Short Story: The Caller Who Never Calls

Short Story: The Caller Who Never Calls

I would like to introduce you to my friend Christin. She's in her early twenties, petite, blonde, intelligent, works in the pharmaceutical industry, can smuggle you free ibuprofen during that time of the month, bubbly, excellent company for a cocktail - or two, open to visiting swingers clubs, lets you borrow her clothes even if you're two sizes too big and meets you at the tube station when you're too drunk to find your way home. The perfect companion.

And the most perfect thing about her is, she's just about to call me, ...right...now.

There it is.

Wow, I have either inherited those oogie-boogie powers from my psychic nana, or I knew Christin was going to call me because …..

(drumroll)

because she called me two days ago to remind me that she was going to call me on Tuesday the 13th December 2011 at exactly 19 hundred hours.

Or

(drumroll even more intense)

Because she said she would.

(a sarcastic crash of symbols)

I'm now ignoring the call.

I'm already multitasking as it is (typing/smoking). Plus, when I answer the phone with a cigarette in my hands, I either sound like someone's grandad or the killer from a thriller movie. I'll send her a message to say I'm on the toilet or having sex or something, and that I'll call her back when I'm done … either of which I'll explain will take some time and unfortunately, for the latter, this has recently been so far from the truth that it might give the game away.

But of course, I will call her back.

Because I said I would.

I'm sure you're now expecting some rejected hopeless woman to launch her resentful torpedo.

Fuelled by self-pity and unrequited love.

Final destination penis.

Correcto.

However,

I understand that by introducing Christin, I was being slightly unfair. I'm willing to consider all sides of the argument before declaring war.

She is, of course, a woman.

And studies show that women talk on average three times a day more than men.

Hence, scientifically speaking, men are probably justified in not picking up the phone and calling when they said they would in one third of all cases.

(This rule only applies to those men who are not going to moan at their future wives for their phone bills being too high, and therefore reduces the number of cases where men get off scot free to one tenth).

More importantly, if a man is going to utter three times less words than a woman, he could use that extra time to make sure what he does say is at least going to be the truth.

Secondly, I forgot to mention that Christin is also German. So yes, by default, she is bound to be uber punktlich and super organised.

And I'm open to the theory that telephone usage may also be linked to cultural trends.

Just the other day, my colleague in Paris failed to call me when he said he would. It was regarding the important customer details he'd managed to erase from the painstakingly boring database I'd spent hours creating.

So I was stuck in the middle of a cross-cultural sandwich - between Frau Schmidt who was stood frowning over my desk wailing 'How can it be?', and my Parisien co-worker Pierre, too engrossed in... Well, whatever it is they do over there will always remain some magical mystery but it's something so charming it left Pierre powerless to find the 'edit' and 'undo' tab on Microsoft Excel, or to call me back when he said he would.

When I dialled France only to discover that the office was closed due to a spontaneous midday protest, I was quite sympathetic about the matter, it's the cultural get out of jail free card.

From what I hear, the women get it pretty good in France. Who needs a man to call when you can sit around eating croissants all day without getting fat, when you can borrow your brother's man-bag when none of yours match your outfit, when you can polish off a bottle of wine in your lunch break and flick fag ash into your keyboard without your boss batting an eyelid.

If you're a man who is failing to call a French woman, then I don't blame you. They've got it good enough as it is.

Finally, I must also consider that my good friend Christin's ability to call on time may also be linked to a severe case of OCD.

Not only did she call when she said she would, 20 hundred hours on the 13th December 2011 without fail, she also kept to our scheduled appointment yesterday, Monday 12th December 2011 midday , location: second doorstep in front of my workplace, mission: to collect the now overly stretched fishnet tights and leather thigh-high boots I'd borrowed from her for swingers night.

Only problem was, I had been so busy rebuilding a database with all our customers' details that I'd completely forgotten my scheduled appointment with Christin.

So after waiting outside in the cold for exactly 115 seconds, she rang the doorbell and was let into the office by a snarling Frau Schmidt, who isn't exactly a Frau who'd approve of a glass of wine at lunch, definitely not the kind of Frau who'd approve of the fetish attire I'd been hiding under my desk all morning.

This time, I had found myself to be the filling of a German-German sandwich. On the one side I had Christin, the scheduling maniac whose appointment I'd missed and whose stockings I'd stretched. On the other side, Schmidt, who clearly did have to count how many croissants she ate and whose smoke came out of her ears rather than her mouth.

I had no other choice. On Monday 12th December 2011 at exactly 12:03 midday, I was no longer only known in the office for being the girl with amazing data-input skills.

That evening I received 3 calls.

Two were from guys who worked in my department.

One was from a friend of a guy who worked in IT.

Not one was from the caller who never calls.

And so, Caller Who Never Calls. How can this be!? You said that you would call me when you got back from Nepal. According to Christin's highly accurate calendar, you have been back in Europe for precisely two weeks and two days.

From what I remember about you loving the sound of your own voice, you are able to talk about yourself more in an hour than a woman talks for an entire day.

You are not French.

I can't borrow your handbag.

We both know I eat too many croissants.

You are definitely obsessive compulsive when it comes to saying you will do something, when you won't.

In fact, I have given up on the hope that you will call. I know longer risk life and limb to dive across the living room, only to find I've received an SMS offering me the opportunity to enlarge my penis. But if I do, I will sure to be sure to forward it on to you

(sarcastic clash of symbols)

Instead, I have now resorted to sleeping against the mailbox. The post lady is considering a restraining order, but this is also something with which she threatened Christin.

And so, I will let the saga continue for another three weeks.

I can imagine the titles of each upcoming chapter before I've finished the previous … 'The writer who never writes', 'The date that never shows', 'The charmer that never changes', 'The penis that never gr.....

One moment,

my phone is ringing.