Missed Call – Scott Cumming

August 17, 2021

A missed call could change it all. The only line he’d written. Read like a movie tagline. Thought he was ready to write about it. Needed to. Yet he sat with this singular line.

Should’ve been simple to chart his feelings after all this time. Now it’s wrapped up with Lucy. The divorce. He doesn’t want the song to be about that. He doesn’t want it to be about himself. It has to convey how Dan felt. What he did. Remains a mystery why, but Joe knew he owed him.

Eight years since Dan hanged himself. 23:14 12th January. Timestamp of the missed call. The answer phone message. Joe remembers when he first heard it. Stomping from the club, muttering under his breath. Dan at his New York pad. Joe still in London. The band taking a moment before the next world tour.

Stabbed at his phone. Waited out the robot lady. All Dan says is “fuck it,” followed by a bunch of clattering and a ghostly silence fills the remainder of the message.

A different urgency to the phone stabbing. Hours spent chain smoking trying to get hold of Dan. Asking the rest of the band if they’d heard from him. Finally, confirmation as the sun bloodied the sky. When there should have been hope in the new day, Joe’s world caved in.

The sadness hardened to anger at people making the same tired jokes on the internet. The “no wonder he killed himself being the drummer in that band” shite. Joe handed over his social accounts to a PR firm to deal with, such was the incessant nature of the jokes.

His last sight of Dan. Heading for the airport with a wave goodbye and a smile that beamed from his eyes.

The smile became blurred with the message. A piece of confusing static. Every night Joe would listen to the message. Morbid curiosity and revery in one. Wondered how things might’ve turned out had he answered. Might Dan be here now? Instead of the drummer Joe turned to each night, disappointed and shattered to find it wasn’t his best friend since the age of five.

Joe was surprised at the messages and calls he received from rock luminaries who’d suffered through the death of a band-mate. Letting him know what happened shouldn’t define how he looked back on Dan, but the message tugged at him.

Until he met Lucy. Lying together in a post-coital glow that darkened when Joe realised, he hadn’t listened to the message. He searched desperately for his phone.

Lucy worried she’d done something wrong and asked Joe what was up. For the first time, he admitted to somebody what he did each night.

“Joe, you can’t kill your friend again every night. That isn’t fair to him.”

Joe never realised that was what he was doing. Thought he was searching for an answer. For a reason. Anything to make sense of things. Dan did what Joe would never have the guts to do.

At Lucy’s behest, he played the message as they sat crossed legged like school children on the tousled bedsheets. The message married them long before any official ceremony. They confirmed their commitment to one another by smashing the phone underfoot. Destroying what lay within.

Now he sat trying to write a song for his friend. Something he had put off for too long. Even with the message gone, the suicide still haunted him. It was why they were getting divorced.

Lucy said he hadn’t changed in the years they’d been together. You could see it in the music he produced. Each album the same. Mid-tempo with peaks and valleys in the quiet/loud department.

Anticipation for the follow-up after Dan’s death was immense. Many left disappointed it didn’t address it overtly. The theorists tried to parse out lines about him, but the truth was that nothing on the album was about Dan. Or the next album. Or the next.

Joe kept it going for the others. Made sure they still had a living. His heart wasn’t in it. It didn’t take long for the same to apply to his marriage.

Lucy was the person he had shared the message with, but he never really shared his pain. He could never articulate his feelings about Dan’s death.

And he still couldn’t.

He could’t save Dan. He can only understand how he felt.

In his cavernous dining room, built upon the diminishing returns of his artistry, he stands on the table holding the first thing he could find – a metal ringed dog leash. The dog gone with Lucy. The leash left behind.

He twists the leash around the light fitting and turns the other end into a noose. With eyes so puffy they look blackened; he looks around and feels stupid. This isn’t going to bring him closer to Dan. It feels more like a game than getting in touch with the feelings of his dead friend.

Despite everything between them and the things that went unsaid, Joe decides to unburden himself. Really let Lucy in. He’s done exactly what he was told not to and it has led him to standing in a lavish dining room with a noose around his neck.

He slips his phone from his pocket. Stabs at the recent contacts and finds Lucy. He hits dial. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Four rings…