The Snoring Hotline

At one fourteen in the morning, Mira called a sleep clinic and said, “Your breathing exercise is useless.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” a sleepy man replied. “Especially because I am not a sleep clinic.”

Mira checked the number. She had reversed the final two digits.

“Then why did you answer professionally?”

“I work in customer support. It is a disease.”

His name was Dev. He was awake because the neighbour above him rearranged furniture every night. Mira was awake because her brain replayed every embarrassing thing she had done since primary school.

“Try counting backwards,” Dev suggested.

“Tried it.”

“Rain sounds?”

“Makes me need the bathroom.”

“A boring podcast?”

“I become emotionally invested.”

There was a pause.

“I can snore,” he offered.

It was an obviously ridiculous idea, which was why Mira agreed.

Dev produced three careful snores. The first sounded like a motorcycle refusing to start. The second resembled a pigeon trapped in a trumpet.

Mira laughed so hard she had to sit up.

“This is medical malpractice,” she said.

“You called the wrong clinic.”

For the next week, she rang at one fourteen. Dev developed characters: the exhausted dragon, the congested prince, the tiny bear with enormous responsibilities. Mira rated each performance. Nothing scored above six.

Then one night she did not call.

Dev waited until one twenty. At one twenty-one, he called her.

“This is the snoring hotline,” he said. “We noticed an alarming absence of complaints.”

Mira was sitting outside a hospital room while her father recovered from a minor operation. She had not wanted to bother Dev.

He did not perform a character. He simply stayed on the line, talking about ordinary things until the hospital corridor felt less cold.

When her father went home, Mira invited Dev for coffee at a café halfway between their flats.

She recognized him immediately. He was the only man pretending to snore over a menu.

“Three out of ten,” she said, sitting down.

“Cruel. That was my award-winning walrus.”

They discovered daylight did not ruin the conversation. Dev was funnier when she could see him trying not to smile. Mira was quieter than she sounded on the phone, but her silences were comfortable.

Months later, Dev stayed at her flat for the first time. At one fourteen, Mira turned off the lamp.

“Do the dragon,” she whispered.

“I am retired.”

“The prince?”

“Union dispute.”

“Tiny bear?”

Dev rolled toward her. “The tiny bear has delegated his enormous responsibilities.”

“To whom?”

“You.”

“Terrible management.”

He began the motorcycle snore. Mira laughed into the pillow.

She fell asleep before she could give him a score.

In the morning, she found a note beside the bed: Silence is legally five stars.

Mira wrote beneath it: Four. Do not become arrogant.