This post should be read in conjunction with Puzzle for You, also in the Personal category.

I have a second voicemail from the fellow I described in the previous post.  The first one came at noon today, this one arrived seven hours later.

In his first message he suavely introduced himself as my doctor, calling to make sure the operation had left me without any discomfort.  Then smoothly he became himself, assured me that he and his wife were at my disposal and then, in the evening, he reached out again.  I haven’t listened to his second message yet, but I assume the tone will be slightly less playful.

Why don’t I listen to his second message now?  I don’t really want to hear it, at the moment, the same way I didn’t feel like improvising a duet with him when he called for a second time today.  And, as it happens, T-Mobile, my cellphone provider, sometimes doesn’t deliver messages until several days after they’re left.  I am surprised, sometimes, when missing a call from my sister, that she’s left no message.  It’s not like her not to leave a message.  Then, three days after I speak to her the message from earlier that week is delivered to me.  It’s the damnedest thing.

So I have deniability, as well as a bit of sadistic tit-for-tat pleasure in ignoring the second call.  All I have to say is that stinking T-Mobile often waits three days to deliver voicemails and I’m off the hook.  What can I say?  I didn’t tell him that I didn’t hear his messages, only that T-Mobile is so often bad at delivering messages.  It’s like a politician’s perfect lie:  the truth of it is undeniable, yet it is completely untrue and has no application to the actual facts at hand.

Another thing I understand is that he and I are playing psychic roles for each other, the dimension and scope of which are hard to define.  It may be that I am very much like his father, who was droll, quick and emotionally elusive.  It may be he stands in for the good friends who don’t answer emails and takes the lumps for all of them.  These people, in turn, are standing in for my parents who always insisted that since I was a genius and know-it-all I really didn’t need their feedback and should stop whining about the strategic silence.  

If things hold true to form, in this hideously choreographed ballet, his tone will get less and less playful, take on more and more of an edge, for every call he makes that is not returned.  He’ll be hurt, the wronged party, complaining, unjustly treated badly, increasingly, with every additional message he has to leave.  For my part, I already feel justified in not getting back to him right away.  I act this way because I’m far from being a saint, though further along than I was when I was still doing battle with my parents.  As for him?  I have no idea, really.