A seventh day.

The day was Sunday and my phone rang. Once, twice, three times.
I picked up the receiver around the fourth ring and took a deep breath. My lungs immediately filled up with new air. My body is a thing to rely on, for now at least.
On the telephone, a female voice spoke to me from the other side.
“Hi, Frank, how are you, today?”
“I’m fine.”
Well, I guess Sundays are boring.
“Can you give me a figure in a range from one to ten for how good you feel today. Zero would mean you feel like utter crap. An abandoned rock in deep space, let’s say. Ten is the single best day of your life.”
“Okay.”
“How about it?
I considered this for a while. After this break I decided not to give too much thought to it, a decision which came, off course, much too late.
“I’d say it’s a four or a five today. Maybe a six.”
“A seven?”
“Definitely not.”
There was another pause.
“Okay, thanks.”
After this phrase she hung up. I was alone again.
I went to the fridge, took some cheese, sliced some bread, combined the two in a kind of sandwich and put them in the oven. While the foodstuff grilled to a solid exterior with a sticky heart I thought about my past a bit. I didn’t like to do it, but it kind of came automatically.
I was 26 years old, going to 27 fast. I wasn’t particularly succesfull in life, even though I did achieve some things. I had gotten a master’s degree in Peculiar Astrophilosophy, but I had never gone to the stars. I couldn’t get a permanent job, but it wasn’t like I was starving. The initial charisma that people saw in me, and for which they hired me, quickly wore out, until they saw what I felt to be the truth all along. A mediocre man with no ambition whatsoever. I dated some women, had some sex, but nothing lasted but the memories of some laughs we laughed and some fights we fought. The fights weren’t bloody, the laughs weren’t all that hilarious. At some points in my life I made some jokes, at others I was stonecold serious.
I knew my life wouldn’t last, but couldn’t really see the end of it. There had been a lot of cancer in my family but I couldn’t see myself getting a tumour of any kind. If I would have had to give my life grades, on a scale of ten, I’d give it a 4 or a 5. Definitely not a 6.
I took my sandwich out of the oven, sprayed it with a bit of ketchup and ate it. It was a good meal, by my own standards. I called my best friend Eddy and asked him what he was up to.
I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying, as if he was talking in Swahili. He was hammered, I could almost smell the putrid scent of booze through the telephone. Slightly jealous I said goodbye, pressed the red telephone button and put on a Ryuchi Sakamoto record. The vibrations immediately started filling my ear. For a second I was grateful that I wasn’t deaf, but this feeling also passed. One can always depend on a moodswing, steady as a rock in it’s contingency.
I sat down on the sofa and closed my eyes. There was music in the air. Everything was silent that way.

I conveniently woke up at six in the evening. The sun had started to fade and I went to the kitchen to cook dinner. I didn’t have a thought in my head, and for a while the world was a practical place. All around there were practical problems and one had to keep a steady mind to solve them. It was the simple world of our primitive ancestors, hard but rewarding. Off course, it didn’t last. During my meal the complexities returned to me, and I was left with a feeling of desolate angst.

It got dark around 8:30 and I went to bed to read for two or three more hours. I was reading a book about the futility of it all. I wished I had a woman or a girl to fuck, a little piece of tail to alleviate my mood. No such woman was present in my room, so I just read some instead. I didn’t indulge in masturbation, not because I had moral objections against it, but simply because I didn’t see the point in it.

Around 10:30 she called me again. I picked up my phone after the fifth ring.
“Hi, Frank, how are you this evening?”
“I’m fine.”
“How much?”
“I’d give it a 4.”
“That’s not a lot.”
“I feel kinda lonely, I guess.”
“I see.”
“Do you ever feel lonely?”
She seemed to be considering this, because she didn’t answer for a while.
“Hello?”, I inquired, afraid that she’d left.
“I do feel lonely, sometimes.”
“When can I see you again?”
I could hear her smiling.
“Maybe when it’s a seven or an eight.”
“Okay.”
“Good night, Frank.”
“Good night, dear.”
I hung up and went to sleep. My sleep was dreamless but I kept a vague consciousness of having a headache. When I woke up the first minute of the new week had begun. In the edge of my field of vision I could see the slightly annoying flashing of the fluorescent 0001. Everything else bathed in darkness. There wasn't a sound to be heard.
"I guess mondays are also boring", I thought, after which I closed my eyes and slept some more.