The Voicemail

It's 11:45 on Sunday night and I'm doing that thing you're not supposed to do where you burn your eyeballs out on your phone screen before going to bed. Barclay is reading Dune, because Barclay is always reading Dune, because Dune is a migonstrous novel that would take any reasonably literate person ten years to finish.

I'm watching a funny video on Instagram and I turn my phone to Barclay so he can see it too, because don't you love it when you're reading a difficult book and someone keeps interrupting you to show you mildly funny videos of strangers from a social media realm in which you've specifically chosen not to partake? Barclay loves that.

As I turn the screen to him, he says, "Oh, someone's trying to call you."

Which is interesting, as it is 11:45 on a Sunday night. Generally, at this time, all the spammers, the scammers, the telemarketers, and appointment reminderers have gone to sleep. Generally, you don't call someone at 11:45 PM unless it's an emergency. So my heart beats a bit faster and I check the number. Local, but not a number saved in my phone. Which is interesting as, if you are having an emergency, you would generally, generally call someone you know, who would have your phone number saved in their phone. Right? I think.

I ask Barclay if he knows the number, and he says he doesn't. He shrugs. "Probably a wrong number."

So I watch the phone ring. The screen goes black and then lights up with a new voicemail.

Curious, I access the message and put it on speaker phone. Barclay has set his book down; he's probably thinking, too, about how people don't call at 11:45 PM on a Sunday night unless they have a very good reason, and he wants to know what the very good reason is.

It's a man's voice, not one I recognize. "Hey Suzy," he says, "I missed your call earlier today."

Which is interesting, because I didn't call anyone earlier today. I swear. 

I think. 

Did I? I rack my brain. It's funny how someone can make you doubt yourself. I know I didn't call anyone today; I spent the entire day with Barclay and the kids. But this stranger on the phone says I called him and why would anyone lie about that? 

But wait, it gets weirder.

"I can't wait to meet up," he says. "I know I messed up before but I really want to try this again."

WAIT WHAT.

"Since the moment I met you, I just thought you were really cute and—"

It goes on like that. Rambling, weirdly intimate, apologetic. On speaker phone, with my wonderful husband lying beside me looking completely bewildered. Understandably so, I'd say. If the roles were reversed I don't even know what I'd be up to at this point. Climbing into that phone to drag some lady out of it by her hair.

He ends with, "Okay, call me back. I love you," and the phone beeps at me, same as it does after every old innocuous message. 

"End of message. To erase this message, press 7."

"Okay," I say, completely gobsmacked. I might be asleep, I think. "So first of all—" First of all what? There is no first of all. There is nothing. I'm just more confused than I've ever been in my entire life. But I should probably say something to reassure Barclay that I'm not, like, cheating. I should say something reassuring. "I don't know this, I didn't call this, I don't know who, I'm just as, I'm not sure what..." This is probably not reassuring. This sounds super guilty, actually. But I'm legitimately questioning my sanity at this point, checking my recent calls screen to see if I made any phone calls earlier today, as though I could possibly have done something like this without knowing it. 

Barclay's cool though, save for those first few moments of looking like my phone had grown legs and kicked him in the face. 

"I know," he says, "I believe you. Spam?"

"But...he called me Suzy," I say. "If it was spam, wouldn't he have used my real name, not my nickname?" I have changed lanes very quickly, from trying to reassure my husband that I'm not having an affair to brushing off his plausible explanations that it's anything but. If my name were Susanna or something like that, I could see a spammer calling me Suzy. But my name is Elena. How...?

So then we spend a bit of time trying to figure out if there is a place on the internet where my nickname is connected to my phone number (there isn't, as far as we can tell). We reverse look-up the number, but come up with nothing. (I reverse look-up both mine and Barclay's phone numbers and come up with nothing there too—is reverse look-up a thing that actually works for anyone?)

Finally, Barclay's like, "Welp, I guess we'll never know." 

And he rolls over and goes to sleep.

But I, even though I know for a fact that I did not recognize that voice and do not know that person and did not call that person etcetera etcetera, just lay awake and keep being stumped.

So now I come to you, dear internet. Is this a spam call? Have any of you received one like this? What is the end game here? How did he know my nickname? Have I lost my mind? 

Plz advise. 

And may we all learn to be as chill as Barclay.