The bureau. The letter. The manly scrawl.
What was I going to do?
Only one thing I could think of, since I hadn’t made a decision about reading the letter or not. I’d simply take it with me to work. If I decided to read it, I’d give it a quick scan over my lunch hour.
But probably I wouldn’t read it at all. I had a lot of faith where Laura was concerned. And I didn’t like to think of myself as the sort of possessive guy who snuck around reading his wife’s mail.
I reached into the bureau drawer.
My fingers touched the letter.
I was almost certain I wasn’t going to read it. Hell, I’d probably get so busy at work that I’d forget all about it.
But just in case I decided to...
I grabbed the letter and stuffed it into my blazer pocket, and closed the drawer. In the kitchen I had a final cup of coffee and read my newspaper horoscope. Bad news, as always. I should never read the damn things... Then I hurried out of the apartment to the little Toyota parked at the curb.
Six blocks away, it stalled. Our friendly mechanic said that moisture seemed to get in the fuel pump a lot. He’s not sure why. We’ve run it in three times but it still stalls several times a week.
Around ten o’clock, hurrying into a sales meeting that Ms. Sandstrom had decided to call, I dropped my pen. And when I bent over to pick it up, my glasses fell out of my pocket and when I moved to pick them up, I took one step too many and put all 175 pounds of my body directly onto them. I heard something snap.
By the time I retrieved both pen and glasses, Ms. Sandstrom was closing the door and calling the meeting to order. I hurried down the hall trying to see how much damage I’d done. I held the glasses up to the light. A major fissure snaked down the center of the right lens. I slipped them on. The crack was even more difficult to see through than I’d thought.
Ms. Sandstrom, a very attractive fiftyish woman given to sleek gray suits and burning blue gazes, warned us as usual that if sales of our computers didn’t pick up, two or three people in this room would likely be looking for jobs. Soon. And just as she finished saying this, her eyes met mine. “For instance, Donaldson, what kind of month are you having?”
“What kind of month am I having?”
“Do I hear a parrot in here?” Ms. Sandstrom said, and several of the salespeople laughed.
“I’m not having too bad a month.”
Ms. Sandstrom nodded wearily and looked around the room. “Do we have to ask Donaldson here any more questions? Isn’t he telling us everything we need to know when he says ‘I’m not having too bad a month?’ What’re we hearing when Donaldson says that?”
I hadn’t noticed till this morning how much Ms. Sandstrom reminded me of Miss Hutchison, my fourth grade teacher. Her favorite weapon had also been humiliation.
Dick Weybright raised his hand. Dick Weybright always raises his hand, especially when he gets to help Ms. Sandstrom humiliate somebody.
“We hear defeatism, when he says that,” Dick said. “We hear defeatism and a serious lack of self-esteem.”
Twice a week, Ms. Sandstrom made us listen to motivational tapes. You know, “I upped my income, Up yours,” that sort of thing. And nobody took those tapes more seriously than Dick Weybright.
“Very good, Dick,” Ms. Sandstrom said. “Defeatism and lack of self-esteem. That tells us all we need to know about Donaldson here. Just as the fact that he’s got a crack in his glasses tells us something else about him, doesn’t it?”
Dick Weybright waggled his hand again. “Lack of self-respect.”
“Exactly,” Ms. Sandstrom said, smiling coldly at me. “Lack of self-respect.”
She didn’t address me again until I was leaving the sales room. I’d knocked some of my papers on the floor. By the time I got them picked up, I was alone with Ms. Sandstrom. I heard her come up behind me as I pointed myself toward the door.
“You missed something, Donaldson.”
I turned. “Oh?”
She waved Laura’s envelope in the air. Then her blue eyes showed curiosity as they read the name on the envelope. “You’re not one of those, are you, Donaldson?”
“One of those?”
“Men who read their wives’ mail.”
“Oh. One of those. I see.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Then what’re you doing with this?”
“What am I doing with that?”
“That parrot’s in here again.”
“I must’ve picked it up off the table by mistake.”
“The table?”
“The little Edwardian table under the mirror in the foyer. Where we always set the mail.”
She shook her head again. She shook her head a lot. “You are one of those, aren’t you, Donaldson? So were my first three husbands, the bastards.”
She handed me the envelope, brushed past me and disappeared down the hall.
There’s a park near the river where I usually eat lunch when I’m downtown for the day. I spend most of the time feeding the pigeons.
Today I spent most of my time staring at the envelope laid next to me on the park bench. There was a warm spring breeze and I half hoped it would lift up the envelope and carry it away.
Now I wished I’d left the number ten with the manly scrawl right where I’d found it because it was getting harder and harder to resist lifting the letter from inside and giving it a quick read.
I checked my watch. Twenty minutes to go before I needed to be back at work. Twenty minutes to stare at the letter. Twenty minutes to resist temptation.
Twenty minutes — and how’s this for cheap symbolism? — during which the sky went from cloudless blue to dark and ominous.
By now, I’d pretty much decided that the letter had to be from a man. Otherwise, why would Laura have hidden it in her drawer? I’d also decided that it must contain something pretty incriminating.
Had she been having an affair with somebody? Was she thinking of running away with somebody?
On the way back to the office, I carefully slipped the letter from the envelope and read it. Read it four times as a matter of fact. And felt worse every time I did.
So Chris Tomlin, her ridiculously handsome, ridiculously wealthy, ridiculously slick college boyfriend was back in her life.
I can’t tell you much about the rest of the afternoon. It’s all very vague: voices spoke to me, phones rang at me, computer printers spat things at me — but I didn’t respond. I felt as if I were scuttling across the floor of an ocean so deep that neither light nor sound could penetrate it.
Chris Tomlin. My God.
I kept reading the letter, stopping only when I’d memorized it entirely and could keep rerunning it in my mind without any visual aid.
Dear Laura,
I still haven’t forgotten you — or forgiven you for choosing you-know-who over me.
I’m going to be in your fair city this Friday.
How about meeting me at the Fairmont right at noon for lunch?
Of course, you could contact me the evening
before if you’re interested. I’ll be staying at the Wallingham. I did a little checking and found that you work nearby.
I can’t wait to see you.
Love,
Not even good old Ms. Sandstrom could penetrate my stupor. I know she charged into my office a few times and made some nasty threats — something about my not returning the call of one of our most important customers — but I honestly couldn’t tell you who she wanted me to call or what she wanted me to say.
About all I can remember is that it got very dark and cold suddenly. The lights blinked on and off a few times. We were having a terrible rainstorm. Somebody came in soaked and said that the storm sewers were backing up and that downtown was a mess.