Brian seems like a nice guy. He went to the trouble of calling Irma to let her know that he was in receipt of her certified mail, and that he would be happy to get it out to her. Unfortunately for Brian there is no Irma here at my MagicJack line, which still keeps alive the landline number assigned to me 18+ years ago.
The way he says his name, as it trails off into a mercurially curly half-questioned tone of voice, makes it sound like he expects Irma to know who he is. He left a number at which Irma could call him back. That number, from a 607 southern New York area code, differed the the number on caller ID, which showed a 248 Michigan area code.
When I lived in Washington Heights there passed a week when I came home daily to find receipt of 2 or answering machine messages from the Sears up on Fordham Road. A kindly sounding woman kept calling to let me know that because I had just had a baby I qualified for a set of free baby portraits at the Sears photo department. No miracles of birth had sprung from my loins. I nevertheless was taken in enough by the sincerity of the caller’s voice that after about a dozen of these calls filled my answering machine I called back to inform her she had the wrong number.
I said something like “It just seemed like such a nice offer that I didn’t want the person for whom it was intended to miss out.”
With no way to know if that individual got her free baby portraits I add to that pile of ambiguity Irma, and Brian, and whatever is to become of her certified mail?
