19

Today, like every morning, some hours after I went to bed, ringed the phone. It rings, rings, rings without previous warning.

I look my watch, drunk by sleepiness and by beer and notice that it is exactly the same hour in the morning, as it is in all mornings: a quarter past ten.

I turn around again. I try to ignore the annoying bell, I feel my stomachache and my hangover.

Thanks god (which doesn't exist, therefore I don't believe in it), I have an answering machine. That prevents the phone from keep ringing ad infinitum, because the machine starts and the people hang off. This is why people buy answering machines, not to get messages, but to make the phone stop ringing.

So I start sleeping again, putting dream and reality together, and I feel some fear and regret. Who would have called? Would it be a bad news? Good? Wrong number? Probably wrong number, and this relieves my consciousness.

Then dream and delirium enter. I start imagining that it was no wrong number, but the woman of my life, whispering gently by the phone:

- Hello? Anacreon? I wanna fuck you! I wanna stop by your place and I wanna you to tear off my clothes and show the world isn't as bad as it is!

Then I get excited, and my dreams becomes one of erotic trips in the nymphomaniac virgins island. Then again the dream with the phone disturbing my sleep.

During my dreams I think of work and my duties. I think in how good it is not answer the phone, 'cause if it was the woman of my life coming to me (in all senses), I would miss work, be fired, would drink still more than I do, ending up the night under the wheels of a car in some highway.

Then I remember all my fears and my lack of assurance, remember how much I would disappoint the woman of my life if she saw me today. My inability frustrates me, so well implanted inside of my me during years of boring teachers and nun and parents and uncles and aunts and presidents and directors and bosses and all kind of being in which we should not believe. My frustration makes me turn around again in bed, sweating. Then the dream changes.

I imagine I answer the phone and it was a bad news. Not one, a lot of them. This dream restarts over and over, each time worsening. First it is a death, most of the news I don't remember, but the first is always a death. No a close relative or a friend death, but some distant relative, whichever sometimes I have never heard of, but fatally will force me to go out of bed and take a lot of bullshit attitudes, ruining my day. The first thought is always a disappointment for not being me the dead.

Then it evolves. A friends death. Deadly accident. Then death of women I always loved, even though I never told them. Deadly diseases. The only thing in common in the different versions is my wish in being me the dead one.

I awake at last. I'm sweat, tired, scared, coward and sick. In my watch it is almost thirteen. I'm late. I change my clothes and run out for my duties with the tough and outstanding reality. No bath. No teeth brushing. No cleaning at all. No lunch nor breakfast (it will happen only at eighteen). I only stop for a leak before leaving.

In bus stop i wonder: Who the fuck rings me every day at a quarter past ten? I decide to answer the phone tomorrow morning, but as I get on the bus I already know that I won't do it. Tomorrow morning the phone will ring, but I will be to much sleepy and afraid to answer it.