1. Person A is sitting in a chair, then gets up to get a glass of water. On the way to the kitchen he or she sees the phone sitting there and without thinking about it too much picks it up and dials a number from memory. In the home of B, distant or close, the phone is ringing but no one is home. Note, however, how a ringing telephone in an empty home still constitutes an event. Back in A's living room, he or she replaces the receiver in its cradle and looks thoughtful for a moment, running through several possible emotional responses to this unsuccessful call, all of them wrong and pointless. One of these potential emotional responses will be engaged, however, in the way that you sometimes walk into a shoestore somehow certain that you will be leaving with new shoes on.

2. Person C is lying on a very comfortable couch trying to read, and even though the book is engrossing and C has for some time been eagerly anticipating the reading of this particular book, he or she keeps dozing off, such is the almost ludicrous comfiness of this particular couch. As C is yet again nodding off, in the far corner of the room the telephone rings, and C looks over at it without moving his or her head. Why does C look at the telephone when it rings? If C had even a moment's thought of answering the phone it sure doesn't show. The person phoning we'll call D, whose identity remains unknown to this day. D could be A or B for all we know.

3. E is bored and feeling the walls closing in, and is in fact stricken with such boredom and cabin fever that he or she is considering telephoning A, B, or even C, just to "see what's going on" even though E knows perfectly well that nothing is going on with A, B or C or will be going on, in the way that E means or hopes, which to be honest even E couldn't exactly describe if pressed. Just as E is hovering over the phone struggling with this decision, picking up and putting down the telephone several times, it rings. (E will describe this incident later by saying 'the phone suddenly rang' as if a phone could at other times gradually ease into ringing.) When the phone rings, E backs away from it almost imperceptibly, then inches back with a kind of stealth, as if sneaking up on it, to glance at the caller ID information. As it continues to ring E sees that it is A, B, or C calling, and with held breath E waits for the ringing to stop and when it does E feels that a narrow escape has just been made. That was close, E thinks, as if it would have been a less gripping close call if he or she had been across the room when it happened. E is relieved, and has already completely forgotten his or her earlier desperate desire for human contact at any cost.