“It has been a while, John,” Marlene said. Her voice was rather slinky in its honey pour of void, to sweeten our relationship up.

“Yes, it has. Just got back from Midwest.”

“How nice.”

“I’m not so sure. It isn’t exactly comforting to be in the room full of Aryan cousins. It was a good wedding, though.”

“You exaggerate so much for nothing,” Marlene reddened his cheeks up.

“Maybe,” I said as I pour pitcher over to her cold, empty beer.

Bartender stepped in. “A phone call for you.”

“Huh?”

“Phone for you,” he passed the note to me. “Call this number.”

“In this f******* place? Ok. Who could it be?” I mumbled.

“Over there,” he pointed. 

I sighed. “I’ll be right back, Marlene dear girl.”

“Be quick about it. We’ve got a long night for two of us,” Marlene said sweetly.

I went to the end of bar table. I pressed the number. “What is it?”

I moved around and glanced at innocent Marlene. And I moved around again when the voice came. There was a brief, long click. It wasn’t exactly scary, nor eerie, neither. It almost sounds like minuscule thunderstorm in a dot of ink.

“John, we’ve got a situation,” a familiar voice frankly said. It was a spooky tone.

I looked him up slowly with my rising eyelids to look myself in the designated mirror across from me. “Jiri,” I said.

“You familiar with mirage?” Jiri was slow to say.

“Jiri, are you calling from Europe?”

“Prague line. Are you familiar with mirage?” he said again.

“That depends on how you skew the situation,” I made a point.

“Well, it goes like that, John, though not twisted quite enough as it ought be.”

“So what’s going on?” I tried to find the right idea of odd phone call, here out of all places.

“A girl. A girl was looking for you. She sent me emails. It drove me crazy a bit. She thought I was you, John,” Jiri said straight away. “She doesn’t sound so pleasure. Her intention seems to hate your guts.”

“Well, who is she?”

“You know, I didn’t ask for name. I even played around words to get a point out of her,” Jiri chuckled. “She sounds like a real hassle bitch.” 

“Give me more clues,” my head was swimming.

“She said something like ‘youre jb arent you?’” Jiri recalled.

“That’s my initials,” I said. “It has been years since the last time someone called me that.” Has it been five years? Or six?