One day I got a phone call from the Operator.
She said my number sounded sexy
and asked me what I was doing in the evening.
Her name now escapes me. "Come to Rudi's ...
half past eleven ... I'll be wearing
(what was she wearing?) ... See you later!"

Give Chance a chance has always been my motto.
Having no options, I consented.
At ten, having emerged from the bedroom closet
in a shirt matching (as the store clerk put it)
my personality, I attached a smile
to my perplexed reflection in the mirror.

What happened next belongs to a different poem.
I had a single date with the Operator
whose mystery lasted only so many hours
and whose talk made only so much sense.
By the next morning, I stopped feeling
like the epicenter of a minor earthquake.