30Still In My Dress: You never call
By: 290
And mess me around
And then worst of all (worst of all)
you never call, baby,
When you say you will (say you will)
Sora stared sullenly at the coffee table. "I don't remember what costume you were wearing."
"That's not really the important part."
"Were you a soccer player? You were always a soccer player for Halloween. It was pretty unoriginal."
"I wouldn't have rented a soccer costume. I own soccer uniforms."
"It was such a boring costume."
"I thought you didn't know what costume I wore at the party."
"I don't. Your soccer costume was boring though."
"I wasn't a soccer player at the party."
"Okay, fine Tai. Let's get back to Mimi."
"Mimi?"
"You're deeply in love with Mimi."
"I'm not in love with her," Tai mumbled.
"But you asked her for her phone number."
"That doesn't mean I'm madly in love with her!"
"You know who I'm madly in love with?" Matt said, leaning back as he flicked a sugar wrapper at Mimi.
"Who?" Mimi asked absently, focusing most of her energies on gently stirring her tea so as not to disturb the sugar too much.
Matt nudged his chair closer to the table and leaned over his lunch plate. "Catherine," he said, grinning.
Mimi eyed him skeptically. "That's nice," she replied, "You should tell her when she comes back."
He lean idly back in his chair, tilting it so it was balancing only on its two back legs. "Don't you want to know why I'm in love with her now?"
"If you're so madly in love with Mimi, then you should call her. I bet she's been wondering why you never called her after she gave you her number."
"Because I lost her number!"
"Well she doesn't know that."
"So you think I should call her?"
"Of course."
"Well do you have her number?"
"Hand me my purse."
Tai stood up and surveyed the room. "I have no clue where your purse is. I didn't even know you brought it with you here."
Sora gave him a look of great frustration as she slowly stood up. "The things I do for you, Taichi Kamiya."
Mimi sighed, dramatically blowing a piece of dirty blonde hair out of her face. "What if you were to use your cell to call Tai's house, for me. Then you'd have an excuse for calling. And then I'd get to talk to Tai. Actually, I could call! I could call to talk to Sora, about you two, and then end up talking to Tai..That's perfect!"
He grinned. "What about Catherine? She won't like that very much."
"I'll have to do something to get her away. Or you could just yell at her again."
Matt's face turned pale crimson. "I'd rather not."
"Then I'll do something. Look, she's coming. She looks like she's calmed down," Mimi observed.
"Here you go." Sora handed Tai a beat up white address book. "She's under T."
Tai rolled his eyes at her. "Thank-you." He perused the pages. He noticed the lack of writing in the book, in fact, there must have been less than ten people in the entire book. He found Mimi's name. Then he looked up at Sora again.
"Sora, this is Mimi's America address. She's not in America right now. She's been staying with her mom for the past four months. Here. In Japan. I thought you said you had spoken to her recently."
"She called me. I never called her."
In an exasperated tone, "Well I wish you would have told me that before. What am I supposed to do now?"
"You're going to call her."
"Well how the hell am I going to do that without a phone number?"
"Tai, you are such an idiot. Don't you own a phone-book?"
"Oh…yes." He couldn't help but feel that she had known that she only had Mimi's American number all the time, and just enjoyed admonishing him for his stupidity.
"Well use that to call her then."
"Oh, okay then. It's right here," he said as he pulled a large phone book out from a hall table drawer.
"Now look up her mom's number."
He observed that Sora was at least now mildly interested in something besides herself. She had stopped moping and staring at her dress and was now sitting straight up, her arms thoughtfully leaning on the back of the sofa, watching him at the table behind her flipping through the phone book.
"Well did you find the number?"
"Um, could I check your address book for something?"
"What would you need to check that for? It has the American number."
"I don't know how to spell Tachikawa."
"Hi Catherine!" Mimi said brightly. "Nice to see you again!"
Matt groaned inwardly.
"I waz not gone for zo long, Mimi. Maybe it waz—Hey! What waz zat?" Catherine protested, staring down at her dress, which was soaking wet. Mimi had unfortunately accidentally spilled her entire cup of tea onto it.
"Oh Catherine I'm so sorry! I was just standing up, and I must have somehow leaned across the table with the tea in my hand, and then, oh look at your dress! It's soaking," Mimi said as she pulled a cloth napkin off the table and began trying to wipe the stained fabric. "Oh I hope the tea won't stain your dress, it's so pretty! Here, let me see that," Mimi said as she wiped even more furiously.
"Mimi! Stop zat at once. I need to go to zee bathroom so zis doesn't stain. Oh look at zis, Zis dress is Hermés," she wailed, pronouncing it Er-maze.
"Oh here, Catherine, let me help you, I feel so awful—"
"Zat is quite alright Mimi, I can get to zee bathroom myzelf, zank you," said Catherine indignantly.
"Oh, I really am so sorry," said Mimi as she followed Catherine away from the table.
"Mimi!" Catherine said exasperated, "I really am fine, if you would leave me alone…"
They walked a few steps, with Catherine in the lead, protesting, half out of politeness, and half out of exasperation, and Mimi following her, showering her with apologies and fussily wiping her dress with napkins, until they reached the doorway, where Catherine finally got Mimi to stop as she walked on towards the bathroom. Mimi did stop, to stare for a few minutes at Catherine's fleeting figure. She stretched her head until she was sure Catherine was gone, and then ran back to the table, knocking over a few dishes as she leaned over it and grabbed Matt's cell.
Matt watched it all with quiet amazement and amusement. Before she could dial—"I wasn't expecting that."
Mimi smiled. "I wish it wasn't a designer dress, though. Well, at least I learned how to pronounce Hermés. It took long enough, though. What's Tai's number?" she asked hurriedly.
"Tai, you are unbelievable. Here it is," Sora said, quickly locating Mimi's name in the address book and handing it over to him.
"Thanks. Let's see," he said, following the names of the phone book with his finger. "Tab, Taca, Tace, Tachikawa! I found it."
"Good! Now call her!" she urged him.
"Right now?"
"Call her right now."
"Okay then—wait, I lost her name, one second, here it is. So, let's see, 5-5-5, 1-0, oops." He hung up the phone.
"What?" she asked. She was now hanging excitedly over the back of the sofa, waiting for the results of the phone call. For an instant he mused over what she hoped the outcome might be.
"It's an old phone, I pressed the zero too hard and it made two beeping noises. That means the phone thinks I dialed someone with two zeroes in their number, instead of—"
He was rudely interrupted by a extremely loud sigh. Sora got up huffily from the sofa, proceeded to walk around to the back table, grab the phone from Tai, and speedily and accurately dial Mimi's number, before thrusting the receiver into his left hand and retreating back to the sofa, where she sat down on the floor and leaned against its arm.
"Sora," he said, as he switched the phone to his other hand, "How'd you dial her number so quickly, I mean, it was like you didn't even look at the phonebook—"
"Sssshhh. Is it ringing?"
"It's on speed-dial, remember?"
"Oh yes…"
"He's the first one."
"Sora's not first?"
"Just hit the number, Mimi."
"Okay, one sec—"
Mimi had the phone pressed against her ear, and was listening deeply to the other line.
"Noooooooo," she wailed.
"What is it?" he asked worriedly.
"It's busy! I wonder who they're talking to."
Tai had hung up the phone. Again.
"What was that for?" she asked.
"There's no one at home. I got the answering machine."
"That's why you hung up?"
"Yes."
"Call back."
"There's no one at home though."
"Tai. Leave a message."
"Oh. Yes." He didn't move.
"Hit the redial."
He hit the redial.
"And when you get the answering machine, leave a message."
Tai had the receiver up to his ear, listening intently for the machine.
"Wait-what should say?"
"Say that—"
"Sora, be quiet! It's the machine."
They both sat in a moment of suspended silence, before he heard the two beeps and began talking.
"Um, hi, Mimi, I'm sorry I didn't call before but see I lost your number, well, I didn't actually lose it, but I left it in my costume, and then I had to return the costume…" It looked like Sora was motioning for him to speed up.
"But anyway I just wanted to know if you maybe wanted to go out sometime. With me. So I guess if you could call me back, that'd be good. Um, see ya." He hung up the phone.
He guessed that it was a bad sign that she was shaking her head. A lot.
"It wasn't that bad of a message," he said defensively. "Well, I guess I kind of…well, it was pretty bad."
"It's fine though," she said.
"Really? Why?"
"Because she'll never know that it was you who called because you never told her who you were. Or left a number," she shook her head some more. "I do not know how you got dates back in high-school, Tai."
"Well it was mostly you…" he said matter-of-factly.
She ignored that. "Well, call again now."
"Again?"
"Of course again."
"But then she'll know it was me who left the dopey message…"
"Hit the redial and wait for the machine. Then, when you get the machine, leave your name and number and ask for the date."
"Should I explain why I didn't call her before?"
"You already did. Do what I tell you to do."