After the Call

February sixteenth.

Simone called her dad from the break room. I know because I was already there when she walked in, and she said, quietly, already dialing, "I'm just going to call my dad real quick," the way you say something out loud so the room knows not to need you for five minutes. I looked at my phone. I did not call anyone.

It wasn't a sad thing. She came back from the call the same as she left it, maybe a half-degree warmer, and we sat there for a few minutes while the restaurant existed without us.

mid-sentence, break room, February

She said something I can't remember exactly, something about how her dad always asks the same questions in the same order, and how she used to find it annoying, and now she finds it steadying, the same way a metronome is steadying if you're trying to keep time. I said I knew what she meant. I did know what she meant.

the look before you decide whether to call

I have been thinking about the photography workshop flyer on the community center corkboard. I have also been thinking, without quite meaning to, about the last time I called someone from somewhere I was only passing through. The two thoughts are not obviously related. I think they might be the same thought in different clothes.

Happy Valentine's Day weekend, or whatever it is when the day has already passed and you're sitting in a break room on a Sunday afternoon thinking about phone calls you didn't make. That counts too, probably. The collapsed bowl was on the windowsill when I got home, which it always is. Gerald had grown another inch. Some things stay where you put them.