“Gee, that’s too bad, Mr. White. That’s what you were coming down with last week, I bet.”
“Yes, it is. I was—”
“I knew it when I saw you. You remember? I said how you looked awful rheumy around the eyes, remember?”
“Well, you were right, Tom,” said Albert, keeping a tight lid on his impatience. “But what I’m calling you about,” he said, rushing on before Tom the Postal Clerk could produce any more medical reminiscences, “is the letter you’ve got for me.”
“Let’s see,” said Tom the Postal Clerk. “Hold on.” And before Albert could stop him, he’d klunked the phone down on a table somewhere and gone away.
As Albert sat in impotent rage, waiting for Tom the Chipper Moron to return, Elizabeth appeared with a steaming cup of tea, saying, “Drink this, dear. It’ll help keep your strength up.” She set it on the phone table and then just stood there, hands folded over her apron. Hesitantly, she said, “This must be awfully important.”
It occurred to Albert then that sooner of later he was going to have to explain all this to Elizabeth. What the explanation would be he had as yet no idea; he only hoped it would occur to him before he had to use it. In the meantime, a somewhat more pleasant attitude on his part might serve as an adequate substitute. He fixed his features into an approximation of a smile, looked up and said, “Well you know, it’s business. Something I had to get done to day. How’s the poached egg coming?”
“Be ready in just a minute,” she said, and went on back to the kitchen.
Tom the Postal Clerk returned a minute later, saying “Yep, you’ve got a letter, Mr. White. From you-know-who.”
“Tom,” said Albert, “now, listen carefully. I’m sick today, but I hope to be better by tomorrow. Hold on to the letter. Don’t send it to Bob Harrington.”
“Just a sec, Mr. White.”
“Tom—!”
But he was gone again.
Elizabeth came in and pantomimed that the poached egg was ready, Albert nodded and made his smile face and waved his hand for Elizabeth to go away, and Tom the Postal Clerk came back once more, saying, “Say, there, Mr. White, we’ve had this letter since last Thuesday.”
Elizabeth was still standing there. Albert said into the phone, “I’ll be up and around in just a day or two.” He waved violently for Elizabeth to go away.
“You better call Mr. Harrington,” suggested Tom the Postal Clerk. “Tell him to send it out again as soon as it comes back.”
“Tom, hold it for me!”
“I can’t do that, Mr. White. You remember, we talked about that once. You said yourself we should definitely send it back if you didn’t pick it up in the five days.”
“But I’m sick!” cried Albert. Elizabeth persisted in standing there, looking concerned for Albert’s well-being when in point of obvious fact she was crazy to know what this phone call was all about.
Tom the Postal Clerk, with infuriating calm, said, “Mr. White, if you’re sick you shouldn’t be doing any undercover work anyway. Except under the bedcovers, eh? He he.”
“Tom, you know me! You can recognize my voice, can’t you?”
“Well, sure, Mr. White.”
“The letter’s addressed to me, isn’t it?”
“Mr. White, Postal Regulations say—”
“Oh, damn Postal Regulations!”
Elizabeth looked shocked. The silence of Tom the Postal Clerk sounded shocked. Albert himself was a little shocked. He said, “I’m sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean that, I’m a little upset and being sick and all—”
“It isn’t the end of the world, Mr. White,” Tom the Postal Clerk said, now obviously trying to help. “Mr. Harrington isn’t going to fire you or anything, not if you’re sick.”
Albert, with a new idea created by Elizabeth’s unending presence directly in front of him, said, “Tom, listen. Tom, I’m going to send my wife down to get the letter.” It meant telling Elizabeth the truth, or at least an abridged version of the truth, but it could no longer be helped. “I’ll have her bring identification from me, my driver’s license or a note to you or something, and—”
“It just can’t be done, Mr. White. Don’t you remember, you told me that yourself, I should never give one of these letters to anybody but you in person, no matter what phone calls I got or anything like that.”
Albert did remember that, damn it. But this was different! He said, “Tom, please. You don’t understand.”
“Mr. White, now, you made me give you my word—”
“Oh, shut up!” cried Albert, finally admitting to himself that he wasn’t going to get anywhere, and slammed the phone into its cradle.
Elizabeth said, “Albert, what is this? I’ve never seen you act this way, not in all your life.”
“Don’t bother me now,” said Albert grimly. “Just don’t bother me now.” He leafed through the phone book again, found the number of the Monequois Herald-Statesman, dialed it, and asked to speak to Bob Harrington. The switchboard girl said, “One moment, puh-leez.”
In that moment Albert visualized how the conversation would go. He would tell a crusading reporter that a letter he had never mailed was going to be returned to him and would he please not open it? This, to a crusading reporter? Ask someone like Bob Harrington not to open a letter which has come to him via the most unusual and mysterious of methods? It would be like throwing a raw steak into a lion’s cage and asking the lion please not to eat it.
Before the moment was up, Albert had cradled the receiver.
He shook his head sadly, back and forth. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
Elizabeth said, “Shall I call Dr. Francis?”
Dr. Francis had been called on Friday, had prescribed over the phone, and had himself called the pharmacy to tell them what to deliver to the White household. It had been said, with some justice, that Dr. Francis wouldn’t make a house call if the patient were his own wife. But Albert, suddenly aflame with a new idea, cried, “Yes! Call him! Tell him to get over here right away, it’s an emergency! In the meantime,” he added, more quietly, “I’ll eat my poached egg.”
Dr. Francis arrived about two that afternoon, shucked out of his sopping raincoat — it was the worst rainstorm of the spring season thus far — and said, in a disgruntled manner, “All right, let’s see this emergency.”
Albert had remained on the first floor, reclining on the living-room sofa and covered with blankets. Now he propped himself up and called, “Me, Doctor! In here!”
Dr. Francis came in and said, “You’re a virus, aren’t you? I prescribed for you last Friday.”
“Doctor,” said Albert urgently, “I absolutely have to go to the Post Office today. It’s vital, a matter of life and death. I want you to give me something, a shot, whatever it is you do, something that will keep me going just long enough to get to the Post Office.”
Dr. Frances frowned and said, “What’s this?”
“I have to get there.”
“You’ve been watching those TV spy thrillers,” Dr. Francis told him. “There’s no such thing as what you want. When you’re sick, you’re sick. Take the medicine I prescribed, stay in bed, you might be on your feet by the end of the week.”
“But I’ve got to go there today!”
“Send your wife.”
“YAAAAAHHHHHH!”
It was nothing but fury and frustration that kept Albert moving then. He came up off the sofa in a flurry of blankets, staggered out to the front hall, dragged his topcoat from the closet and put it on over his pajamas, slammed a hat on his head — he was wearing slipper socks on his feel — and headed for the front door. Elizabeth and Dr. Francis were both shouting things at him, but he didn’t hear a word they said.