I heard the front door open. Nandina called, “Aaron?”
Damn. She appeared in the living-room entrance.
“Oh!” she said.
Gil stood up. “Evening,” he said.
“Good evening.”
“We’re busy going over some figures,” I told her.
I gave her a look that she couldn’t possibly mistake, and she said, “Oh, all right; don’t let me interrupt,” and backed hastily out of the room.
“You were saying—?” I asked Gil.
He had sat down again, and he was riffling through his papers. “There’s structural damage in the attic,” he said. “That’s the worst of it. Some of the rafters need replacing. Roof, of course, and the insulation’s shot; and so are the hallway and kitchen ceilings and the cabinets on the west wall. Chimney will want rebuilding, too. Chimneys are kind of a big deal, I hate to say. Now, moving on to the sunporch—”
“Can’t we just take that off?” I asked.
“Say what?”
“Take the sunporch off; demolish it. It’s a lost cause, anyhow, and it was only tacked on to begin with. It’s not a part of the main—”
“Would you two like some refreshment?” Nandina asked. She had reappeared, but from the dining room this time.
“No,” I told her.
“Mr. Bryan?”
“Gil,” he said. He had risen once more to his feet. “No, thanks.”
“A cold beer, maybe?”
“No, thanks.”
“Or a glass of wine?”
“Thanks anyway.”
“We don’t have anything harder,” Nandina said. She had ventured a few feet farther into the room; any minute now she would plop herself down in an armchair, as if this were a topic that required deep discussion. “I know it’s still gin-and-tonic weather, but—”
I said, “Nandina.”
“What?”
“That’s okay,” Gil told her. “I don’t drink.”
“Oh.”
“AA,” he said. He straightened his back as he spoke, almost defiantly, but then he raised a hand to feel for his beard in this uncertain sort of manner.
Nandina said, “Oh, I’m sorry!”
“That’s okay.”
I was fully expecting Nandina to segue into the non-alcoholic side of the menu, but before she could, Gil told her, “We were just talking about the sunporch. Aaron here is saying how he wants to take it off.”
“Take it off? Take it off of the house?”
“That’s what he’s been saying.”
“Well, that makes no sense whatsoever,” Nandina told me. “You’ll lower the resale value.”
I said, “What do I care about the resale value?”
“It’s a tiny house as it is. You need that room.”
“Nandina, do you mind? We’re trying to have a private conversation.”
“You’re just mad at the sunporch; that’s what it is.”
“Mad!”
“You’re just … emotional about it, because of what happened there.”
“For God’s sake, Nandina, what business is that of yours?”
“Here’s a thought,” Gil broke in. He spoke in an extra-quiet, reasonable-sounding voice, as if negotiating a treaty. “What if we were to keep the sunporch but change the orientation.”
I said, “Orientation?”
“Like, right now it looks like you had a desk kind of arrangement along that wall of shelving that joins the house, am I right?”
The wall where the TV had hung, the one that killed her. I nodded.
He said, “How about we plan now for your desk to face the front, in the middle of the room. Better anyway, right? You’d be looking out on the front yard. And then we’d run a row of shelves all around the circumference, underneath the windows. Just low shelves, built in. It would be, like, a whole new different setup.”
I said, “Well. I don’t know.”
Although I did see his point.
Which Nandina must have guessed, because she said, “Thank you, Mr. Bryan.”
Then she turned and left us alone, finally, and Gil sat back down on the couch and we went on with his papers.
Mr. Hogan said he’d had an inspiration about his war book. He thought it should include his letters home to his mother. That was fine with me. We were merely his printers. But what I hadn’t realized was that he meant to submit the letters in their original, handwritten form. He set them on my desk one day in early October: a three-inch stack of envelopes bound with a satin ribbon that had probably once been blue. “Now, here is an example,” he said, slipping one envelope free. He hadn’t even sat down yet, although I’d offered him a chair. He was a tiny, stooped, white-haired man with squarish patches of pink in his cheeks that made him look enthusiastic. He drew the letter from the envelope with his crabbed fingers. Even from where I stood, I could see that it was almost illegible: a penciled scrawl, faded to silver, on bumpy onionskin paper.
I said, “You’d have to get them typed, of course.”
“Here I’m telling her all about what they give us to eat. I’m telling how I miss her fried shad and her shad roe.”
“Mr. Hogan? Are you planning to have these typed?”
“I’m saying how I haven’t had real biscuits since I left home.”
“Who typed your original manuscript?” I asked him. It had arrived looking quite presentable, which wasn’t something we could take for granted in our business. (And we didn’t have even a hope of any sort of electronic submission.)
“That was my daughter-in-law did those,” he told me.
“Could your daughter-in-law type these letters, too?”
“I don’t want to ask her.”
No point inquiring why, I supposed. People’s goodwill wears out. It happens. I walked over to open my office door. “Peggy?” I called. “Could you bring in that list of professional typists?”
“Right away.”
“Is this something I would have to pay for?” Mr. Hogan asked me.
“Well, yes.”
“Because I’m not made of money, you know.”
“I doubt it would be that expensive.”
“I’ve already spent my life savings on this.”
Peggy walked in, holding a sheet of paper. She seemed to be wearing a crinoline underneath her skirt. I didn’t know you could even buy crinolines anymore. She asked, “How’s the arthritis today, Mr. Hogan?”
“He says I’m going to have to get these letters typed,” Mr. Hogan told her.
“Oh, well,” Peggy said, “I’ve got a nice long list here of people who can help you with that.”
“I don’t think I can afford it.”
Peggy glanced down at her list, as if she might find some solution there.
“These are letters I wrote to my mother,” Mr. Hogan said, offering forth the one letter in both hands. “I thought they might add a little something to my story.”
“Oh, letters from the front are always good,” Peggy told him.
“Mine are more like, from Florida.”
“Still,” Peggy said.
“I write about how I miss her cooking. Her shad and her shad roe.”
“I love shad roe,” Peggy said.
I said, “Well, in any event—”
“I’m living on a fixed income,” Mr. Hogan said. He was peering intently into Peggy’s eyes, and the letter he held was trembling.
Peggy said, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hogan. Why don’t I just type them.”
As if I hadn’t seen that one coming.
“Would you charge me?” Mr. Hogan asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It won’t be any trouble.”
“Well, thank you,” he told her. A little too easily, in my opinion.
I said, “That’s very nice of you, Peggy,” but in a severe tone, as if I were reproving her.