What could I say? The whole thing was ridiculous. �I was at the restaurant, like I promised. We must have just missed each other.�

�I don�t believe that. I waited for three hours.�

I didn�t expect her to believe me; that�s why I couldn�t tell her the whole story. You trust me, though, don�t you? I�ll tell you what happened.

I was there on time. I swear I was. I was even a half-hour early, and I got a table before the place was really busy. She was late. She wasn�t there at ten minutes till, and she wasn�t there on the hour. That was normal. By the time it was fifteen after, though, I was worried. She should have called. I dug my cell phone out of my briefcase to call her, but it was dead. No, it wasn�t dead. It was broken. I shook it, and it rattled.

I�m glad she wasn�t there at that moment; she wouldn�t have approved of my language just then. The manager certainly didn�t, and neither did a couple of old ladies sitting at the table behind me. Maybe it wasn�t the wording, but the gesture, that made them so angry. All I did was throw the phone across the room, at floor level, too. It didn�t hurt anything. The long and the short of it is that I was asked to leave. They didn�t care that I had a date. They didn�t care that I had lost my most depended-upon form of communication. They didn�t even care that I was worried about someone.

I left. No use arguing until they called the police or something. Maybe I could find a pay phone. There was one a block away, in front of the grocery store, and I found it all right, but the only change I had was seven pennies and a couple of nickels. I went into the store to break a dollar bill, but then I realized that I had left my wallet in the restaurant. It was a fairly new wallet, too. She gave it to me last Christmas.

They wouldn�t let me back in. I said I lost my wallet, but they said they hadn�t found one and that no, I couldn�t look for it myself. I stood on the sidewalk and peered through the windows for a while. She was in there by this time, so I pounded on the glass to get her attention. I was glad to see her, and would have told her so if I could have got her to come out. She was too far away, and couldn�t hear me. The manager heard, and he came out. He asked why I was still there, and said that if I didn�t leave, he really would call the police. He wouldn�t take a message.

Well, I walked across the street and waited there for a while. I couldn�t even drive home; my license was in my wallet. I thought that she would eventually get tired of waiting for me, and I could ask her for a ride when she came out. She was more patient than I was. After an hour and a half, I decided to go home anyway. Then I could use my own phone, call her at the restaurant, and ask her to bring me my wallet. No problem, right?

How could I know they were doing a random seat-belt check at that corner? Sure, it was in the newspaper, but I didn�t find that out until later. And I did get stopped, and I was arrested for driving without a license. I was going to call her from the police station, but I got nervous and dialed a wrong number. They wouldn�t let me try again.

So I just sat there for a few hours, until the police finally went to the restaurant and got my wallet. They couldn�t let me go, you see, until they had verified my name and address. By the time I got home, it was eleven o�clock at night. I didn�t call her then, because the last time I called her after eleven she threw the earrings I gave her into a toilet. She came by my house this morning, though, and said that she would never speak to me again.

�I tried to call you,� I said. �I did nothing but try to call you. I had phone trouble.�

She still won�t believe me, and I have to go to court on the twenty-seventh.