THE LAST VOICE ON LINE SEVEN

My job was to transfer calls at an old exchange that was due to close forever at midnight. By eleven fifty-eight every line was dead except seven.

Line seven had no wire connected to it. The engineer showed me himself. But the light above it pulsed like a heartbeat, and when I lifted the receiver I heard rain.

"Operator?" said a child. "Can you connect me to the person who makes tomorrow happen?"

He sounded exactly like my father had sounded in an old home movie. My father, whose voice I had not heard in twelve years, was speaking from a day that hadn't arrived.