the toy in the mail, then the number changed
right before he’d mailed her child an expensive toy and then had his phone number changed
Context
Orin's standing apparatus for ending contact: not a word said, just an expensive toy posted to the Subject's kid and the phone number quietly changed, the line severed by administration rather than speech. The gift and the disconnection are one gesture — a payment that buys the right never to be reached — and it rhymes forward with his answer to Avril's letters (a form reply and, here, the number simply gone). Communication closed the way you'd close an account.