in which i check my voicemail box

At the end of the work week, I found myself under my desk, resisting the urge to put my head between my knees, sipping electrolyte solution. I always keep a pouch of this stuff* in my purse, folded into an Altoids tin along with some eye re-wetting drops, healing ointment, and a single zinc cough drop. 

I'm still not sure what had caused me to nearly collapse, but I sat there for about half an hour and eventually decided to call a car. I would not be taking the train home in my state, as much as I prefer it.

I stepped outside. It was raining gently in a way that I love. The sun was setting but not entirely gone, the whole world washed with a warm pigeon grey. A man and woman stood nearby, chattering loudly about how prediction betting should be regulated, and probably soft drinks too. She didn't know that he used to be a libertarian. She clearly liked him. He was clearly unsure. 

While I waited for my car and pretended not to notice their peacockery, I checked my missed calls. I learned that my voicemail box had filled up, so I started to delete the messages, selecting tens at a time, mostly robots and spam I didn't recognize. I culled everything, save for a few messages here and there from people I love. I got all the way back to the beginning: mid-2022.

That can't be right, I thought. I checked my deleted messages. I checked my saved. 

I opened Voice Memos and searched "grampa." Where was my car? "Grandpa." Nothing. "Voicemail." Only one memo, 18 seconds long, labeled "Voicemail-105.m4a." Mar 17, 2023. I swiped away. 

The voicemail I was looking for had been delivered in 2020. But what if I'd had the good sense to save it in March of 2023?

I went back to my memos, searched "voicemail" again, and this time I pressed play.

I wept. 

It rained.

I pressed play again.

All in all, I had a good day at work today. A good week, in fact, and I'd like to tell you about it, save for the fact that I'm supposed to have gone to sleep hours ago, and I should save those thoughts for the morning. There are a lot of them. The reason I'm up is my friend — my cousin, in effect. I don't believe in platonic friendships unless they're like this one. He once told me I'm as sexual an object to him as a potted plant. We decided to go on a road trip this year, one where we each have some kind of question we want to answer. I told him I wanted to go find a bunch of Filipino people in middle America and ask them how they ended up there. 

*It's quite good. It was made in Ireland, and it's hard to find in the US, so I ask Molly to bring it back for me when she goes.