The Last Pay Phone in Los Angeles

I am preoccupied by normal things happening in my life and everything is fine.

Mar 25, 2025

This is a chapter from I Hear You Watching, my novel based on my experience with hearing voices and paranoia.

But you can jump in here! The “previously on” will get you up to speed.

Previously on I Hear You Watching…
Alex was chased through the streets by unseen pursuers. In his apartment he overheard those same strangers ridiculing him, which seemed to prove that they were watching through his webcam, but a consultation with a computer specialist and multiple virus scans gave no leads.

A black line drawing of Alex, the protagonist of "I Hear You Watching." He is white, short messy parted hair, glasses. He stares straight at you, unsmiling. He is flanked by two close-ups of blue pay phone box panels—one displaying the perforated shape of a handset, the other featuring a white handset symbol.

Red ropes on gold posts draw the marble floor into an easy maze of switchbacks. A short line of people wait, and I join them in the maze.

A teller with a closed placard in her window peers at me over her glasses. I look at the ground, then hope I haven’t done so too quickly. There’s a hole in the left knee of my jeans, and the right knee is about to open its mouth. Does she think I’m here to cause trouble? Rob the place? I make a deal with myself to glance again—sweep my eyes across the windows to avoid looking directly at her—and if she isn’t still watching, it means I’m not suspicious.

I start at the right side and move my eyes across customers at the windows, the others in line, and… she isn’t looking. Nor is the security guard further to the left.

The back of my neck tingles like circle time in school again, but now I have to pee. I can already see how the bank’s marble bubble of quiet murmurs would burst at the sound of my urine stream hitting the floor.

Would the security guard charge at me? Would he tackle me to the ground?

He might approach slowly with his hands out to show how much he doesn’t want to have to touch me. The line of people would flush out against the teller windows. The tellers’ heads would pop up over clients’ shoulders to see. Would they push that secret alarm button under the counter I’ve seen in movies?

What would it feel like to stand in the middle of a bank with my penis in hand, exposed to the cool marble air, emptying onto the floor? There’d be a magical several seconds before anyone noticed what was happening. Would it be freeing, if only for a moment? A perfectly normal tableau of afternoon in a bank, but there I’d be in the middle of it like a mischievous fountain cherub.

Repercussions would follow—charges, fines, jail time, psychological counseling, a mark on a record—but my body knows nothing stands in the way of me doing it in the first place.

I’ve seen something like that once, waiting at a light downtown. A man at a bus stop wearing threadbare sweatpants and T-shirt posed in a subtle lunge, a hand down the back of his sweats. He waited. My light turned green, and he was already small in my mirror when he pulled his hand from his pants and dropped something on the ground. I was alone in my van, others were in their cars, none of us could share or come to a consensus on what we’d seen. I wasn’t even sure the other cars had seen it. The man’s appearance may have rendered him invisible by default.

Which is why this isn’t the same. The hole in my jeans is from wear but not hardship. And I’m not at a bus stop, I’m in a closed space with other people.

More line up behind me. Everyone watching the back of my head is, by association, waiting and counting on me to do something.

Which is worse to do on the floor of a bank: piss or shit? The physical act of shitting stimulates the prostate, which induces pissing. So shitting is worse because it means both will inevitably occur. I’m in good health; my shit would stay well-contained. It’d be like picking up after a big dog. Bleach wouldn’t stain the marble, but psychological stains would persist in the witnesses who might forever make a point of stepping over that particular spot. They might adjust the red rope maze around the “no-go zone.” Eventually the detour would become normal, and maybe someone would ask why the red ropes seem to steer around this small patch of floor, and the person asked wouldn’t know because they were hired after “the incident.” Or maybe “the incident” would gain layers of infamy and insanity with each retelling, and twist into me shitting onto someone or pinning them down and trying to feed it to them.

I’m next. This is the moment to do it in full view, pivoting to hit the calves and shoes of everyone in front of me.

A teller to my right says, “Next customer, please,” looking at me. She isn’t smiling. Can she tell what I’m thinking? Is there an expression someone makes when they think about peeing in public? I try to relax all the muscles in my face, then fear it’s become a worse “pee face.”

I slide her the twenty I got from the ATM and ask for quarters.

What do people look like when they think about normal things?

She slides me two rolls of quarters. “Can I help you with anything else?”

I consciously think the sentence, I am preoccupied by normal things happening in my life and everything is fine, and I smile with that energy. I say, “Thank you,” put the rolls in my pocket and walk around the maze, past the guard, and out the door, leaving their civilized bubble intact and the marble floor dry.

The metal frame of the pay phone’s wall box is bent, as if it had softened in the sun and a giant hand lowered from the sky and pinched a corner of it. I imagine two punks with metal bats alternating blows like blacksmiths pounding folded steel bars.

Below the phone hangs the segmented metal cord that used to hold the phone book in a plastic shell, but someone cut the book and shell from the cord and now it hangs umbilical, vestigial. The phone’s earpiece is caked with something that was once thick and wet but is now dry and dusty after days—weeks? months?—of direct sunlight. The number pad buttons are cracked and pushed in.

I get back in my minivan and drive, seeing all kinds of places where a pay phone would be, but where there isn’t one now.

Flash of pay-phone blue in a liquor store parking lot. A booth! I park and walk to it before realizing the phone is gone. Now it’s just a small bubble in the middle of the neighborhood. Clear out any condoms or needles, scrub away the scum. There’s a shelf—limited counter/desk space. Sleep standing up, or sit with my legs crossed or hugged against my chest. My universe would shrink to the size of the booth; the world out the smeared glass would be illusory.

Regardless, it would need curtains.

Getting back into the minivan, I hear a laugh. I wait with the door open. Maybe from the next lot, behind the hedges.

“What is he doing?” one says.

“Two busted. Third time’s a charm!” says another.

Two pay phones, and I’ll be seeking a third. Could be another overheard coincidence, like the stranger.

But when I’d heard the stranger I was on my computer, and its eye saw me switch hands. That was no coincidence.

They saw the virus scans, my searches, they may have followed me to the computer store or watched through the webcam and laughed as the specialist turned my laptop, swinging their view from his skeptical face to my own sinking bafflement—go ahead and enter your password for me. They could’ve prepared for the quest I’m on now. I thought I was clever, avoiding my cell phone for this call. I even turned it off and left it in my desk drawer. Nice try. But they’re not following my phone, they’re following me.

I’m grateful to have my cigarettes. I hadn’t expected this to take so long. I smoke a couple driving down Moorpark, up Coldwater, and back on Riverside. Liquor stores, laundromats, payday loans, psychics, nail salons, more liquor stores, and only the ghosts of pay phones. A rusted pedestal against a brick wall, an empty shell with the word PHONE above it like a joke.

What happened to them? Were people trying to get at the money inside? Or did the decay of obsolescence produce a pheromone that attracted violent riffraff?

Then there’s a park, and on the wall of the concrete block of restrooms is a pay phone—with the phone part intact.

I park and open my door in time to hear them say, “—fucking creep-o.” Maybe it’s not them, maybe it’s a parent. Maybe they mean someone else.

The restrooms are near the playground, where parents sit nudging strollers back and forth and chatting with their phones in hand. Kids run, climb, scream, laugh.

“He picked this one ‘cause there’s kids.”

I feign interest in a tree to my left, away from the playground.

“Don’t look at ‘em, perv.”

“We should warn all these parents.”

“They’ve already clocked him. Lone dude with a minivan.”

I drag on my cigarette.

“Hey… Hey!” It’s louder and clearer than the other voices. Female. “Hey, excuse me, uh, you can’t smoke here!”

To my right is a woman on a bench with an incredulous face and her arms up in a shrug.

“This is a park!” she says. “With kids! There’s a sign!” She points at the bathrooms. Near the pay phone is a red circle-slash over a cigarette. I know it’s illegal to smoke in parks, anyway. I’m just distracted.

I stoop and smush the cigarette on the ground. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, “it totally slipped my mind. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

She looks at the black smear on the pavement. “Great. Now that’s filthy.”

I scrape the spot with my shoe, which does nothing, and look for a trash can to toss the butt. There isn’t one. So I put the butt in my pocket, which the woman appears to expect from someone like me.

“He got fucking told!” says the familiar voice. They’re somewhere nearby. “Just so you all know, we’re keeping an eye on that guy. He’s a perv. If he so much as looks at your kids, we’ll take care of him.”

I dare to scan the playground again—blurry, speeding past the children to the parents—to see if I can catch my pursuers evangelizing. I don’t know what I expect them to look like. Maybe they’re dressed like these people. Maybe they know the locations of all the pay phones within a certain radius, and could anticipate where I’d stop, so they arrived ahead of me and planted themselves.

That woman is still looking at me and saying something to a woman next to her, who is now also looking at me. I turn away.

I want to find another phone. But that could take hours, and leaving would make me more suspicious.

The phone’s receiver is cracked and a couple of buttons are missing from the number pad.

I take the receiver and hear a dial tone—a distant, familiar sound. A hum like the universe thinking aloud. A long, flat plane with no obstructions. I tear open a roll of quarters, feed the phone and dial, pushing my finger into holes where the buttons are absent and hoping not to receive an electric jolt. The line rings.

“Probably scheduling a drug deal.”

Ring…

“Around a bunch of kids and parents? That’s way fucked up!”

Ring…

“He’s a desperate crackhead. What do you expect?”

Ring…

“Hello?” I almost don’t recognize the difference in this voice compared to the others. This one is less muffled by distance, more thin and electric. My ear clings to it like a buoy.

“Matt? It’s Alex,” I say. “Porter.”

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“Something’s happening, and I need your help.”

Matt is a friend of Dad’s. The most knowledgable computer guy I personally know. I tell him about the neighbors’ comments, the firewall, and my suspicion about the webcam.

A kid on the playground starts screaming.

Matt asks, “Where are you?”

“I had to find the last working pay phone in Los Angeles. Happens to be next to a playground.”

“You mean your cell phone’s messed up too?”

“Might be, yeah. I don’t want to take any chances, so it’s at home turned off. But I think they followed me anyway.”

“You saw them?”

“No, I heard them. Shouting stuff at me.”

“But you haven’t seen them?”

“No, they always stay just out of sight.”

“What were they shouting?”

“You have reached the prepaid limit for this call. To continue, please insert fifty cents.”

I dig in my pocket for more quarters and Plinko them into the phone. “Matt, you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. What are they—”

“Is it too late for my computer and phone? Virus scans got nothing. I feel like the disabled firewall left the door wide open and they’ve just been squatting in my basement this whole time, y’know? I have no idea how long this has been going on.”

“Did they go after your money?”

“No, I checked everything. No weird charges on my cards. Changed my passwords. I think they’re doing this to fuck with me.”

“Right.” He pauses. “That’s a lot of work just to mess with someone.”

“I know.” Truth tickles in my spine. Matt understands the extent of their obsession—this is an unreasonable amount of effort for nothing. My hope is that if they’re clever enough to infiltrate my privacy, logic will prevail. They’ll reach a point of diminishing returns and realize how much time they’ve wasted following me around. I might already be close to the end.

Then I feel another tickle, imagining a day when they’ll disappear from my life and I’ll be left perplexed but at peace.

“I wonder if I got hip to them sooner than they expected, and now that they know that I know what they’re up to, they can’t take my money or anything. ‘Cause that would give me concrete evidence, you know? And maybe they’re just using me as a guinea pig, trying out tactics to use in other scam jobs.”

“Have you told your folks about this?”

“No, I don’t think they’d know how to help. I figured you’d know best.”

“Hmm…”

The line between us crackles like the foil over my window.

“Do you know of anything I could do in the meantime, while I wait for them to wise up and go away?”

“You said your firewall’s on now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. We could tweak some settings on your router, too.”

I cup my hand over the receiver and my mouth for the rest of the call. I glance over my shoulder—only once, avoiding looking directly at that woman—to make sure no one snuck up behind me to listen.

I strain to hear grit underfoot, or breathing, or the swish of fabric. But I can’t hear those things under everything else. I wish the children would shut up and sit still for a goddamn second, and the air would calm and the leaves would settle, and the cars would park and the planes would land. The world beyond my field of view is in an unknowable quantum state, constantly shifting and trading places, peopled with things popping in and out of existence. But when I turn to look, everything jumps back into perfect position, twiddling its thumbs.

The world grins and says, “Nobody here but us chickens!”