Just after the first of the year I went out with some friends for sushi. The girl sitting to my right was just smoking hot. Her “date” was some short geek who was either a mismatched blind date or co-worker. Bess, Eli’s girlfriend was trying to figure out a way for me to ask her out. Her first plan was to head to the bathroom when the other girl did and get the dirt. Instead, the girl and her “date” got up to go outside for whatever reason. Plan B was Bess took one of my business cards, and wrote “I’m the guy sitting to your right at SushiMon on Thursday night. I think you are very attractive. If you are interested, please give me a call”

The plan was to drop it in her purse which was just to my left on the floor. In goes the card. She sits down and it dawns on me that I gave her one of my old cards with my old office number on it. Plan C was hatched right there. I would write something on the card like “sorry, wrong office number on last card, this is the right one” If only she would get up. No such luck. We needed a diversion in order to get the correction card in the purse. I told Bess to get up and drop a beer glass on the other side of the table. She wasn’t into it. We decided on having her put her coat on, making a spectacle of herself getting stuck in the sleeve or something to attract attention. She did and it didn’t work. The two were wrapt in conversation.

It was a wash. No dice. The whole thing was for nothing. I wondered what she would do when she got the message on my office phone that there is no one at that number. If only that old number worked. I realized that Peter could help me. He worked in telecom and could do anything with the phones. It was a long shot but if only I could get him to make the changes before she called me.

When I arrived at Red’s house across town, I bolted to the computer, got to my contacts called Peter and left a message, “Peter, dude, I met, well, I didn’t exactly meet her, but anyway I gave her my old card and it has my old number. If you forward my old number to my new one, I’ll be indebted to you.”

The rest of the evening was devoted to drinking and talking about what a stupid stunt this whole thing had been.

My hangover and I came to work the next day to find Peter in our part of the building talking to one of the guys.
“I got your message and forwarded your phone at 9:30 last night, I got a good laugh out of that”
“Thank you, I was a little in the bag and she was so damn hot”
“Ok, but how about checking to see if she called”

Sadly, these messages have been lost. Suffice it to say, she and her boyfriend were quite amused and made lots of mock sex and orgasm sounds into the phone, over two voice mails. It was pure comedy.