Mime Spent Apart

Part 28

When Menhaus woke up, Tina was already gone. He remembered her saying something about needing to work early the next day and blearily focussed on his phone to check the time. Ten AM. On his bedside table he could see a small card with 'Corporal Tom Hadrigal' written on it, followed by a number.

He wondered to himself if he should give it a call, then decided not to. He picked up his phone and checked it for messages. Nothing yet, though he hoped Tina would send him something once she got to work. He wondered about this. Were they in a relationship now? He was definitely seeing a lot of her. When George asked she said they were fucking, but that could've just been for George's benefit, or to shut him up. He knew she was probably still pretty annoyed about the food being spilled on her.

Menhaus started to put the phone down, then was startled when it began to ring. It was from a silent number. He decided to answer it rather than his normal thing of leaving all phone calls to go to messagebank. It had been the sort of week where every phone call might be important.

"Hello?"

"Am I speaking to Menhaus Tentapolis?"

"Yes, who am I speaking to?"

"My name is General __++_ ___ and I need to talk to you regarding an incident you saw."

"Do you mean when that guy was kidnapped?"

"That's the misunderstanding I intend to correct. You see, the man who was taken was a terrorist."

"And the girl?"

"His accomplice."

"What about his work? I know for a fact he was hired by a friend of mine to play a character for him at the party."

"It was connected to his terrorist activities. What is your friend's name?"

Menhjaus hung up at this point. Everything about that phone conversation seemed wrong. He also didn't want to be pressed for his friend's name when he didn't even know if the guy was telling the truth. He put down the phone and saw it begin to ring again. This time he let it keep ringing. If the guy really was from the government, or the secret service, or whatever, they would have other ways of contacting him or at the very least wouldn't have to keep ringing his phone number. He wondered how they even got the number; but he knew he'd given it out to countless people, along with it being a contact nuimber for any number of online promotions, banks and gyms he had signed up for. It wouldn't be that hard to get, even with just googling his name.

On his bedside table, the phone stopped vibrating, showing a message left. Manhaus decided to have a shower and freshen up. He turned towards the bathroom, then heard his phone begin to vibrate again with another call. He looked and saw it was a private number again. 'I guess he's not going to give up' he thought to himself. He ignored it and had a shower. He came out of the shower, roughly drying his hair and could hear his phone buzzing again. Private number. When it finished he saw he had seventeen missed calls. 'Time to change my number' he thought. He'd been thinking about doing it for the last few months anyway, after a few weird calls late at night and some text messages from an ex-girlfriend who seemed to have lost a little of her contact with reality. 'Lianne' he thought to himself.

He recalled that she liked to stay out all night, going on long walks with him to discuss existentialism and the vishnuati. They would end up getting coffee at 7am and then go to sleep in eachother's arms. They weren't even going out at that point, hadn't even kissed. It was nice, though. Until she started doing things like breaking into his house in the middle of the night. The last he heard, she had escaped from a mental asylum.