So I'm innocently enjoying my Friday off, washing dishes, catching up on laundry, and watching House on the 'tube. Then I get a call on the home phone and the caller ID reads, 'MOTEL 6, KNOXVILLE'.
Motel 6? The f**k?
That seems suspicious. No one I know would even park in, let alone sleep at a Motel 6. Then I rolled my eyes. I knew exactly who was calling. Another junkie with a wrong number.
Let me back up. A few months ago, Jed decided to upgrade his Comcast cable/digital phone package and somehow, he wound up with a brand new digital home phone number. About a week after acquiring this new number, we started getting loads of 'wrong number' calls at the house. Starting out, the calls were pretty normal. "Hey, can I speak to Verne?" Then whichever of us answered the phone would just tell them they had the wrong number. Obviously, the number used to belong to some guy named Verne who had a lot of friends with rough voices and/or heavy ghetto accents. No big deal.
As time went on, we learned through the phone calls that apparently, this number used to belong to some kind of music store. People often asked, "Hey, is this the music store?" or, "Y'all have a bunch of CDs for sale today, right? Can I get some of those?"
Then the calls starting getting weird. We began getting them several times a day, and people on the other end sounded strangely eager to talk to 'Verne', and even a little desperate. Sometimes, I would insist that there was no 'Verne' here, and the caller would actually start pleading for me to go get him, promising they were 'straight up customers' and 'no tricks'. Eventually, we'd finally make them understand that this isn't Verne's number anymore and they'd hang up very suddenly, with no apology or goodbye.
One day, Jed told me he had answered yet another of these strange calls, and he now believed this number used to belong to a drug dealer. I asked him why he would think that and he told me, "Well some girl called, talking about the music store bullsh*t, and she said she really needed some special merchandise. So I asked her what she needed, and she gave me some nutty code word like 'Purple Unicorn' or something. I told her I had no clue what she meant and she asked if she could speak plainly. I said 'Sure' and she said, 'I'm looking to get, you know, some roxies', and something else."
By now, we were certain the number used to belong to a guy who was selling drugs out of his music store. That is, if the store even existed. I just had to find out, so today I did a reverse phone look-up for our new number, and sure enough, I found an address for a music store located in a shitty part of Knoxville. The store is real; I saw the building on Google Maps' street view. So now I know exactly where I sent the poor junky I screwed with today.... which brings me back to the most recent phone call.
I answered the phone impatiently.
"Hello?"
"Can I talk to Verne?" It was the worn, raspy voice of a heavily-intoxicated female.
"Oh. No," I said.
"Please? Please, let me talk to Verne."
"Look, you have a wrong number. This is a residence."
"So...I can't reach Verne at this number? Or did I dial wrong? I'm sorry, who is this?"
At first, I was just going to insist once more, like I've had to do repeatedly for weeks, that this is a residence, there is no 'Verne' here, and they really do have the wrong f**king number. But then that trouble-maker in me realized there was too great an opportunity here. Surely, there could be nothing funnier than screwing with the mind of this miserable, strung-out person.
So I said: "Why do you want to talk to Verne?"
"Oh, is this his girlfriend?"
"............Yes." I almost giggled. Almost.
"Oh, um. Well I heard he was giving out some CD's today. At the store. I've got money."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Well what are you looking for? We've got a wide variety of....albums....today." Such terrible improvisation on my part, but it seemed to be working. I could hardly take it. I felt horrible and yet giddy. She sounded so damned eager and here I was, agging her on.
"Can I get some Bowie?"
"Jesus, you want BOWIE?" I practically screamed at her. "You people are buying us all out of that sh*t!"
"I've got money," she said again.
"Well just know that 'Verne' is asking for some special 'favors' today, along with the money. If you want Bowie, that is. So you best be in a giving mood when you show up today."
"You're talking about a different product here, aren't you?"
Product? Lolz. I didn't even come close to breaking character. "Yeah. Your 'product' for his. Plus cash. With all the high demand, it's a fair trade, huh?"
To both my irrepressible amusement and my horror, she complied. "Okay....fine. I guess I could. Should I come down to the store right now?"
"Yeah, come on. Bring pizza." I wanted to hit myself.
Then she hung up. I wanted to die laughing. Wanted to. But then I found myself confounded by self-doubt. Should I be helping these people instead of taking advantage of their idiocy? I mean, I have no respect for people who sell their souls and bodies for a quick high. I've watched plenty of Intervention to know how those poor souls work, and it's completely terrible that the ones selling to them are making so much dirty money off of helping them destroy themselves. Perhaps I ought to quit fooling around with this and report the music store to the police. Perhaps I ought to be telling the junkies this isn't Verne's number, and they should really stop hurting themselves and get some help. Am I even capable of such a humane gesture?
So my question to you is: Should I, or should I NOT keep all of these peoples' phone numbers and then release them to the fiends of the interwebs, so some hilarious and purely evil pranking of desperate junkies can ensue? HMMM? Oh, me. I'm such an asshole.
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