Gary received the first odd text message while teaching Modern Poetry class.

        When his phone vibrated, he lifted his volume of Pound a little higher and asked the sycophant in the front row to read Canto XIV aloud. While she stumbled through the awkward word order, he slipped the phone from his shirt pocket into the fold of the book and peeked at the message. He hoped it might be from Gail, although he hadn't heard from her since she moved out six months before.

        "LTR STNKS PU! LVU PDLS," it read.

        He didn't recognize the name PDLS. He tried to recall the last time he'd sent a letter, to whom he might have sent a letter, and what he could have possibly written that would deserve such harsh criticism. Certainly every unreplied-to letter he'd sent to Gail had been respectful, even, at times, (he blushed to admit it), fawning.

        When his student read Pound's 'prostrate' as 'prostate,' the class's laughter drew his attention back and he thought no more of the message.

        Later that afternoon a student had the temerity to show up during office hours, waking Gary from a daydream featuring Misty Crème, an incidental character in his unfinished erotic novel, "Pussy Comitatus."

        He and the unwelcome visitor from clueless spent the next twenty minutes dissecting "The Emperor of Ice Cream," during which the student doggedly returned to the question, where is the ice cream? To Gary's relief, his cell rang, and he was able to shuffle the student out of his office so he could answer the phone.

        The ringer, however, was merely informing him he'd received another text message. His message-- "TNA 2NT? PLZ? LVU PDLS".

        His cat's name was Mr. Piddles, and Piddles favorite food was tuna, so Gary considered who among his few friends would perpetrate such a lame hoax. It remained an open puzzle in his mind, but he carried innumerable puzzles in his mind all the time, and this one quickly sank into the morass.

        After his 4:00 p.m. class on Borges, Oates, O'Conner and Barth, (sadly listed as BOOB 434 in the first edition of the fall schedule), he stopped at the Teacher's Lounge for his afternoon beer. He plopped a pile of essays from his freshman World Lit class on the bar. The bartender, Trish, served him his usual draft pilsner. Between bites of bar pretzels, he began to wield the Red Pen of Illumination. The ring of the cell phone interrupted his written harangue over a student's views of a story by Turdagrev (sic).

        "PARCHD. LV TOILT ST UP PLZ. LVU PDLS."

        "Huh," he said to Trish. "Somebody's figured out how to send me text messages spoofed with my own home phone number."

        She pulled her hands and a fistful of wine glasses out of the sink. "Maybe it is somebody at home. If I leave my teenage daughter behind when I go to the mall, she'll text me about every two minutes the whole time I'm gone. 'House on fire,', 'Grandma's head stuck in toilet', that sort of thing."

        "Nobody at home for me," Gary said. "Probably just spam."

        "Doesn't sound kosher to me."

        Gary decided to catch supper in town before returning home. He took a table at the Maison d'Morgantown and ordered the fresh tuna special, with a split of Pinot Grigio.

        He tried to concentrate on the latest issue of the student literary magazine, Kestral. Instead, he found himself watching the diminutive monorail cars scuttle back and forth between north and south campus, the same way Mr. Piddles watched the mice traverse the kick space of his kitchen cabinets. A thought popped into his head; perhaps Gail was calling from home. Perhaps she had returned unannounced, and the messages were her playful way of announcing herself. She had, after all, shown a delightful sense of humor when they first moved in together.

        His phone rang just as the waiter delivered his salad.

        "WH R U? :-( LVU PDLS."

        Before he could clear the message, another arrived.

        "LAP DNCE TNITE? ^ ‍‍^ LVU PDLS."

        He confirmed the source number as his home number, so he dialed home to see if Gail would answer. His hand trembled as the phone rang five times before switching over to the answering machine. It played Gail's old "We can't come to the phone" message. He hadn't had the energy to change it since she left.

        Over the entrée, Gary fantasized how she must have come to the realization, once in her new boyfriend's condo in San Diego, of all she had lost. To his surprise, Gary found his reaction ambivalent; a little schadenfreude that her new love had gone sour, but also an unresolved sense of having been wronged. A month ago, he would have rushed home at the slightest hint she might be there, but now, he felt conflicted.

        Needing time to sort out his thoughts, he decided to take in a film. As he settled into a seat in the nearby theater to watch The De Vinci Code, hoping none of his colleagues would spot him at such a lowbrow entertainment, his phone rang again. Two teenagers in the front row turned to glare at him.

        "DONT U LV ME N E MR? ILVU PDLS."

        Before he could clear the message, it rang again. He scrambled to mute the ring tone.

        "OK IF U DONT BT PLS B HNST LVU PDLS".

        The phone vibrated several times during the film, but he steadfastly refused to take his eyes off the screen. Nonetheless, in fifteen minutes he was lost, so he spent the rest of the film reliving the last face-to-face conversation with Gail.

        "And Mr. Piddles," she'd said. "You can keep everything else."

        "The cat stays with me," he'd said, fishing under the couch, trying to grab the cat by the collar. Mr. Piddles had raked his palm. "Shit." He'd raised his bleeding hand to his mouth.

        "You don't even like cats, and he doesn't like you, either." Gail had clenched their red stapler in one hand, the halogen desk lamp in the other.

        The more Gail had insisted, the more Gary had refused to consider giving up the cat, until, to his eventual regret, she gave in. His sense of triumph had died with the first litter box overflow.

        He remained seated after the conclusion of the film, and checked his messages.

        "WE HV ONLY 1 ANTHR. LVU PDLS."

        He flashed on his parents, still sharing a shoebox of a room in a sustained living community back in Nowhere, Ohio. Since his mom's stroke, she couldn't talk, and Dad never did anyway, so they had no friends to share their bitterness with except CBS, ABC and NBC. Would he and Gail ever be able to forget the screaming, the ill-considered insults? Could he sleep next to her, after learning he looked like a beached whale in his sleep? Would she choose to forget his comment about the size of her nose, his unfortunate comparison with Basil Rathbone?

        Back at the Teacher's Lounge he was nursing another beer, when his phone rang again.

        "WHT WUD I DO W/O U? PDLS."

        "You still married?" he asked Trish as she filled the freezer with beer mugs. Clouds of frost fog obscured her face.

        "Yeah," she said, sliding the freezer closed. She began to mop up condensation around the edges. "Twenty wonderful years. Which ain't bad, out of the thirty-five years we been married. You want a refill?"

        He nodded. "You ever break up and get back together? I mean, move out, the whole nine yards?"

        "Nope." She placed another can in front of him. "I never saw that work out. Seems like if you've moved out once, you know where the suitcase is, what to pack, how much it will cost, where you would go. The temptation would be there every day, and all of us have some days that suck."

        "I keep thinking about all the little things that used to bug me; streaks of mustard in the mayonnaise jar, or my shirts hung inside out, or the newspaper sections out of order."

        After four beers, the shroud over Gary's mind was beginning to lighten a little when his phone rang again.

        "1^st U TK MY NUTS THN MY HRT? PDLS."

        He could imagine Gail on their couch, Mr. Piddles on her lap, giggling as she keyed in the message.

        By closing time, Gary was so drunk and sleepy he could barely stay upright in the back booth of the bar. He was watching the pool players rack their sticks for the night when his phone rang for the last time. He lifted the phone to his face and groggily retrieved his message.

        "HV IT UR WAY. TNIGHT I RIP OUT UR THROAT WHL U SLEP. UV BN WARNED PDLS."

        He begged for ten minutes before Trish relented and allowed him to spend the night on the hard booth bench.

        After lying there for an hour, though, he sobered up enough to feel foolish, and eventually drove home.

        His driveway was empty, the lights in the house off. He opened the front door slowly, listening for movement, but heard nothing.

        Gary checked the living room first, the couch where Gail had spent many nights sleeping in front of the television. Nothing had been disturbed.

        He checked the kitchen, the fridge, the bathroom. The new roll of TP he'd put up that morning appeared unused.

        No sign of visitors in his office. The utility room was exactly as he had left it.

        Finally, he checked the bedroom.

        There was no pile of luggage. None of Gail's many silk pillows had been returned from the closet onto the bed. The air retained his own stale, faintly bowelish aroma.

        Gary sat down on the bed and clasped his hands behind his head, wishing they were Gail's hands. He felt so empty.

        When he felt something swat his heel, Gary sprawled on the bed and leaned his head over the edge. He drew the edge of the comforter up, revealing Mr. Piddles crouched beneath.

        When he reached out to gently stroke his only friend, the cat growled, and backed away into the darkness.

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