914

I was having a typically crappy day at work, when something unusual happened—my cellphone rang. Being the ray-of-sunshine-shut-in that I am, I don’t get a whole lot of phone calls. I looked down at the front of my phone, expecting to see the word “Leah.” Instead there was a strange number that I didn’t recognize, with a 914 area code.

“Hello?” I said answering the phone.

“Um, hello James?” a woman said.

She sounded strangely foreign, her accent was hard to understand, just very noticeable. She spoke with that polite-syntax found in former British colonies. Listening to her breath on the other end of the line my brain thought “Africa.”

“Ah, no,” I told her. “My name is Jason…”

“Why do you sound like that, James?” she said, almost pleading.

It almost broke my heart that I wasn’t her James.

“I’m not James,” I said. “I’m Jason, this has been my phone for years…”

I don’t know why I do that. Every time I get a wrong number, I always affirm how long I’ve had my telephone number.

“Oh,” she said softly.

If I had to guess, this woman was in her late teens or early twenties—I bring this up only because I don’t want you to think I was talking to a six-year-old…or some blue-haired lady. This was someone closer to my own age, that’s the only reason I can figure what happened next…happened.

I started talking to her.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked her.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and I was certain she was going to hang up.

But she didn’t.

“New York,” she said. “I’m in New York—where are you?”

“I’m in St. Louis,” I told her. “What’s the weather like there?”

“Oh man!” she exclaimed. “It’s awful, it’s gray and rainy here…”

“Yeah?” I said. “It’s gray and rainy here, too.”

She told me some more about the weather in New York—in that cheery way people have when they’re happy to have something to complain about. Something that’s no one’s fault, something that that’s bigger than all of us. I missed exactly what she said, because I was at work, and there were people in the room trying to talk to me.

I ignored them.

“Well, I hope you get a hold of James.”

“I do, too.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

“Bye.”

And for some reason I felt better the rest of the day. I guess it was because I didn’t feel so alone. Sometimes it’s nice to know that there are other people trapped in gray, rainy cities. Pleasant people, trying to deal with life…people with numbers similar to mine…