“This is the 02 messaging service. The person you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.”
Last chance. Make it good. Get it all in, but don’t talk for too long…
***
The beginning was almost too perfect. I’d ridden the train from Stansted to Liverpool Station and was standing on the platform for the Circle line, which I thought was going to take me to the Westminster stop, where the Walrus Waterloo Hostel awaited my arrival. While debating whether I had time to pull my backpack off my aching shoulders, I noticed a pretty girl across the tracks from me.
I forgot about my backpack.
She looked up at the marquee announcing the arrival of the next train. Her eyes widened and she looked around for an exit before turning and scampering up the stairs behind her.
Please be coming over here.
Out of the corner of an eye, I watched as she made my wish come true. She settled on a spot eight feet to my left, near a stone pillar that held up an advertisement for the new Transformers movie.
Knowing that each passing minute would cause my self-doubt to multiply like the lily pads in that famous math problem, I gave myself forty-five seconds before getting out my map and sliding toward her.
“Could you help me? Is this the right train if I want to go to Westminster?”
In my defense, I wasn’t sure I was standing on the right platform.
She said, in a British accent that made her even prettier, that she wasn’t from London, but that she thought it was. And then, the kicker:
“But I’m getting on this train, too, so if we’re wrong, we can be wrong together!”
In the seven stops before Westminster, I had time to find out that she was down from Ipswich to see a friend from “uni”, that in her bag she was carrying heels for the night out, that she had a delightful laugh, and that I really, really liked London.
We chatted about the burdens of being tall (she was 5-foot-11, she said – freakish for an English girl) and about how awkward her night was going to be (she didn’t know the friend she was staying with all that well).
It was easy and comfortable and what people talk about when they say, “It just felt right.”
And then, Westminster approached. Or rather, we approached Westminster. I fortified my troops near the line.
“I’m a little sad that you already have plans tonight.”
I braced myself. The thing about telling people the truth is that it gives them license to hurt your feelings.
“Me too.”
Wheeeeee!
I smiled and said, “Well, maybe we should get together tomorrow.”
The best part of what she said next was how she said it, which was as if it was obvious that we would see each other tomorrow.
“Of course! That would be really good, actually. I have to leave on Monday…or maybe it’s Tuesday…to go back to…anyway, let me give you my number.”
“What’s the country code here?” I asked, since I had a Spanish SIM card in the phone.
Her eyes went wide. “What’s a country code?”
Naïve, sure, but endearingly so.
“Well, like, this Spanish number has a 34 before it. The US is 001. Et cetera, et cetera. But I don’t know what it is for England.”
“Neither do I,” she said with a laugh.
I shrugged and tapped the English number she told me into my phone. I showed it to her and asked, “Does that look right? I’ll figure out the country code when I get to where I’m staying.”
She looked at it, nodded and smiled again.
It was time to get off the subway. I told her I’d send her a message and that we’d have lunch or dinner the next day.
She said she couldn’t wait.
When I arrived at the Walrus, which had a downstairs pub that brought to mind the place where Frodo meets Strider, and as an extraordinarily kind and extraordinarily dreadlocked man named Alex helped me check in, I sent my opening volley:
“Unless the guy with the dreadlocks is wrong, the country code is +44. I know that protocol would have me wait till tomorrow to contact you, but I want to get in a bid to see you tomorrow, so I’ve given up on protocol. So how about it? Lunch? Dinner? What does your schedule/friend allow?”
Breezy. Perfectly light.
An hour later, nothing.
The angel:
It’s okay. She’s with her friend and it’s Saturday night. Or maybe she’s more patient than you.
The devil:
Yeah, but you saw that iPhone. And if you know anything about iPhone users, it’s that they’re usually quick on the trigger with a response.
I walked to a store where Alex had told me I could find an electrical adaptor (whatthefuckEnglandhasdifferentoutletsthanEurope?!). After, I stopped into a friendly-looking bar and restaurant called the Fire Station, ate fish and chips (duh) and washed it down with the worst beer I’ve ever had, some IPA that should be checked out by the EPA. (Ha!)
It was nearing nine when I got back to the Walrus.
“Hey Alex, if I’m dialing a British number from another country’s phone, do I use the 0 before the number?”
“I don’t think so.”
Aha. I’d been suspicious of that 0 ever since typing it in. I copied the number, eliminating the 0 between the +44 and the 77, and sent the same message.
That must be it. Now you can relax.
I set out to do just that. I walked across the Westminster Bridge and listened as Big Ben tolled 10. I turned right and headed for Trafalgar Square. I stopped at a pub, ordered a Heineken, and tried not to look at my phone as I drank.
I finished the beer and hiked to Picadilly Circus. Then up and around some streets I didn’t know or understand before running out of gas at 11:30 and turning tail for the Walrus.
When I got in, I nodded hello to my bunkmate, a diminutive male of indeterminate origin, whom I would learn, in a few hours, when the alarm on his phone exploded, was a Coldplay devotee. I marveled at the robustness of the sleeping power of the Singaporean brother and sister I’d met when I’d checked in.
After one last, hopeful look at my phone, I turned it off and folded myself into the cage someone had labeled a bunk.
I should have stayed in the street – I would have slept as much. My brain turned over the possibilities.
She decided that it wasn’t worth replying because I will only be here for a few days.
Her friend told her not to trust strange Americans that she’d just met.
She lost her phone.
She was mauled and eaten by a dragon.
The message never got to her, because either I’d typed in the number wrong (but you showed it to her when you punched it in!), because I was performing the country code operation wrong, or because of some idiosyncrasy having to do with communication between Spanish and British phones.
This last, rather lengthy concern was at the forefront of my brain. I can deal with rejection. Oh boy, can I deal with rejection. Rejection and I are like salt and pepper shakers, we’re so close. What I can’t deal with is not knowing. When it comes to imagining the worst, my brain’s creativity (I believe psychologists call this a “unique ability to catastrophize”) knows no bounds.
There was more tossing and turning. There was less sleep But mostly, there was a lot of hoping that maybe, when I turned on the phone in the morning, a message would be waiting:
“Paul! Sorry, I was [enjoying the night with my friend and am not a slave to my mobile phone OR waiting till this morning to return your text because I didn’t want to appear to be overeager OR getting gangbanged by six Cockneys] and so couldn’t return your message!”
IF YOU EVER FEEL LIKE SOMETHING’S MISSING
- Some Coldplay song
I reached for the phone. I turned it on.
Nothing.
GoddammitIhatethatkidabovemeandIhateColdplayandwhycouldn’tthishavejustgoneright?!
Facebook.com. Type “Stephanie Healey Ipswich”
No response.
Text message, to a friend in Oxford: “I need to know if my phone is working in England.”
I surveyed the hostel breakfast and after murdering a bowl of muesli, walked to the nearby supermarket on a protein hunt. Yogurt acquired, I bought an apple and some water before dropping the yogurt, which exploded on the floor and all over my shoes.
But worse than that, my phone stayed silent.
Back at the hostel, an email from my friend in Oxford:
Hey! I can’t respond to your texts – they keep getting sent back because I don’t have any international service. But I’m going to go to 02 this afternoon and see if I can activate that feature.
- A____
HAAAAAAAAA-lelujah! Maybe that’s what’s happening to her! She probably can’t text back and she’s been scurrying around, trying to figure out how to get me. Poor thing.
“This is the 02 messaging service. The person you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.”
O2! Just like A____!
“Hey, Stephanie. This is Paul, the guy from the train. Call me back when you get this and let’s talk about getting together today…although…I have a feeling that you might not be able to call or text me back on this Spanish phone. So, either email me at p______@_____.com or…wait, what about this? I’ll call you back at exactly 1 p.m.”
That should do it.
A____ had told me I should see Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. With her orders in mind, I walk across the Westminster Bridge (again) and then toward Buckingham Palace. I become annoyed at the crowds gathered at the palace (Don’t you realize that this place was built to make you feel inferior! Have a little self-respect, people!) and as I pass a post-race party for the London 10k, have to keep myself from falling down in laughter when I see people wearing shirts for a charity called SADS – Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. Because, after all, shouldn’t that be the largest charity in the world?
I avoid a pant-wetting emergency thanks to the Sheraton Hotel near Hyde Park before finally, I make it to Speaker’s Corner. It’s not as raucous as I was led to believe; most of the “speakers” are religious nuts like the Canadian who’s yelping at the crowd about how we can’t explain the wind but we still believe in it, which is the same as how we can’t explain God but we should believe in Him. It is the flimsiest rhetorical device I’ve ever heard; the wind is actually pretty easy to understand, but the problem with his logic is that it doesn’t prove the existence of God. We already know the wind exists and we use science to explain it. Saying God exists because God exists doesn’t hold a lot of weight with anyone with an IQ above 75, but I don’t want to argue with the guy. I want Stephanie to answer when I call, at exactly 1:02 p.m.
“This is the 02 messaging service. The person you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Uh…hi…so now I’m starting to think that maybe this isn’t the right number, so if this isn’t Stephanie, I’m sorry, Person, for bothering you. If it is Stephanie…um…I guess I’ll try back at 2:30, in case you still can’t call, but that will be the last time, I promise.”
And now I feel terrible. I walk to Trafalgar Square and eat lunch with the Australian girl who appeared in my hostel room like a dream that morning. Our trips have been remarkably similar – she’d gone to Russia with her family to see where her ancestors came from, an echo of my family’s trip to Sweden. We share travel stories and talk about our plans for the afternoon and then 2:30 is approaching and I don’t even want to call Stephanie again.
But I do. I take my last shot.
“This is the 02 messaging service. The person you have called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.”
Last chance. Make it good. Get it all in, but don’t talk for too long…
What I want to say is this:
“Hey, Stephanie, or someone in the world. I have no idea what’s going on at this point, and to tell you the truth, I’ve pretty much given up on ever seeing or hearing from you again. The problem now is guilt. I feel guilty because there’s a chance that something went wrong in the course of me getting your number and typing it into my phone and so now you think all guys are assholes and I really don’t want that, especially because you were so sweet and kind and trusting to have given me your phone number in the first place. I realize, too, that there is a better chance that you just decided it wasn’t worth responding to me, because you came to the conclusion that I was ugly or had a bad personality or smelled funny and if this is the case, well, you can go straight to hell. But honestly, I don’t really think that’s the case, even though everyone I ever tell this story will think that’s the case. I would think that’s the case, if someone were telling me this story. But no one reading this story was in that subway car, and there was something going on between us in that subway car. Wasn’t there? I mean, I don’t know everything there is to know about male-female interactions, but I’ve participated in a few and, yeah, I think there was something there. At any rate, because of all of this, all I really want to say is that I’m sorry, in case you are out there thinking that I’m a terrible person or that all men are terrible people or that all Americans are trash. Not that me saying I’m sorry would help, because if I need to say I’m sorry, I’m saying it to the wrong phone. So, to whomever this is, if you ever meet a pretty, brown-haired girl named Stephanie Healey, tell her I’m sorry.”
But I don’t say that, because it wouldn’t have mattered if I did. What I do say is this:
“Hi, someone in the world. I’m utterly bewildered at this point and I don’t know what to say. Once again, my email is ________. My American phone number is _______. Call me back if you’d like, but I won’t bother you anymore.”
Unfortunately, there is no surprise twist to this story; there is no perfect ending to go with its perfect beginning.
In fact, this story has the worst ending of all: none. I never heard from Stephanie Healey.
She never called. She never emailed. I will never know what happened.
So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, take a lesson from me. If you want to avoid confusion and heartache and sleepless nights in hostel beds, learn the country codes before you go anywhere.
And if you meet a kind, beautiful girl in a subway car in a foreign city, and it seems pretty obvious that she wants to see you again, take the time to call her phone and make sure that everyone has the appropriate phone number. Even if it means riding past your stop or walking a few extra blocks. It’ll be well worth it. You still might get rejected later, but at least you’ll know what happened.
For more from Paul…
Past work on FlipCollective.com.
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To send him an email.
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