Smartphones

A story about the mafia and metanoia.

Devices by August Lamm

Imagine a guy in the mafia called “Smartphones.”

They call him “Smartphones” because he got made after stealing a bunch of smartphones off a truck.

Success came with all the usual perks for “Smartphones”: a new car, a new fiancé, and new respect from his peers.

Things move fast with the new fiancé, and soon “Smartphones” is getting married in a huge wedding in a beautiful church with all his friends and family.

A few weeks later, the feds bust “Smartphones” for stealing all those smartphones.

Turns out, he had been the target of an elaborate sting.

The authorities were not only aware that the heist was going down, but their agents had even taken actions to encourage “Smartphones” to “mastermind” it.

With “Smartphones” facing a huge prison sentence, the feds try to get him to flip.

The feds tease him during their many attempts to interrogate him by calling him “Flip phone.”

But “Smartphones” doesn’t flip.

Repaying this loyalty, the mob arranges it so that several key witnesses in the federal case against “Smartphones” undergo mysterious accidents that result in their deaths before they can testify at his trial.

As a result of the weakened case, “Smartphones” ends up doing two years in prison instead of fifteen.

For the first few weeks of “Smartphones’s” prison term, he’s elated, but then he starts having trouble sleeping.

He eventually goes to see the prison chaplain about it.

According to the chaplain, the cause of “Smartphones’s” insomnia is guilt.

“Smartphones” feels bad about the innocent witnesses whose “accidents” enabled him to spend less time behind bars.

“Smartphones” leverages his mafia connections to smuggle sleeping pills and other prescription drugs into the prison.

With these, he medicates his way to a good night’s sleep and emerges from prison only slightly addicted to pills.

Once he gets out of prison, however, he finds he has another problem.

People around the neighborhood are still calling him “Smartphones,” only now it’s completely sarcastic.

It seems his disastrous smartphone heist has become a kind of dumb, urban legend he can’t escape the legacy of.

Hey Smartphones, bring me a beer.

Yo Smartphones, what’s shaking? You had any big ideas lately? Hahaha.

Every time he hears that nickname, “Smartphones” bristles.

And for the rest of his narrative arc, his battle against his own sense of inadequacy is on full display.

As an audience member, you root for him, at least a little, because, at the end of the day, he’s not a horrible person, relatively speaking.

He was loyal to his friends, he never wanted to hurt anyone, and he even suffered insomnia out of guilt over those who died for his benefit.

“Smartphones” is a pretty good guy for his own time and context!

And his internal conflict is painfully relatable.

In the last scene he’s in, “Smartphones” gets a chance to redeem his reputation in the mob by whacking someone who is completely innocent but whose death is required for the mafia to accomplish its broader objectives.

Although “Smartphones” is gung-ho to do this for several scenes prior, in the heat of the moment, he can’t pull the trigger on this innocent person.

As a result, “Smartphones” is mercilessly ragged on by his fellow mafia members.

Eventually, he retreats from the scene to be alone.

Sitting on a bench a short walk from the location where he couldn’t pull the trigger, “Smartphones” is mulling over his second major failure as a hardcore gangster, and his general inability to fully embrace the role he seems to have been cast in.

That’s when the oldest and wisest mafioso in “Smartphones’s” circle walks up, and, finding “Smartphones” crying with no one else around, sits down and tells him that maybe he’s just not cut out for being in the mafia.

We’ll call this guy the “Don” for simplicity’s sake, although, in truth, this particular group of mafiosos doesn’t have a true “Don” at this particular moment in their long unfolding saga, of which “Smartphones’s” story is only one sliver.

Regardless, the “Don” suggests that if “Smartphones” wanted out of the “family business,” he would happily help him come up with an exit strategy that would preserve his dignity and honor.

At first “Smartphones” seems as if his manhood has been insulted by the mere suggestion that he might want out of the mob, but, after a while, “Smartphones’s” face reveals immense existential relief.

He tells the “Don” that although he would be lost without the mob, he also genuinely wishes that there was something else for him in this life, since he’s so obviously not cut out for being ruthless and skilled enough to do the dirt that a true criminal soldier needs to be able to do.

The “Don” nods at “Smartphones’s” precise articulation of his predicament, then, without “Smartphones” noticing, lifts a pistol that he’d had in his hand the whole time up behind “Smartphones’s” head.

Then with his free hand, this seasoned mob guy gestures at the horizon.

There’s a charismatic twinkle in the “Don’s” eye as he speaks:

I want you to close your eyes and imagine a life, any life you want, just over that horizon, waiting for you. Keep your eyes closed. Now, when you got a good, solid picture in your head, tell me, and I’ll tell you to open your eyes, and you’ll tell me what you pictured, and not only will I listen, I’ll help you make it happen. That’s my promise to you, “Smartphones.”

“Smartphones” looks at the senior mafia guy with tears of gratitude in his eyes, then looks at the horizon long and hard, then closes his eyes.

Okay, boss. I got it.

Go ahead, “Smartphones.”

But just as “Smartphones” eyes are opening, the “Don” pulls the trigger.

The bullet flies through “Smartphones’s” brain.

The beautiful future “Smartphones” had been envisioning star-wipes to nothingness.

The “Don” frowns at some spots of blood on his collar, then stands and rolls “Smartphones’s” body off the bench with his boot.

He looks down at “Smartphones,” whose eyes are open wide, and there’s a huge, stupid smile on his face.

After a long stare, the “Don” offers mordantly:

“Smartphones.”

A trace of bleak yet cosmic empathy threads the “Don’s” one-word eulogy—as if it is dawning on the “Don” how, on some level, “Smartphones’s” fate is ultimately the fate we all share.

The “Don” performs a sign of the cross with his gun-hand, then tucks the gun away.

The “Don” stalks back to the place where his mafioso semi-subordinates are loading the body of the innocent person they successfully murdered to advance their objectives into the trunk of a car.

One looks up, then looks around.

Wait—where’s Smartphones?

Dead.

After a moment, in which they all looked shocked, the “Don” orders them to go get “Smartphones’s” body and cram it into the trunk with the body of the other, objectively innocent person.

The two entangled corpses shift and settle against each other in the darkness as the vehicle hits potholes and the bumps of various roads and bridges.

By the time the bodies are weighted and dropped into the river, their rigor mortis has made them difficult to separate.

The gangsters peering over the edge of the wharf are momentarily haunted by a big bubble of air that escapes from “Smartphones’s” mouth as he sinks, unblinking, into the ink-colored water.

The bubble of the dead man’s breath bursts as it crosses the threshold of the surface of the water and joins the air.

The gangsters stare speechlessly at the waves, suddenly stricken by the pathos of what they have just done.

They reach for humor to cope with the discomfort.

They start ragging on each other about which one of them will be the first to try to put the moves on “Smartphones’s” widow, who everyone agrees was always out of his league.

Little do they know that the “Don,” who comforted and murdered “Smartphones” is already at the widow’s house, telling her the news.

The news is wrapped in a lie about the circumstances of “Smartphones’s” demise.

This lie preserves “Smartphones’s” honor and reputation for the benefit of his widow.

For as long as she lives, “Smartphones’s” widow will believe that “Smartphones” died in a heroic fashion.

It’s easy for the “Don” to tell this lie with conviction because he himself genuinely believes it.

Although he keeps this particular reflection to himself, the “Don” believes that “Smartphones” preserved the sanctity of his soul by refusing to murder the innocent person.

“Smartphones” heroism was the rarer, Christlike kind of heroism, the “Don” reflects.

Going to bed that night, the “Don” wishes he lived in a world where he could have divulged to “Smartphones’s” widow the true nature of his heroism.

What if we do live in that world? he thinks.

What if I really could have told her the truth?

Would that change anything?

Why are we so ashamed of ourselves and each other when we are truly, literally self-sacrificial?

Why are we only proud of ourselves when we exhibit heroism in an aggressive or acquisitive sense?

If one person knew how I truly felt about “Smartphones,” he thinks, surely “Smartphones’s” story would mean more.

What if the only thing keeping the world from becoming more loving, less enslaved to the moral compromises of power, was the reluctance of people like me to share the stories of those like “Smartphones’s”?

The “Don” is furious with himself for indulging in such thoughts, even as he feels proud of himself for thinking them, which makes him feel faintly saintly.

Why am I even having these thoughts when I am the least likely person to ever do anything about them?

I have the most to lose when it comes to spreading a message of radical love, of choosing innocence over power.

I would have to change my whole life if I really believed any of this.

What’s wrong, honey?

This is the “Don’s” wife, who is also trying to sleep, but her husband’s lack of sleep is keeping her awake.

Nothing, sweetie. Go to sleep.

I’m trying to, but you keep tossing and turning.

I’m sorry.

Every time I close my eyes and almost fall asleep, you move or sigh again, and it wakes me up!

I’m sorry.

I can tell you’re worrying about something. Why don’t you just tell me what it is? You’ll feel better after sharing, and I’ll fall asleep while you talk.

I don’t want to talk about it.

Then for Christ’s sake be still and let me sleep!

Sorry. The “Don” feels a flash of self-righteous anger. I didn’t know I was moving around.

How can you not know? I know when I’m fidgeting. See? She starts fidgeting dramatically to make a point. You don’t know your own body? You don’t know what it’s doing? Just be still.

I said I was sorry. Jesus Christ.

His wife rolls over onto her side with her back to him. I can’t sleep on your sorries. I can sleep if you’re still. Just be still and feel about it however you want.