Free Warp by Lev Grossman Page A

out a cigarette, lit it, and dropped the lighter and the pack back in. Then she took a long drag, held it, and let it back out in a sigh.
    â€œI thought you were going to pull a gun on me,” Hollis said.
    â€œLet’s hope your luck holds.”
    She took another drag and held it.
    â€œI’m only doing this out of a desire to harass corporate America,” she said finally, exhaling. She gestured to him. “Pick up the phone.”
    Hollis picked it up. There was no dial tone: she was holding down the hang-up switch.
    â€œWhen I let go of this hook,” she said evenly, “the phone’s going to try to dial into the customer service center. It’s preset to do that. You have to stop it from doing that by dialing first. But you can’t, because there’s no buttons on the phone to dial with.”
    She watched Hollis carefully, to see if he was following, and he nodded with the phone still held up to his ear. A police car went by outside with its siren on.
    â€œThe way you dial a phone like this,” she went on, “is by hitting the switch: you hit it as many times as the number you want to dial. That’s basically how a rotary phone works. The trick is to do it before the phone can do its own preset dialing. So what you have to do is pick up”—she let go of the receiver—“and as fast as you can you start smacking the receiver.”
    She tapped on it smartly, six times in a row. When she stopped, there was silence on the line, and she looked up at Hollis expectantly. The tips of her ears stuck out from under her hair, giving her a slightly elfin look.
    â€œWho do you want to call?” she said.
    â€œI don’t really know.”
    â€œMight as well go transcontinental. It’s BayBank’s nickel.”
    Hollis scratched his chin.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” he said. “Dial anything.”
    She rolled her eyes at him, then went ahead and dialed. It took her about half a minute to get six more numbers tapped in.
    Hollis waited. The phone rang a few times, and an answering machine picked up.
    He listened to the message, then hung up at the beep.
    â€œWho was that?” he said.
    â€œMe,” said the woman. She made the clicking noise with her tongue again. “Do I have any messages?”
    â€œI don’t think so. Which one are you—Alix or Xanthe?”
    â€œGuess,” she said lightly.
    Hollis thought for a second before he answered.
    â€œXanthe.”
    â€œNope.” She slipped down off the plastic bench. “I only wish.”
    She straightened her skirt and slung her bag over her shoulder. Glancing at him once, ambivalently, she headed out the door. She wasn’t walking particularly quickly, and Hollis shoved his hands in his coat pockets and followed her out into the cold. It was definitely below freezing, but she let her jacket hang open.
    â€œWhat kind of a name is Xanthe?” he said.
    â€œI don’t know. It’s from some poem, I think.”
    She turned left, the opposite way from Hollis’s bus stop, but he went with her.
    â€œIs she a good roommate?”
    â€œShe’s quiet.”
    Then she added, as if she were ticking off the points on her fingers:
    â€œShe’s obsessively neat. She sleeps exactly eleven hours a day, from nine every night to eight every morning. She can’t stand noise. She has good skin. She has bad hair. And she writes poems. Oh, and she’s rich, dahling, she’s terribly, terribly rich.”
    â€œHow are the poems?”
    â€œI never read them.”
    â€œMaybe you could introduce me.”
    â€œI don’t think you’re her type.”
    A late-night Rollerblader overtook them from behind, then skated away ahead of them, the reflective patches on his elbows slowly fading away into the darkness.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell, your overcoat, for starters,” she said. “That’s enough right there. She’d