Wrong Mary

Inside her phone was a room the color of wool and that was where she talked to Rod. Often it wasn’t just talking. She sent pictures of herself: naked, clothed. Rod was always complimentary. Oh my God, he would write. Mary you Look Amazing. No matter what he said she sent him more photos, pressing her body to the phone’s camera the way children lean against deli counters, their stomachs firm against the panes.

The phone’s camera clicked. Mary watched as her body appeared on the screen. There were dark strokes around each muscle, like someone had taken a scalpel to her skin and carved into its surface overnight. She attached the picture and the message turned blue, watery, when she sent it.

Oh my God, Rod typed. Mary you Look Amazing.

When they texted Mary called him Emily Dickinson because of the way he used capital letters. Sometimes just Emily. Rod claimed autocorrect. Mary texted back a small, dark-haired woman obscured by the silvery square of a laptop computer. A picture appeared on their thread: Rod’s pants with a seatbelt strung over them tight, the fabric folding around his body.

Working Hard, he said.

Okay Emily, Mary wrote.

Rod’s next message popped up immediately, this time through the dating application they met on last October. They lived in the same city but on opposite sides and that meant their relationship often resorted to words. The words, usually on the app, which Mary kept because Rod liked it or seemed to. He used it more often than actual texting. On the app he was Rod, no last name, age 32, 6-foot-3. Rod No Last Name was simple, sexual. He was very direct. With Mary it went the reverse. She was more formal on the app, more composed. On the screen the app’s icon brightened, its fake flame flickering. 

Hey, he wrote. It’s Raining in the Valley—Are you Wet Yet—

He texted Mary while he drove to work from her studio apartment, the long arc he took from the museum district to the coast. She still didn’t know what he really did for living, like how he spent his days. It was something to do with computers and whether they could be used to make people learn better. Typing skills, children. Rod did the software and she didn’t understand it. Like: what do you mean, those numbers turn into websites? Yeah, he would say. Numbers into websites. On the dating app Mary sent back a pair of hands in prayer, two oblong eyes stuck wide open.

Oh Shoot, Rod said. I meant to text that to Other Mary—

Other Mary was a joke between them because when they first started out he was dating someone else named Mary too. One time he texted real Mary to break up with the other Mary by mistake. Something about a shirt he left at her place, a pair of slippers. Please don’t be mad at me but. And then: oh no, I meant that for someone else, not you, Mary. It had a feeling to it, the experience, that she struggled to name. Like she’d been locked out of a new apartment. Whatever it meant to sit out there, listening to the ambulances.

She turned the phone’s screen black with her thumb. The app wasn’t as good as texting. She didn’t like being Mary no last name, picture of her by the Y in the Hollywood sign with an ugly dog by her feet, its hips spreadeagle. Caption angel in disguise, caption if you’re my student no you’re not. Students = the freshman in her introduction to fiction seminar. Teaching at the university was required for her funding, the stipend for the creative writing fellows, though it barely paid enough for her to go to the bargain grocery store. She tried to write a short story about the experience with the other Mary around the time a student found her on the app. Hi, Mary. Is that you? The short story wasn’t very good.

You’re afraid to hurt your characters, her classmates had said. You’re afraid to raise the stakes.

Which characters? Mary replied. Which stakes?

Mary sent a cartoonish avatar to Rod, its expression locked into a contorted, sideways grin. The app didn’t let you send actual pictures. Instead it forced her into positions she would never replicate in actual life. Wink, thumbs up, etc. The front-facing camera was different. Mary liked the way its real lens enclosed her: the small, accurate projections. Very predictable. When she blinked, her reflection blinked back. It was better than the outside world, the world where even mirrors were wrong.

She opened her computer. Sat down. There weren’t many places to go in the apartment. What did the realtor call it, an efficiency unit? She couldn’t walk a few steps without running into necessary furniture. A bookshelf, her bedframe, the mirror. She rested her phone against the upright screen, camera open, so she could see herself while she worked. The image helped to ground her: that was her, she was there, it was real. Mary last name, Mary full body, Mary working.

She went to her inbox and opened a document, flipped back and forth between that and the camera. There were: lines of text, images, a few junk messages from bikini companies. Two emails from the university’s graduate counseling center, one that advised taking walks around water sources and another confirming Mary’s scheduled appointment with one of their psychiatrists. Her professor recommended she go after a bad meeting at office hours. Andrea had told her that her new short stories were very relatable. Mary started to cry. It’s a compliment, Andrea said. But have you heard about the counseling center?

The program directed the doctoral fellows to every form of therapy. Therapy: talk and ketamine and psilocybin and cognitive behavioral. They thought it was hard to get by with minds like theirs. Mary thought it was insulting, the belief that people who studied words were more fragile than people who understood how to build bridges. After all Rod knew computers and he felt more than she did. He had sex like it was going to kill him and cried when they covered protests on the radio.

Her phone buzzed. It was Rod, responding to one of the photos she sent earlier that morning. In the photo Mary wore a corset she bought from a luxury clothing consignment website, held the camera up horizontal. The picture looked good. The corset looked better. It was made of a thick white fabric printed with blue Vegas roses. It didn’t fasten all the way up, so now—almost noon—it hung from her body, ties drooping long onto her legs. She bought the corset before the website locked her account for fraud—fraud that wasn’t even her fault, but the fault of another person with her exact name. Another Mary Jones. She glanced at the text from Rod, a yellow bubble face with water dripping out of its mouth.

Mary flicked it away but more alerts came after it, each from a different application. All the notifications said basically the same thing again and again and again. Everyone Mary knew was getting married and everyone had more money than she thought they did. More friends too. They had credenzas and barcarts and dinner parties. Mary didn’t have a couch. All she had was the fellowship at a university mostly known for a football team. Plus a corset. Her phone vibrated.

Text from Filip, the phone said in a woman’s voice.

The woman inside her phone spoke only sometimes. Her job was to translate whatever happened in the phone into the outside world but she could never do it right. Sometimes the woman said things through the mapping service. She said turn left and exit here and approach the roundabout. She was British sometimes, Indian others, but only on certain words. Words like curbstomp and colonization.

The phone-woman said his name again, this time with a surname: FILIP CONSIGNMENT. Mary picked up the phone, read his text. It was about the locked account and the dress she tried to buy online—the same dress she tried to buy last month plus the month before. Mary played with the corset’s sturdy laces, the thick knot of its designer tag. The dress she wanted would be similar. Short and green with velvet trim around a squared off neck. Sleeveless. She would wear it to the park. She would wear it to dinner. She would wear it in pictures, and Rod would love it.

We’re unable to locate you in our system, Filip Consignment wrote.

I’m Mary, Mary wrote.

Their text messages were titled with the case name: no. 134555. The messages with Filip—with customer service—went back to September. Mostly Filip just referred to her by number: 134555. Hi 134555. How are you doing. She understood. There were so many Marys spinning around in the black internet hole, buying dresses online. They needed case numbers and direct addresses. It was better that way. Numbers were the language of software and software was very elegant according to Rod. When it was done right, he said, reading code was like classical music. Even houseplants liked it.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Filip Consignment wrote.

That’s okay, she wrote.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Filip wrote again.

Filip wasn’t elegant or at least he wasn’t all the time. One morning Mary checked her phone and he’d messaged her asking for a receipt four hundred times. That was when Filip was automated. Sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn’t. Mary knew when he was real from his punctuation—less of it—and how he sometimes made spelling mistakes and didn’t capitalize the first letters in sentences. Like: how are you doing? what’s your name? Great, Mary would write. greaat, real Filip would say back.

The clothing consignment website named all their customer associates Filip. His name implied something as upscale and international as the clothing consigned on the website. The message pinged again.

Swipe: the website’s interface on the screen. Mary scrolled past columns of handbags. Silk dresses that melted like water from a faucet. Severe trousers. That the clothing was used only made it better. Mary imagined women in the sleeves of these ballgowns. The silver earrings, big enough to get stuck in your throat. Mary picked the skin on the outside of her nail until it bled out the color of the application’s logo. 

We’ve elevated your request to our management team, Filip said, his message appearing across the phone’s top layer. Please expect a call shortly.

The last manager Mary spoke to was named Filip except that the Filip sounded like a woman. Hi, I’m Filip, the woman said. Really? Mary said. That’s right, she said. Filip. Great, Mary said.

Is there anything I can help you with?

No, Mary said. Thank you.

Have fun at the wedding! Filip wrote.

The corset’s string looped tight around her finger. There was no wedding. Rod was still in her phone as Rod Application. Maybe he had the wrong person again. According to Filip her purchase could not be completed because of a existing Mary with her exact name. A Mary in hot water with the company. It was something about replica merchandise. Designer dresses that weren’t. Wrong Mary gave them fake clothes for real money. Filip said it went on for months or maybe years without the company realizing. Everyone knew about it: accounting, management, legal. Mary unwound the string and watched it fall to the ground.

She traced her hands over the blue shock of each rose in the corset. Wrong Mary probably had a wedding. She probably had a water faucet dress. But no. Mary went back in her and Filip’s messages and saw that she’d said the event herself. I’m going to my sister’s wedding, she wrote. And I really need that dress. As soon as possible. She didn’t know why she said there was a wedding or why she said she had a sister.

Thanks, Mary said. I will. Have fun at the wedding.

It’s been a pleasure serving you, Filip Consignment said.

His bubble disappeared. Filip’s avatar was handsome in a computer-generated way. Hair that looked edible. When he left the noises in the apartment got louder. Her fridge grumbled and she could hear the neighbor’s TV. The young couple next door watched reality shows all the time. The ones that locked people inside houses until they fell in love. She heard a woman scream and the sound of water splashing. What’s your dream house? A voice said. What’s your perfect partner?

Call from Filip Consignment, her phone said.

She answered. A man’s voice. This Filip sounded like a respectable Filip. His voice was sanded down, smoothed by the invisible tide.

Mary, Filip said. Can you confirm your email?

M as in Mary, she said.

Go ahead, Filip Consignment said.

Dot-com, she said.

Then he asked for her middle name and her shipping address and her billing address and her mother’s maiden name and her private PIN and her second dog and her birth city and her credit card number. When she looked out the window, down at the square pool of the complex, she could forget that he wasn’t in her apartment. He was real. His voice was so clear. The reality show was gone. She recited letters for Filip and remembered her second dog.

I’m so sorry, Filip Consignment said. That you’ve been confused with someone else.

He had a slight accent. Former Yugoslavia.

I know, Mary said.

Zip code? Filip said.

9—Mary said.

How’s it Going, the semi-British woman in her phone said. Text from Rod.

Good, she said.

Excuse me? Filip Consignment said.

Nothing, Mary said.

Sending text to Rod, the woman said. Nothing.

Mother’s maiden name? Filip Consignment asked. Favorite childhood pet?

A thump came against her window and a small sparrow dropped to the balcony. There was a faint smudgy place where its wings smashed against her window.

On her phone, Filip said: You have been confused for someone else. Is that right?

Mary said, haven’t I said that already?

I’ll have to pass this on to our management team, he said. Can you confirm your email address and telephone number?

Don’t you have my email address, my telephone number? Aren’t you the management team?

No, he said. I need them. I need them right now.

The music came again. It was jazz or classical or whatever. The bird ascended into the sky. 

Movie later? Mary texted Rod.

Text from Filip, the woman in her phone said. Please rate your experience of my service with a happy face, a straight line face, a frowning face—

The semi-British woman translated even the more abstract emojis into language. Smiling moon, she would say. Shooting star. American flag. Mary chose the middle option and sent it, her face adopting its pose, mouth drawn flat across her chin.

On the phone, Filip said: Please wait while I process your request.

There’s a 7:30, Mary typed. I’ll meet you.

Please expect a callback—

Every Filip was useless even though he sounded nice. The string instruments began again. Mary hung up. As she pressed the red button, Filip disappeared, and she caught her reflection in the small, unframed mirror propped against the wall. The person there confused her. Had there always been so many hairs in her eyebrows?

She turned from the mirror, and opened her phone’s camera, returning it to its spot, leaned against the laptop’s screen. It was later than she thought: the sun cast long over the pool outside, and she saw a kid returning from school, its backpack larger than its body. She added a comma to the first sentence of her newest story, deleted it. Rod didn’t text. Filip was quiet. She looked at the details for the movie on her phone and got dressed, sliding a t-shirt over her body and pretending it was something nicer: a cotton dress, a suede skirt. The sky turned the shade of pink that you could own.


She ran from the parking lot and by the time she made it to the theatre the lights were off and all Mary saw were names flashing on the screen: Bill Jones, Aaron Graeber, Candice Jenkins. She wasn’t sure if Rod made it. The only seats left were in the front below the aisle where people hunched over to go to the bathroom.

She hadn’t missed anything: the documentary followed an actress cast in a spy movie set in Paris. The woman came from a career in superhero movies. The spy thing was supposed to be her artistic debut, except that bad things kept happening, halting production: storms and no tax break and a viral stomach bug. The movie got too much attention online. It was boring. Mary focused on the wrought iron curves of each French balcony and the way their loops mirrored the heroine’s fingerwaved hair. She checked back in the crowd a few times for Rod, but she couldn’t find him. There was one man who came close: like a stretched version of Rod, a Rod with legs like gel pens.

As the movie went on it made less and less sense. Mary couldn’t tell when the woman was her character and when she was real. Both women started wearing the same silvery latex suit, and the actress started doing her makeup the same, too, a dark red lipstick with dots of clownish blush. She did all the things her character did: she cheated, lied. She pocketed a large green jewel. Mary was glad Rod hadn’t made it. He didn’t like indulgent films.

When the movie got brighter—daytime in Paris—she felt alone. She looked back at the crowd, but everyone stared right at the screen. It went on. Nothing resolved. The woman’s husband said that she wore the latex suit all the time, sometimes even to sleep. Eventually the lights came up, and Mary waited as the other people filed out of the theatre. Almost-Rod moved past her in the EXIT line and smiled. Maybe he was Rod: a version of him, swapped and altered in the dark.


Outside it had rained and the air smelled like a gas station. The stars were a desktop. Mary saw the Rod-ish man standing in the corner of the parking lot. A drop fell onto her nose. She glanced into one of the puddles gathered on the parking lot’s asphalt and in it she saw her reflection.

Mary admired the dress she wore, a beautiful green shift with dark velvet trim. It really was beautiful, that dress. The velvet was thick, the pleats perfectly placed. Mary straightened up and listened to the road, the cars, their traffic, an ambulance vanishing around a corner. Had there always been so many people and so few of them at the same time?

A car honked to move her body out of its way. Her feet slapped across the puddles through the dead-black lot. When she glanced at her hands they looked wrapped in something. Their fabric was firm. Expensive, Mary thought, and tailored. Small indentations laced across them, lines from the movie theatre’s seat.

When she looked up, there he was: Rod. Or something. Mary approached him the way you walk up to a wild animal. She rehearsed certain things she might say to attract his attention. It was a little difficult. Men didn’t care about clothing or the rituals of the body. She could blow a whistle or clutch his hands. I hated that movie, she would say. I hated it so much. And then he would calm her down. He had Rod’s friendly hair, the same pants that just grazed the ground. Finally, after one million years, he turned to face her. It wasn’t Rod. It was Rod.

Filip? Mary said.

He smiled. When they left together, Mary thought, well, this is what I signed up for. This real-life stuff, the parking lot glistening like a necklace. The city, behaving exactly as promised. She could write about it later. For now she was in love with a man she met online.



Claudia Ross is a writer in LA. Her fiction and essays can be found in The Paris Review, The Baffler, 3:AM, Frieze, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere.