The Missed Call

Andres Molina had been in Montreal for eight months, studying architecture at a university that seemed to have more staircases than students. He loved the city, even in winter, and he had spent most of the fall applying for internships. He had sent out twenty-three applications. The one he wanted most was at Atelier Lumen, a small studio famous for its wooden libraries and schools. He hadn't heard from them, and by March he had stopped hoping.

On a Friday night in March, his classmate Chloe threw a party to celebrate the end of exams. The music was loud, the apartment was packed, and Andres was in the middle of explaining Colombian soccer to a very skeptical engineering student when his phone vibrated in his pocket. Unknown number. He glanced at it, assumed it was another company trying to sell him cheaper internet, and put it back in his pocket.

The next morning, with a headache and a dry mouth, he noticed that he had a voicemail. "Hi, this is Claire Dubois from Atelier Lumen," said a calm voice. "We were very impressed by your portfolio, and we'd like to offer you a summer internship. We need an answer by tonight, as we have another strong candidate. Please call me back before eight." The message had been left at seven fifty-two the previous evening.

Andres listened to it four times, as if the words might change. Then he called the number. It went straight to an automatic message: the studio was closed for the weekend. He sent an email, then another one, and then a third, which he immediately regretted because it used the word "sincerely" three times.

For the next week, Andres was impossible to live with. "I should have answered," he told his roommate, Felix, at breakfast. "I should at least have looked at the number properly. I could have stepped outside for two minutes." "You couldn't have known," said Felix, who had heard this speech eleven times. "I could have known! Who calls at eight o'clock on a Friday? Only somebody important."

He wished he had never gone to the party. He wished he had a phone that screamed when something important was happening. Most of all, he wished he were the kind of person who picks up when an unknown number calls. His mother, when he told her about it on a video call from Bogota, was not very sympathetic. "How many times have I told you to answer your phone?" she said. "You never answer mine either."

On Wednesday, Claire Dubois finally replied. She was sorry, she wrote, but they had offered the position to the other candidate, who had accepted. She wished him luck. Andres read the email on the metro and missed his stop.

He tried to move on. He applied for three more internships, all of them less interesting. He even started answering every unknown number, which meant that he had several long conversations about car insurance, although he didn't have a car. Then, the following Friday, at almost exactly the same time as the week before, his phone rang again. Unknown number. This time he answered on the first ring.

It was Claire Dubois. "I'm glad I caught you," she said. "Our other intern has just told us she's moving to Vancouver. If you're still interested, the position is yours. But I need to know now." Andres was standing in the cereal aisle of a supermarket. "Yes," he said, so loudly that a woman nearby dropped her granola. "Yes, absolutely. Thank you."

In June, Andres started at Atelier Lumen. On his first day, Claire showed him around the studio and then stopped at his desk. "Can I give you some advice?" she said. "Next time, answer the phone. You almost lost this job because of a party." "I know," said Andres. "I wish I could say I'd learned my lesson." "Haven't you?" He smiled. "I've learned that I should have answered. I've also learned that sometimes, if you're lucky, the phone rings twice."