|
| Thursday, February 22, 2007 |
| Ata and the Phone Call |
The other night, Ata got a phone call.
At 2AM, Ata was sleeping soundly on the couch (it was hot, alright? And Mr Ata doesn't like sleeping on the couch, so he had the airbed on the floor. Yes, correct, we still haven't had our house airconditioner repaired) when the phone rang. Ata's mobile phone.
Having entered a stage of life where one assumes that a phone call at an unusual hour is a family member calling to inform of the death of another family member (morbid, perhaps, but that's how it is), Ata leapt out of bed... er, couch... and raced down the hallway. Just as she lay a hand on the phone, it stopped ringing.
Somewhat disoriented from having gotten up so quickly and still unsure of what the time was, Ata glared at the "missed call" notification on her phone. The number started with 07 - that makes it a Queensland number. Before she had time to puzzle over this, the phone rang again. Ata picked it up.
"Hello?" she said.
"'Elllllooo!" said the Voice on the other end. "Lizzy?*"
At this point, some background knowledge is required. Ata's best friend is commonly called Lizzy- it being the standard affectionate abbreviation of her actual name.
"No," said Ata, "This is Ata."
There was a pause while the Voice processed this information.
"Who?" he ventured, slowly.
"I'm not who you're looking for," said Ata, very firmly but displaying admirable patience with a 2AM phone call that wasn't for her.
"Oh," said the Voice. Another pause. "....Well, 's Lizzy there?"
"No, mate," said Ata. "You've got the wrong number."
"Oh," said the Voice. "Sorry."
And he hung up.
After getting off the phone, some connections began to fire in Ata's mind. Queensland. Queensland. Ata knows one person in Queensland... and, coincidentally, he and Lizzy were, once upon a time, an Item. In point of fact, she dropped him for her now-husband. Ata chewed this over. Ata has not spoken to the gentleman she's thinking of for... over a year. But even so, the likelihood of him making late-night drunken phonecalls - on a weeknight, no less - seems highly unlikely. Besides which, he would definately have realised his mistake when Ata told him her name... if it was the person Ata was thinking of, she and he were good friends for a number of years, through Highschool and University.
In the morning, Ata got out her phone book, and checked on the White Pages as well. The number the stranger had called from was different to the number of the potential suspect... it was with some relief that Ata decided it couldn't possibly have been him.
But the voice - although drunken and slurred - was very familiar...
*Yes, names have been changed. Because I damn well felt like it. |
posted by Ata @ 4:42 pm  |
|
|
|
|
|
