Why people go hiding when they answer the phone

So me and Tommy (Tommy’s my friend) are sitting down in the common room of a hostel and he says: “Hey Vic, why do people go hiding when they answer the phone?” There’s a guy on his mobile right across the room so I gesture with my head and say: “They don’t, man.” “No, no”, he says, “Look.” And in that moment a girl comes in and walks all the way across the room in front of us and past the big couches, walking in a hurry and a bit nervously like she’s up to something very urgent, and finally she gets to the corner where’s an old cordless phone everyone can use. “Look”, Tommy repeats, and the girl picks up the phone, starts dialing and walks out of the other door with the same nervous walk.

“How did you know?”, I ask, a bit confused. “She’s been doing that every day since we’re here, same time”, he says. “We’re here since yesterday.” “Yes, she’s done that yesterday too.” “Tommy, have you been eavesdropping?” He looks at me like I’ve said the smartest thing, and says: “Do you think we should?” “Tommy, people go hiding when they answer the phone because they don’t want to be heard.” “Yes, and why don’t they?” “Because of privacy.” “Half-privacy?” “What?” “Well you can’t hear who’s on the other side.” “Yes I guess. Half-privacy.” “I think we should go eavesdropping.”

So Tommy jumps up and moves swift like a panther across the common room and I jump up and follow him because I’m bored of sitting there anyway. Me and Tommy slide on the wall and drop our eaves on the other side of the door, but it’s all quiet, so we go through and I follow Tommy because he knows exactly where to go. “This room”, he mouths. We stand on both sides of the red door of room 22, where our curly-haired girl with overalls, pretty nose and mouth and a sense of urgency is talking in quick sharp whispers.

“...whattayamean I should’ve called you an hour ago”, the girl’s saying, “you told me to call you at this time!” Silence. “Uh-huh.” Silence again. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, no. Bullshit. Anyway, whattayaneed? Yes, of course I’m talking about that.” After that there’s quite a lot of silence and the girl going “uh-huh” and “yeah” and “I guess” and “okay” from time to time. Finally she goes: “Okay, give me the address then,” and after a moment she adds “no, there’s no one around”, and after that there’s silence again for quite a bit and me and Tommy think she’s about to walk out and check if anyone’s eavesdropping. So we run across the corridor and down the stairs and we get to the bottom of the stairs, we realize room number 22 is still closed, and we run back up the stairs and to the door, just in time to hear the girl spelling the address. Tommy has the best reflexes when it comes to minding other people’s businesses and he whips out his mobile and types the address very fast and without a single spelling mistake.

Then we’re out of there and back in the common room. “What should we do?”, I ask, and Tommy says: “We wait until she goes so it doesn’t look like we’re stalking her.” And that’s what we do. We wait and after ten minutes or so our curly-haired overall-wearing girl has become a straight-haired leggings&denim-flaunting party animal and she’s storming out of the hostel and into the streets. We see her from a window and we just look at each other, we wait maybe one or two more minutes without saying a word, then Tommy can’t handle it any more and he jumps up and walks out of the room full of energy, and I’m right behind him.

So we’re walking down the street and it’s quite dark (there aren’t many street lights in this part of town), and Tommy has his phone out with directions and he’s leading the way. I think it’s a little strange that Tommy knew the girl was about to have the call and even the exact time. I think she definitely didn’t have the same call the day before, but I’m also not interested in questioning Tommy’s ethics on lying. So I follow him and regardless Google Maps we get lost a bunch of times and we have to walk two or three times more than we should have. When we get to the place something like one hour has passed: the house is flashing blue and red lights out of the windows and there’s a solid hammering beat booming out of top-quality speakers, but no sounds of people shouting and having fun. “Should we go in?”, I say, but Tommy is already holding the door open for me.

The degree of devastation and decay and human filth we find inside can only be calculated taking a top ten of the worst nightclub gents toilet situations and multiplying it to the most disgusting rock-bottom moments you have experienced plus those you have witnessed and then adding to that everything wrong that’s ever happened to mankind. “Brilliant”, says Tommy, and on he dances bouncing on the minefield of corpses and puddles and who knows what other substances have soaked into the carpet, and I follow.

Now the house is our playground. There isn’t a living soul who’s not passed out: the beats keep beating DJ-less and the only sign of life we see are groans and little cute gushes of puke streaming out of some rare specimen on the floor; and if first I was a bit disgusted now I’m excited like a little kid and so is Tommy, who I see coming out of the kitchen holding an egg carton above his head. “Uuuuaaaaaghh!”, he yells, and he tears the carton apart with incredible strength in a shower of eggs that crack all over his body and on the floor and the ones that resist and roll gently and don’t crack are smashed by Tommy who’s now in some kind of manic state. And the same happens to me, as soon as I realize I have unlimited power and the beats are beating majestically and all these bums are high or drunk or most likely both high and drunk out of their minds. We find all the booze and we smoke some guy’s tobacco and go upstairs and turn the volume up. At one point a zombie wanders out of the bathroom, looks at us and wanders out of the house without a word and we keep drinking and smoking and dancing and yelling “uuuuaaaaggh” and “aaaah yeeess” and having the best time.

Anyway, Tommy has other plans in mind, and when we get tired of ravaging the house we start getting down to real business. “Man, we have all this food for like three days and all this booze for maybe a week even, and it’s all a gift from the gods and we should be grateful and not waste it because that would be a great pity and even a blasphemy.” And of course he’s right and I enter this very focused state of mind: I look for bags, I find two backpacks and Tommy finds one more, then I examine the fridge while Tommy checks which bottles are full enough to be worth taking and then I see him pouring some almost empty bottles into a big one and I just pray to the gods Tommy knows what he’s doing, which I well know is not the case but at this point I don’t care any more. We get all the goodies and I decide it’s time to go, but Tommy really wants to leave a note, so he takes a napkin and a marker and writes: “sorry man I ate all your food and drank all your booze but after all that’s what parties are all about right? so no hard feelings.” Signed: “Peter”.

Well I don’t know whether Tommy knew any Peter at the party or whether he had a conversation with the girl at the hostel beforehand, or whether he had planned the raid all along; as I said, I’m not particularly interested in his moral code. But we got out in the night with three backpacks full of supplies and that was a delight, and we ran back to the hostel like thieves laughing and drinking and dancing in the empty streets.

We arrive at the hostel and everyone is sleeping, so we tiptoe into our room and hide our backpacks under our beds and we keep giggling until we fall asleep. We’ve never seen the girl again and we haven’t heard from Peter and even though we did what we had to do and I’ve never had any regrets, I thought neither the girl nor Peter nor the owner of the house and of all the food and booze would’ve been glad to see us there, and in the next days I laughed hard at them every time I took a swig of the booze and a chunk of the food, and I still laugh very hard when I think about it now.

And that’s why people go hiding when they answer the phone.