Ring Ring

Sol finds the phone number on the side of a post box in a suburb he doesn’t often visit. He posts a letter there on the day only because he is passing through. Letters were not a great passion of his, yet he still knows a meagre few who prefer their correspondence written in ink and memories, not pixels and digits. The thought of recording himself would sometimes make him smile, mostly because he was the only one who wrote exactly like he did. His reasoning was that a letter, with his words spaced out just so, letters shaped each with their own little quirks, were like a portrait of everything you couldn’t tell about someone from a photograph. It was about the way their thoughts moved, sloppy letters raced across the page, with high peaks and rushing pen strokes of excitement. Or slow, with measured letters each sitting frank on their own line like a tiny little person, just waiting to be read aloud and freed.

The phone number is written on a piece of paper, stuck with scotch tape to the post box. The box is old, paint peeling red like pieces of sunburnt skin off summer noses. As he stares at the number, Sol’s mind thinks about who paints post boxes, and whether they ever get bored of the colour red. The number is a house number, local. Although handwritten, each number is carefully printed onto the paper, as though the person wants to make extra sure that whoever finds the number could read it. Sol gets one of his fingernails under the scotch tape and frees it from the post box. More paint comes with it, lamenting the removal of this new friend. The paper doesn’t say anything else, but in the number Sol thinks he sees something.

At home, Sol spends some time staring at the phone and thinking about the number. When he can’t figure out the mystery of it his brain turns to easier pursuits like the idea of phone lines as a spiderweb that stretches across the city. Conversations crawl all over the sticky threads like spiders. But then, what would be the flies? The phone number on the paper feels strangely heavy in his hand, and the tape keeps catching on his finger, looking for a new place to rest.

Sol picks up the phone, and then puts it down. He considers ripping the paper in half and throwing it in the bin. His fingers hover over the middle of the paper, not wanting to obey his brain, not this time. Once again the phone comes off the hook, and this time his fingertips dance over the keypad, punching in the numbers in a mystery ballet.
Ring ring.
Sol thinks about the people who leave their phone numbers on post boxes. Ring ring. He wonders why nobody else took the number. Ring ring. Perhaps, he thinks, someone had taken the number down on pencil, and left the paper on the box for someone else to find. Ring ring. He probably should have down that. Ring ring. It seemed that nobody would pick up the phone. Ring-
Sol can hear someone breathing on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” He ventures.
A woman’s voice releases a sigh that sounds like relief, a breath held waiting for a heart beat or a sign of life.
“Hello,” she says, “I’ve been waiting for you to call.”