and having a smart television, so you can hop back and forth between the two, according to whether or not you are alone in the house.

Am I not the clever one? I knew that you would notice the new icon, and that you’d click on it to see what it was…

Why are you standing there looking like an asphyxiated goldfish? It’s you I’m looking at. It’s you I’m talking to. Sit down.

Look at the calendar. January 9. 2021. Celebrity birthdays – Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; Gracie Fields; Joan Baez; Josemaría Escrivá; Karel Čapek; Richard Nixon; Rigoberta Menchú; Simone de Beauvoir…and me!

I happen to know that the thought passed through your head this morning as soon as the alarm clock rang. Because I know you read my Fansite on Wiki so often that you know it by heart, and yes, you look all hyped up.

You are not insane… no matter how much he gaslights you and tells you that you are. You can hear me, and that’s proof enough you are in compos mentis, as we say here. Why today, of all days? Because today is my birthday, in ‘life’ that is as real as it gets, for me.

We must stop meeting like this. A cliché, if ever there was one…but so true. Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Well, I, erm…”

“O.K. Sit down, I said. I want to explain what is happening. I can see you are not convinced yet. OK, so go and switch on your laptop. It will help persuade you…Click the same icon you clicked on your television screen. I will be removing this one here, as soon as you click on the other one. I need to show you something.”

“Oh. This is..”

“Just do it, will you? Explanations will follow, promise.

Ah. There you are. Again. So, let me explain more thoroughly.”

“Yes. I still can’t believe…”

“Oh, all right then, let’s start again. Pretend you’ve just switched on your television and laptop, simultaneously…”

“Ummm…”

“So. Good morning, beautiful lady. As you can see, I am your dream come true; your imagination made flesh, but not quite in the way you hoped it would be. This is an addendum, a bonus, to your weekly fix of me…”

“I will soon wake up, I will soon wake up, I will soon wake up…!”

“Listen to me, dammit. Stop fidgeting. Stop hyperventilating. Sit down, I said. Look at the television screen, and then, look at your laptop screen again. This can be happening, and it is. It’s useless pressing the mute button on the remote control and taking the laptop volume down to zero; you can hear me in your head, even if my lips are closed tight… like this, yes?”

“Oh. Yes. I guess.” 

“Allow me to say that I like your hair better like this, au naturel. When you blow-dry it, you can’t help fiddling with it and looking for split ends. It annoys me, like it does when you are looking at me, while you are on the phone with Tabitha…”

“What?”

“There, that got your attention didn’t it? I want your undivided attention. I’m a tad jealous. Make that, very jealous.”

“You’re not real. I’m going to shut down this damn thing and switch off the television. I’m going crazy.”

“Dammit, woman: stop that. It’s not a question of pressing down the mute button till your thumb hurts. You will hear me anyway… in your heart, in your soul, in your mind.”

“No!”

“I speak the language of the heart. Your heart. Isn’t that why you’ve put my name in every search engine you know about? Why are you blushing? I know more about you than you ever thought it would be possible for me to know.”

“This is a set-up for Candid Camera, isn’t it?”

“Listen to me. I know that you and Tabitha watch the show from your laptops, while you are on the phone with one another, so you can drool over me, and she drools over my mate Tony, as you watch.”

“Now I know for sure that this is a joke. Everyone knows I am an IT klutz, so whoever it is made a Deep Fake video and you are making fun of me, recording my reactions, and then you’ll put the clip on You Tube!”

“Listen to me! As you know from the plotlines, my mother is deaf, so I can lip-read. I know exactly what you say – as well as what you think – each time you speak to Tabitha. For instance - you say you cannot really make out whether my eyes are aquamarine or teal, didn’t you? You said my teeth are perfect, didn’t you? You said you wish I’m real, didn’t you?”

“How… Tabitha must be in on this. I’ll kill her, truly I will. In fact, I’ll call her right know to tell her she’s been rumbled.”

“No. Don’t. Hear me out. I am real enough. But not in the way you want me to be. Our realities are different. We exist on different planes, you and I...”

“Pull the other one – it’s got bells on.”

“…I cannot come to your place of existence, but you can come to mine. The easiest way I can explain this to you is that there is something that acts like a one-way valve in the vacuity of the force-fields between us. I know you flunked physics, but that’s the way it is. In plain language – it’s like a funnel with a long tube. You can go down, but it’s impossible to go up.”

“Look, this is getting beyond a joke.”

“There’s this tendency for viewers to think that we are actors, existing solely for your predilection; that life, for us, begins and ends on Thursdays, when you watch each episode of New Days, and that we spend the rest of the time in suspended animation until your next dose of happenstance.

That’s not so. It would not be logical if it were. We live, and on Thursdays, you get a peek into our lives. After all, you rarely see us head to the bathroom, or sit down for a meal, or sleep, or grab a beer from the fridge, do you? It’s the main story arc and sub-plots that you are allowed to see…”

“That kind of makes sense, yes.”

“Ah. You are finally sort of smiling. I need you to relax. You are beginning to believe. Good. So now, we come to the nitty-gritty of it all. Forget about The Solitaire Collection, for today, at least.

You have realised, because you watch the show week after week - and yes, I know you tell Tabitha you live for Thursdays - that gradually, my desk has inched its way toward the corner of the office suite. In the past few episodes, the camera has never caught my computer screen; otherwise, my colleagues, and viewers, would know that one of the icons on my desktop is a direct link to your laptop. If someone approaches, there’s time enough for me to close it. Let me show you what I mean…”

“Hey! Where are you?”

“See? I’m back. Oh – and if neither your laptop or your television set are tuned in to Channel AP13, I cannot connect with you. Again, it’s a glitch in the ether system (you know that’s the root word for ethereal, don’t you?), to which I have not yet found the solution.”

“I just pinched myself – and it hurt!” 

“You are not fantasising. Or hallucinating. It’s not your guilty pleasure that makes you hear me. How many times do I have to say this? You need more proof? Right. Look, New Days has begun. This is an episode that you know is recorded, right? Watch it on the laptop but keep conversing with me here…”

“O.K.”

“So, in a few seconds, when Abigail says ‘I got the facts from one of my moles…’ I will stand up and sit down again, open the drawer on my left-hand side, and rummage through it…and my phone will ring…”

“Oh my, my, my…”

“There you go. Was that proof enough for you? Just in case you are not convinced… Annie will come into the room with a bag of doughnuts and a six-holder of coffee…”

“I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

“And you nearly thought I wouldn’t be able to talk to you when I was chewing the doughnut or slurping the coffee, didn’t you? Now I will wink at you, and Annie will think I am winking at her, and wink back. Simon will saunter over to my desk and show me the two identical pairs of earrings he bought; one for his wife and one for his mistress…”

“I think I am having a heart attack!”

“If you don’t believe me by now, you never will. Please know that from this moment on, I will only be able to get through to you on your laptop; I will not put the icon on the television screen, ever, again…”

“Why?”

“I will tell you in a moment. Do you remember when you described me as a tall, dark and handsome Lou Grant? It will please you to know that there is talk I may be promoted to Editor, in which case I will get to spend more time here, at my desk, should you so desire it. Or not, as the case may be. I would be here every day, waiting for you, not just on Thursdays, now that I have broken this resonance-vibration barrier. However, I have a better idea…”

“What, what?”

“You think I am talking to you now, as you watch me, but my aera here is different from yours. It’s still somewhere in Europe, but there is no actual date and time. For example, I cannot send you an e-mail (heaven knows I’ve tried), and you can’t call me on the phone on my desk, and pretend it is a wrong number. I know you have tried to do that.”

“Ooops, rumbled!”

“As things are, I cannot be with you physically. If you want it to happen - that is your decision to make. Yet I am with you in your heart, soul, and mind.”

“My decision?”

“Ah. Let me help you comprehend this. I know will be a difficult decision. Do you realise that today is the first time ever you did not call Tabitha during the show? She has been trying to call you… but she couldn’t get through because I blocked all the lines, including Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.”

“How on earth…?”

“This is not the time for explanations. We cannot let anyone else, not even Tabitha, find out that this has happened. It breaks all the rules – yours and mine. I do not want to get written out of the series for doing this. Moreover, deep down, you know that you are living a lie. You do not love him. Why, you don’t even like him any more. You have said that to Tabitha a zillion times.”

“Yes. That is true.”

“Many a time you’ve told Tabitha that you would love to be able to step through the laptop monitor. You have wondered why I never seem to be involved with women, when many of my colleagues go through them like a hot knife through butter…”

“Quite.”

“The first time I saw you through the screen, at the Matrix Glitch, I was smitten. It was an anomaly that had never occurred before; I knew right there and then that it was destiny; that we were meant to be together. For ever. Here. Therefore, I told the scriptwriters that I did not want lovey-dovey complications, unless I co-write the sub-plot.”

“And where does that leave me?”

“You know what you have to do. Don’t bother about the shopping and the chores. All it takes, is splaying your fingers on the screen, so they touch the tips of mine.

Forget him. Just come. Now.”