Standing By

Paging Adam

(Chance)

"No, no, no," I complained to him on the phone.  I didn't have the time or the patience to sit down and have a chat with him right now.  We had a ton of stuff to do.  Rehearse.  We'd been OK until we'd had this Tim bombshell dropped on us—then we got rearranged to make up for it.  The one person that had stayed the same—Austin—wasn't overly familiar with the new arrangement of Colder Weather.  We had got to get together and all of us rehearse the shit out of it, or I was going to screw up and sing my usual part.  I had to concentrate.  Not chat Matt up.  "Matt, I just can't right now.  Just listen to me, OK?  Just don't answer any strange calls right now.  Especially 615 numbers.  It's Jenika and she's being the world's biggest bitch."

    "Aight, aight, I hear ya," Matt said easily.  "I won't answer unless I know them personally.  Or it's the electric company.  Like I said earlier, they try to throw that reconnect fee on me, I'mma lose it on their ass."

    "What?"  I frowned at the phone, not entirely sure what he was saying about the electric company.  Needless to say, I had not been paying much attention earlier.  This was supposed to have been a two-minute phone call—'hey Matt', 'hey, Adam', 'listen, Tim's wife Jenika is losing her mind.  Do not answer any calls from 615-555-6196.' 'OK, I won't', 'thanks', 'no problem, bye', 'bye'.  Instead, he was blabbering on about an electric bill?  Dude, if you need money, I'll give it to you; I've got enough to help you out—but for the love of God, shut up long enough and listen to me!  I'm trying to give you advice!

    Matt sighed on the other end of the phone.  "Adam.  Stick with me here.  My electric wasn't working, so I called them up and they tried to tell me it had been cut off because—"
     "Paging Adam Rupp to guest room 1220," the PA system buzzed on, making me jump.  I glanced over at him, who was also just sitting there with his phone to his ear, looking as puzzled as I was.  "This is an emergency."

    "An emergency?" Austin muttered, glancing from Adam to Rob to me.

    "The hell?" Rob mused, still talking, now to his sister, on the phone.

    "Paging Adam Rupp to guest room 1220.  This is an emergency," the PA repeated.

    "Umm," I mumbled, raising my eyebrows at Adam, who was starting to stand up.

    "Yeah.  I, um.  Guess I'm going to guest room—err, what number was that again?"

    "1220 I think?"  Austin stood up as well, shrugging helplessly at Mitch, who was nibbling on a fingernail.

    "What kind of emergency would call someone to a guest room?" Kirstie wondered out loud.

    "Paging Adam Rupp to guest room 1220.  This is an emergency," it said gain.

    "Whose room is that?" Scott grunted.

    "Not any of ours," I remarked, then said into the phone, "Hey, Matt, I got to go."

    "—regularly!  Every single month!" Matt was saying.  "Wait, what?  You got to go?"

    "Yes," I said quickly.  "Bye."  I hung up and jumped to my feet.  "If we don't know who is in room 1220, why is Adam getting paged to its emergency?"

    "Not a trap of some sort, would it be?" Avi asked suspiciously, then threw his hands up when we all turned to look at him.  "What?  Just throwing it out there!"

    "A reasonable question," Mitch said in his defense.

    "Paging Adam Rupp to guest room 1220.  This is an emergency," the PA ordered.

    "All right!" Adam shouted at it.  "I'm going!" He started to walk off.

    "We're going with you," Rob immediately decided, trotting off after him.