Have Tea With Me

The texts keeps coming. Have tea with me. You should come meet me, really. You'll enjoy it. I'm good company, honest. We can talk physics and life on Mars and maybe even thoughts on dessert. She stares at the phone. The incessant glass chime sounds then sounds again. She's tempted to turn it off but then fears she may miss something of importance. Not necesarily from him, but from some one. Anyone else. Why is it so difficult to care, to muster any interest in anyone other than herself these days. She doesn't even find her own company that compelling right now. Stacks of fiction and periodicals line the floor beside her bed, stacked five high on the shelf above her headboard. So much to ingest, so many words, ideas, information. Read me, see me, take me in. She doesn't want to spend an hour of her life over tea with some young attractive physics student who used to lift weights for a living. Talking about space and the final frontiers as he angles a way into her pants. She's wary because she knows if the mood strikes she'll eat him alive but right now she can't be bothered to shower let alone arrange a date for tea. Even the idea of tea over coffee or shots of tequila. It's all so quaint. Nothing wrong with quaint, in a different time and place. Or decade. The phone dings again. She really must change her settings so that messages stop repeating. Over and over, pay attention to me, it pleads. Ding ding. Fa-huh! Fa-huh! Gong, gong. They all have different sounds. At one point each new prospect was assigned an individualized tone. That way she could  ignore or respond without having to actually look to see who it is. No one ever calls anymore. No, that's not true. Her girlfriends do. Her doctors do. Telemarketers do and on a good day she'll take their call since she has free unlimited incoming service. Surprises them just as much as herself. Then she fakes bad reception and hangs up. Works every time. Ding ding. He doesn't have a unique tone. Yet. Probably won't make it that far. She's not really a fan of tea anyways.

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