welcome, caller

by Sarah Little

“hello, and thank you for calling. how may i direct your call this evening?”

you dial three to speak to the past, and no-one answers. there’s hold music, instead, humming through the phone, loud enough that the clunky receiver feels like it’s vibrating in your palm. it’s the song he did once for you, posted it to instagram so he knew you’d see it first thing in the morning.

it got seven likes, none of which were your own.

this is how the story between you goes, always: that he puts more into the universe for you than you do for him.

breathe in. out. let your voice catch on a whistle of air and sigh, let the exhale rough up the receiver. it crackles dully at you, displeased.

in reply, you thrum your fingers on the body of the receiver, feel the rain-drop patter reflecting back at you a dozen times before it stills. “it’s me again,” you tell the music. it stops, cuts off in the middle of an instrumental warble, and you sigh at it, bang the receiver clumsily onto the cradle.

it sits there crookedly, whining.

at home, you pace and type, type and pace. upload the photo into the internet, a cool-eyed selfie of yourself in a phone-box, “going back to when it was easier,” you tell them. he might not be listening, but that’s alright.

the longer you talk and the louder you whisper, the less he will hear.

(the less he hears, the more he won’t know)

was the phone box blue or red? your hands twist through the hem of your jumper, and you pace without counting the steps: it was blue. down the staircase: it was red.

along the hallway, to the hook where you leave your coat: it was grey.

you go five days, this time, before retracing your steps to the phone box, and it’s raining. your feet fall into sync with the raindrops, which soak into the leather of your boots and the box isn’t where you left it. no matter—you keep walking. it’ll be here somewhere.

and when you walk inside, it’s a dull reprieve from the rain, and you lift the phone from the cradle.

“hello, and thank you for calling. how may i direct your call this evening?”

you dial five to speak to the future, and it’s icily silent on the other end. just as you’re growing nervous, phone trembling in cold fingers—you really should’ve brought your mittens—a voice answers. “you have half an hour left,” and you sit on the little stool that you brought in for this, thudding it against your knees the whole way.

the half hour passes, and you blink at the receiver when it tells you “pens down, close your booklets, and place them to the side.” you’ve been here before, you did this already, but you asked for the future, so are past and future going to overlap?

you let your thoughts drift, suddenly, absently, and remember the university brochures hidden under your paperwork, the quickly-bookmarked pages on the web browser informing you of your student loan eligibility and the half-filled application for.

and if you close your eyes, there you are, in the exam hall, student-desk-student-desk as far as the room will allow, cracking your knuckles together with the satisfaction of a task done.

(and if you close your eyes again and he’s not there, well, there’s only so many things you can let yourself focus on as you file out of the hall with the rest of your potential classmates.)

at home, you fill in the application again, and the website politely doesn’t mention anything about your failed five prior attempts at doing this. this time, you complete it, hit SUBMIT NOW and navigate to the loan-application pages.

and you pace back to where you left your coat, because now that you think on it, the phone box was red. as you’re hanging it up, and putting the kettle on, you think it was grey, and as you’re carrying tea and toast to the sofa, it was blue.

definitely blue.

it takes two weeks during which your loan and student application were accepted, and you applied for a scholarship, and you go back into the pouring rain to investigate the box.

just one more time, is what you tell yourself each time, and everytime you don’t mean it. or maybe you don’t have the conviction left to mean it, but you don’t mind, really.

and you get to the box, greeting it like it’s a companion you miss even though you could never keep them with you forever.

“hello, and thank you for calling. how may i direct your call this evening?”

you dial fourteen to speak to the future, fingers stabbing the buttons in a haphazard mash, and for a second you’re concerned that you dialled forty-one.

instead, there’s your own voice parroted back at you, and you let the receiver droop, press your temple to the glass window. “hello, and how can i help you today?” and you’ve never heard yourself sound quite so commanding.

you see yourself frown into the window into the phone, and his voice streams out. “it’s me. i tried calling and texting, but—well, you’re a hard woman to get hold of,” he chokes a bit now on an exhale, “and i miss you,” and both of your mouths curve into smiles.

one of you just looks more supercilious.

(one of you just looks more reconciliatory)

and you hang up, both of you, because he’s not someone you remember to miss, and you’re not someone he can forget that he ever missed.

and you go home, meet a friend on the doorstep, and as you pace inside together you wonder—blue or red or grey? no, it was all. and you broach it to your friend, describe the box as best you can, and they say:

“oh, that old thing? i didn't know it still worked.”

__________________________

About the Author

When she’s not browsing through stacks of books or watching mysteries, Sarah Little is a poet and sometimes story-teller. Her second poetry collection is forthcoming with Exeter Press (May 2022) and most recently she's been exploring fairy-tale motifs while branching out into fiction. Her most recent publications have been pieces in Roi Fainéant, Perfumed Pages and Pink Plastic House.

© “welcome, caller” by Sarah Little. All rights reserved.