The calls didn't start coming hard and strong till Monday morning. I wish she would've put down her number as the back-up or something. Sunday night there were maybe twenty calls for Brother Jeremiah lasting until as late as midnight, as people watched the eleven o'clock news to learn of my accidental triumph. After midnight I'm okay again until four in the morning, when the calls start trickling in from people who actually wake up that early and see their papers as soon as they're delivered. Some of the people sound angry that I'm trying to push myself as a prophet, and I get cursed at least twice before eight o'clock for being a heathen and a devil worshipper, but those people I hang up on and add to my phone book as "Don't Pick Up."
     At about eight it starts getting out of hand, so bad that I'm getting multiple calls while I'm already on the phone with people. I'm answering them as quickly as I can, trying to be polite and trying to be quick -- "Hi, yes, I'm Brother Jeremiah Wright, yes, I predicted the meteor, yes, there's a meeting at eight o'clock tonight at Sister Bonnie's house. Yes, her address is 65 Glass St., apartment 642, right here on Oakland, don't be afraid to Google Maps-it. Yes, Google Maps, that G-O-O-G-L-E-M-A-P-S dot COM, just input your address in the ‘Start' field and Sister Bonnie's address in the ‘End' field, and it'll give you directions. Yes, again, the address is 65 Glass St., Oakland, California, 94621, apartment 12 and I'll see you there tonight at eight. Okay. Yes. Good to talk to you too." -- but even as fast as I can say it, even if the people already know Google Maps, even if they can contain their gushing and wowing and ohmygoding, it still takes a good minute to spit all of that out, and I'm beginning to lose calls, making the calls that follow them that much more insistent, until I'm losing my mind.
     At about ten I realize that I can set a voice mail message and let the phone do all the hard work. None of these people need to leave messages, so they can't possibly clog up my voice mail. I force myself to not pick up any calls while I call my voice mail and leave a new message. It doesn't take as long as I thought it would: I've already been saying the spiel all morning, so I already know exactly what to say. After a couple retries, I come up with this: "Hello, this is Brother Jeremiah Wright. Thanks for calling. I'm happy to learn of your interest in The Indefatigable Wright Brothers, but can't come to the phone. If you want to know more about the Indefatigable Wright Brothers, please come to our meeting tonight at eight o'clock, at Sister Bonnie's house. Her address is 65 Glass St., apartment 12, Oakland, California, 94621. Don't be afraid to get directions from Google Maps dot com, that's G-O-O-G-L-E-M-A-P-S dot COM. We'll see you there!"
     I set that as my "busy" message too, then I set the phone down and let the damn thing ring.
     I sit around my house and listen to my phone ring off the hook for about an hour, trying to eat breakfast or watch TV, then I set the thing on silent and take off vibrate. I try eating cereal and watching TV like this for another hour, but I can't take the quiet anymore, so I get up, grab my phone, stuff it in my jeans pocket, and head out to the bus stop in front of my complex.
     It's good to get some sun again. I lean back against the pole that marks the bus stop, let the sun fall on my face, and just breathe for a little bit, until the bus shows up. When it squeaks to a stop ten minutes later and the door swings open, I have a momentary fear that the bus driver has recognized me, but then I remember all at once that only my name is famous, not my face. And hell, my name should only be famous for those people that Bonnie handed out fliers to. No one will know me on the bus, no one will mob me or try to touch me, or ask for blessings or curse my name. This feels very good and very disappointing all the same time. That is, until I realize that if Bonnie's successful, I might end up being one of the most famous men in Oakland at the very least, maybe in California, too. And maybe, I think, in the United States, and maybe the world. That's scary enough to cancel out any sense of disappointment.
     I ride around on the bus and try to clear my head. An hour later, the bus is heading for the bus stop I got on at. I get off there and lean up against the bus stop pole again and look at my phone. For the past three hours, I have one hundred forty-eight missed calls. Nice.
     I rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger, then open up the phone and clear the message that tells me I've missed what's for me a century's worth of phone calls. The message that pops up after that tells me I have sixty-five voice mails.
     Shit on toast.
     I clear those out too -- what can all those zealots possibly have had to say to me, except maybe "Oh my god I'm your biggest fan?" Maybe it's a bunch of the religious crazy people who want to inform me that I'll be going to hell, where the demons will drive me up hills covered in needles, and boil me alive in pools of blood.
     The next message shows three texts that I've managed to miss. I look at those first and decide to tackle all the voice mails later.
     First is from Lenny: "d00d, ur phonz buzy, wtf?"
     Second is from Bonnie: "Jeremiah I REALLY need you to answer your phone when I call you"
     Third is also from Bonnie: "WHERE ARE YOU"
     I text Lenny first: "bunch of people calling i will call when i can."
     As I'm texting this, my phone starts ringing again, and I have to stop texting long enough to hit the "Ignore" button. I send my text to Lenny, then call Bonnie. She picks up after one ring.
     "Where have you been?!"
     "Riding the bus. Watching TV. Eating cereal. Why?"
     "There are people at my house."
     Ugh. All I can think is, You're the one who got us into this. You're the one who said we should use your house. Don't even say that this is my fault. "I told them that the meeting would start at eight."
     "Then you must be about as popular as Star Wars, because there are people camped in my front yard."
     "Why don't you invite them in?"
     "I have, but they say they want to wait for you. It's like they're waiting to carry you away."
     "I'll be there, but I don't know when. No car, remember?"
     "So take the bus."
     Call waiting beeps, and I ignore it.
     "Tried that. Can't figure out how to use public transportation."
     (Shut up. It's close enough to the truth.)
     "So you need me to give you a ride."
     Not a question.
     "That would be nice, yeah. I guess I could walk." I try to make it sound nonchalant and pleasepleaseplease all at the same time. I think I just manage to strike the proper balance.
     "Fine. You're at your house, or the transit center?"
     "My house."
     "Fine. What's your address? I'll fucking Google Maps you."
     I can hear in her voice that she's called more than once.
     "I'm 4362 Raider Ave., Oakland. Oh, the zip in 94601."
     "‘Nine four six oh one.' Got it. I'll be there soon. Maybe we can talk about this when I get there."
     "Sure. See ya in a few."
     "Bye."
     She hangs up and I walk into the house. As I'm walking up my little section of sidewalk, I see Ruth waving at me, so I wave back and head in.
     Maybe I really can pull this whole psychopath thing off.
     Bonnie shows up about half an hour later, and I realize that she's never been to my house before.
     She steps in long enough for two things to happen: I grab my coat off the floor, and she says, "Nice couch." I look at her to see if she's serious, and I think she is. I walk outside with her behind me, lock my door, and she lets me in her car.
     She closes the door, then sits with her hands on the wheel and her head on her hands. As we sit, I think: Can Ruth and Valerie see me? What do they think of me, if they think of me at all? Does anyone around here wonder what happened to my Datsun? Do they think I'm creepy? Can they tell that I'm trying to become a psychopath? What would they think? Why do I care? Do any of them recognize me from that news broadcast? Did any of them even see it? Why didn't I see it? What in God's name is going to happen when all those zealots see me at Bonnie's house? What's going to happen when they see that I'm the one whose car was destroyed?
     That last thought puts and end to thinking in words while my mind weighs the possibilities without their encumbrance, clicking along like a calculator.
     Click click click.
     They all think I'm a big hoaxer, and they leave, throwing their fliers up in the air or ripping them up into pieces or balling them up to throw at my head.
     Click click. Click.
     They think that I've wasted their time, and a few of them step out of the crowd, because they were willing to think I was the second coming of Christ until they saw me, and now they're mad enough that baseball bats materialize in their hands.
     Click. Click click.
     They think that the heavens have favored me with some kind of amazing foreknowledge of the events of my life, which I can and will teach them for the small monthly fee of $99.99 per month, and the ones who are better at mastering the art than the others will go up belt levels and join my inner circle of Life Gurus who are slowly learning not only how to predict events, but to change the courses of them through sheer willpower.
     Click.
     All this runs through my head in the time it takes Bonnie to lay her forehead on the steering wheel and take three slow breaths. By the time she rolls her head over to look at me the thoughts have cleared away and I'm feeling a little closer to normal. She looks at me, then says, "Okay, I'm sorry that I freaked on the phone. I guess I should be blaming myself for this, and for printing out all those fliers. I'm the one who got us into this mess, right?"
     I nod, and it's not until after I've already started nodding that I suddenly realize that nodding was not the right answer, Bonnie being a girl and all.
     She doesn't freak out, though. "Okay. But you have to be the one to get us out of it. I'm not the psychopath here, you are. So, do we have a plan?"
     The defrost is beginning to make the car too warm. I shake my head.
     "Great." She turns her head back so that the exact middle of her forehead is resting on her hands. "So we still don't know what we want these people doing. Okay, fine. Good." She nods down at her lap.
     "Do you have any ideas at all?" she says after a moment.
     "Of what?"
     "What you want them doing? They're doing it for you, and now that you have their attention, they'll do whatever you want. Look at Hitler: he wanted an ethnically cleansed Aryan race, and he almost got it. So pretty much, if there's anything you always wanted to do but didn't have the manpower for it, this is the time. It can be something big, like forming your own country whose sole goal is to build a rocket and colonize the moon, or it can be something smaller like creating the perfect ice cream flavor that everyone on earth thinks is yummy. It doesn't matter. What do you want?"
     That's way too big a question to ever possibly answer.
     "Edit every page of Wikipedia to read ‘Jeremiah rocks?'"
     No.
     "Buy and support a third world country?"
     No.
     "Proclaim yourself the personal agent of God and destroy the papacy by demonstrating your godly powers to prove that the College of Cardinals no longer gives a damn who God wants to be Pope, they just pick they guy they like?"
     Definitely not.
     She looks at me again, a sidelong glance out of the corner of her eye, then looks back down at her lap and turns off the defrost. "Well, I guess we have till eight to decide. After that, though, I can't tell you what to do. I can't drive these people. They're your responsibility." She throws a glance back over her shoulder and begins to back out.