Between midnight and dawn

Phone calls between midnight and dawn are bad. This is a generally accepted premise. Whether the call is an over-liquored ex with an axe to grind, or the local P.D. with an update on the whereabouts of your child, or any one of a dozen or more possible scenarios, usually nothing good comes from a phone call at that time.

So the other night (morning?) when I woke to a ringing phone, I came completely awake. Wide awake and peering at the clock on the night table to see the time is 4:10am. The answering machine clicked on and I lay in bed, dread mounting as it cycled through my outgoing message and finally, an unfamiliar male voice spoke,

"Hi, just wanted to let you know that I love you, goodbye."

I lay awake for a while afterwards - wondering about the sequence of events that led to a most unusual misdial. The likelihood of someone scrambling a phone number so badly as to call into the wrong time zone. Or the possibility that someone in my immediate area was supposed to get that message at such an odd hour, and what reception if would get.

I woke up the next morning and any possibility of it being a dream was washed away by the evidence on my answering machine. As a matter of fact, it's still there now. But before anyone else called me on that line, I did have the presence of mind to try the *69 feature, the one that's supposed to ring back whoever called you last. Because - I thought this person needed to know that their sentiments had gone astray. But it wouldn't go through. Why? A blocked number? A payphone? I don't know.

But what I do know is that someone, somewhere out there, loves you. And last night he called to tell you so.