When Descartes Lost His Phone

I remember when Descartes lost his cell phone. He’d come up to visit me in Port Townsend, Washington, where I’d been living for a few years. Descartes liked the quiet of the town; he liked the spring rain, which was frankly driving me crazy after a long gloomy winter. He liked seeing more deer in the street than cars, and that the few cars were driven by grayhairs, who drive very slowly. But then Descartes lost his cell phone.

“But you hate your cell phone,” I said. He was always complaining about it.

Descartes was at our breakfast table. He was still getting used to modern American clothes. He was wearing black Carhartts and a fleece sweater, like all the other guys in Port Townsend. He was trying to hang on to his lace ruff, though. He couldn’t wear a hoodie, because there was no way to combine the hood and the ruff—they just got in each other’s way. He’d started washing his hair every Saturday, and it looked way better. But the ruff just made him look like a clown.

“The cellular, it is something terrible,” said Descartes. “But in this world, to be without such a thing—it is, in effect, impossible.”

Descartes had been staying with me and Molly for a couple of weeks. He said he was looking for an apartment, but he didn’t have a job, and he didn’t have any money that I could see. It was okay with me. We let him use our office as his bedroom. He was a good house guest. Except he never went to sleep. If I woke up at two in the morning, Descartes would still be creeping around the house, in his embroidered slippers, using the bathroom, getting himself a bowl of cereal.

Anyway, he couldn’t stop fussing about that phone. He said: “Ask me, if you please, in which place I was found, when I held it last.”

I said: “Why don’t I just call your number?”

Descartes looked annoyed. “As I have told you before, this thing is lost. For what purpose would you call my number?”

“Because then you’d hear your phone ring, and you’d know where it is.”

He looked at me with new respect. But then his face fell. “But no. The sound—it is execrable—I turn this off, always.”

“You leave the ringer off? How you do you know when somebody’s calling you?”

“If there is someone with whom I wish to converse—eh? Then I should call that person. Yes. But now you must help me. Ask me, if you please, where I was, and at what time, when I had my phone, the last time.”

It sounded so poetic that way, like Descartes wanted to write a sad song about his last time holding a thing he loved. But no, he meant it literally. He wanted me to ask the question. So I asked him. He said he’d remember better if the question came from someone else. Descartes is a very smart guy, but in all the time I’ve known him he’s always had funny ideas.

“It was yesterday,” he answered, squeezing his black eyebrows together, “or it was the day before yesterday, when we were in your car, perhaps. We were on route to the hardware store.”

He searched the car. Nothing. He had already turned the whole office upside down. He walked all around the yard, in case he’d dropped the phone while he was mowing the lawn, though that was back on Saturday.

I took Descartes down to Water Street for sandwiches. I said: “You can use my phone if you want to call somebody.”

Descartes said thanks. He grimaced. He said: “It is not that I wish to call some person! Who is it that I should call? There is nobody. It is a question of the cellular, which one must have always.” That’s right, the phone he hated. The poor guy. To cheer him up I suggested we stop at the bookstore.

He went straight to the Philosophy section. Of course. He was sad to see that the store had only one of his books—an old Penguin Classics edition of his Meditations—while it had any number of expensive hardbacks of a philosopher called Žižek, down by the floor, of course, because Z. Descartes didn’t like having to crouch on the floor to see them.

“He is extraordinarily popular,” Descartes grumbled, as we headed home, “this philosopher Žižek. Why is it that his thinkings find favor? I opened these books of his. I could not understand even one sentence fully.”

“Me neither,” I said. “I wondered the same thing. I’ve flipped through his books too. I really have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“He does not write with clarity and vigor,” declared Descartes. He rolled down his window and looked at the rain.

“Maybe he’s writing as clear as he can, though. About things which are just hard to explain…?”

“This is impossible,” said Descartes. “If one can hold a clear thought in mind, then one can express it in words which are framed with clarity.” He unbuttoned his ruff from the back. It had got wet in the rain and was dripping cold water down the back of his neck. Now he looked like a carpenter or maybe a guy who used to work on boats. Who happened to have a wet lace ruff in his lap, like a small white dog.

He was taking it badly. The phone, I mean. He couldn’t stop fretting about it. “The essence of the matter,” he said to Molly, after dinner, as they were washing dishes, “the essence is—the phone must be in some place.”

“Wait, are we sure that’s right?” said Molly. She liked Descartes but she wasn’t used to his funny ideas yet.

“But of course,” said Descartes. “It is certain. It is most certain. The cellular, it is in one place, one place alone. If I should look in that place, then I shall find it. If I fail to look in that place, I shall not find it.”

Molly was too polite to laugh. “You mean—your phone is already in some place—whether you ever find it there or not? Well! I just never thought of it that way.”

She looked up at me, then, smiling. She was wearing the yellow rubber dish gloves. Descartes was wearing the pink gloves, because they fit his hands, which were smaller than Molly’s. Molly looked happy. She liked my crazy friend Descartes.

She told him: “You know. maybe the reason the bookstore has so many books by Žižek, and only one book of yours…? Is that nobody wants the Žižek books, so they’re still on the shelf. And people buy your books, and take them home! Since they can only be one place at a time.”

She laughed then, her voice going up and down the scale, ha ha ha ha! as she laughed. I loved her for that. I don’t know why. It had been a long time since I’d remembered how much I love Molly.

After dinner Molly and I did the Wordle together. Descartes couldn’t sit still. He took the cushions off the couch to see whether his phone has slipped down between them. “But it is idiotic,” he growled. “I have looked there already. More than one time! There is no reason to look again. I could not stop myself. I am like a child.”

“Did you check all your pockets in all your clothing?”

“But yes certainly.”

“Did you check back at the hardware store?”

“I have asked the manager, face to face.” He was digging through the shoes at the bottom of the hall closet.

“Sorry it’s so dark in there, Descartes. I meant to get a new light bulb. Maybe try in the daytime, when there’s more light. Why don’t you look in the laundry room?”

“My cellular could not be in the laundry room,” said Descartes, “because I myself have not been in the laundry room in two weeks. For what reason should I look in the laundry room?”

“Because more light,” Molly and I said, at the same time. She said “Jinx.” And then we both guessed the Wordle at the same moment. It wasn’t LIGHT but it was RIGHT.



On Tuesday I called Molly from Jonno’s Auto Body. I was getting a dent hammered out of the Civic. I said: “Guess what. I found Descartes’s phone! It was under the seat in the car.”

Molly laughed and laughed. She said: “Well guess what. I found it too! It was in the laundry room, on the shelf. He must’ve been down there for some reason.”

“Poor guy. He hates the phone. Now he has two phones to hate.”

Finding it twice—at the same time! It seemed lucky, like seeing a rainbow. But then that night, Descartes burst in, a little late for dinner, carrying something in his hand that looked like a little box of mud. He said: “The mystery, now it is finished. I have found the cellular, though alas it has gone entirely to ruin. It was in the mud at the frog pond. I must surmise that it had fell from my pocket, at the time we were visiting there, after church last Sunday.”

Molly and I tried to hold back our laughter as we told him we had a surprise. Then we showed him the phones we’d found. Not one phone, but three! Wouldn’t you just know it. We put them all side by side on the kitchen counter and then we ate our tacos before they could get cold.

After dinner Descartes just stared at the three phones for a long time, without saying anything. He looked grumpy.

Molly asked: “Everything okay?”

Descartes said: “Which one is authentic? Only one can be mine, truly.”

We asked “Why?” but he didn’t have an answer. He looked like he was still chewing dinner but there wasn’t anything in his mouth. He was working himself into a very crappy mood.

Molly said: “Well, if only one can be right. Which one looks the way you expected?” But Descartes said he couldn’t remember the details of his phone, which he hated. He said they all looked alike to him.

Molly said: “I’ll call your number.” But none of the phones rang. The muddy one was thrashed, so that was no surprise. Descartes couldn’t remember a password for the phone from under the car seat. The phone from the laundry room didn’t need a password. It had a few phone numbers stored in it: my number, and Molly’s, and numbers from a few other people that none of us knew.

The next day, Descartes was up at dawn, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking pot after pot of chamomile tea. He was just waiting for me and Molly to wake up. He was dressed in his old clothes, from the first day he’d come to town—his shabby cloak of black velvet, the lace ruff, little pointed shoes with buckles. His hair was lank and greased down again. He even smelled the way he’d smelled at first—like neither he nor his clothes had been washed for a while. He was waiting for us to wake up and take him to the bus station. His black leather satchel was waiting at the door, no doubt packed up with all his yellow papers scratched with words and diagrams.

Molly drove him down to the station. When they were gone, I noticed that Descartes had left all three of his phones behind. I think they’re still in the closet, somewhere.