Boy, do I. I wonder if she’d want to know about trying a new thing where you call a man who doesn’t like you, ask him to indulge in your probably useless efforts at artistic inspiration, develop an inappropriate fondness for his face, and then get into a fight with him in the rain on a crowded street in Midtown.
Exhausting indeed!
“I absolutely do,” I say.
For a second, we both look up at the wall, and I try to convince myself that all this blankness won’t turn into another block.
I call Cecelia when I’m on my way home.
I don’t do it because I want to disrespect Lark—or, God forbid, that piece of paper—but because Cecelia helped me out by hanging on to her number, and she’ll want to know how it worked out.
“Oh, Meg!” she says, her voice high. “Was it a Real Housewife?”
I laugh, but then I feel sad again at the mention of it, thinking of Lark in that big house, Cameron wanting boys-only kids and cooking and his knit-cap/leather cuffs portrait, and Lark looking a bit shell-shocked by it all. I push the thought away.
“No, definitely not. She’s got a pretty big following, so it’d be great if she showcases any of my stuff on her social media.”
“See, that’s exactly what I hoped for. Another planner?”
I tell her briefly about the planner, the two walls, and she’s interested but also distracted, probably counting stock or looking over new samples.
“So I wanted to say thanks, and—”
“I’m glad you called, actually,” she interrupts. “Can you stop by the shop? There’s a package for you here, delivered by messenger a few minutes ago.”
“Ugh. Is it from ink•scribe again?” Another overly stylized name for a company that’s always sending me free stuff care of the shop, except this free stuff is garbage. Pens that last a literal day and a half, and I think they’ve sent me fifty since theTimesarticle. “I guess hang on to it, if so.” I’ll pick it up tomorrow and donate it to the day care two blocks from me.
There’s rustling on the other end of the phone. Cecelia mumbles something about needing her glasses, which I know without seeing her are tucked into the neck of her shirt. “Oh, here they are,” she says, a half second later. “No, this one—Sutherland, it says. Who’s that?”
My face heats. “Oh, uh—”
“Your date maybe, hmmm?”
I immediately change direction, heading toward the Smith Street station so I can get over to the shop.
“No, jeez. I wouldn’t have a date send something there. He’s a—” I break off. Can’t risk it. Out of context, his name isn’t that memorable. But if I sayformer clientmaybe it’ll ring a bell for her. “He’s a small business consultant.”
Howannoying, that this is what I’ve said. All his man-terrogating got in my head. That package probably has a bunch of information about health insurance that I already know. What ajerk.
“Oh, what a good idea,” Cecelia says.
I tell her I’ll be there soon and for the rest of the trip over, I’m doing that thing I indulge myself in sometimes, where I compose a lengthy, highly organized but incredibly witty lecture of censure to someone who has done me wrong. Except in this version, I’m seeing it all written out. I’d make it chaotic, haphazard, all different fonts blended together. Something that would really annoy Reid. Bubble letters, definitely; that’d probably make his face melt off.I set up the LLCmonthsago, I’d write.And I have a health savings account. I even looked into one of those asset insurance policies for my hands.I’d leave out the part where those policies are expensive enough to have made me laugh out loud.
By the time I’m close, my mind has wandered, and all I can do is wonder what thatSutherlandlooks like on the package. Did he address it himself? Seeing his handwriting—the possibility feels at turns exciting and unnerving. Intimate. It’s rare to see people’s handwriting these days. Surprising as it may sound, no one ever really sees mine, since what I draw isn’t really similar to my natural writing. Even my own planner, it’s stylized—my headers for task lists in a wide, all-lowercase script, no slant, the tasks themselves blocked with a slim, all-caps roman. It looks good in photos.
But once I have what Reid’s sent in my hands—Cecelia pausing briefly in her consultation with a customer to wave me to where it sits on the back worktable—I see that both the labels on the front have been typed, probably by someone who works for Reid. I ignore the disappointment I feel and tear open the package—it’s slim but stiff, nothing more than a standard, legal-size envelope, the kind of thing a contract comes in. So probably it is annoying I-didn’t-ask-for-this business advice. Well, at least if Cecelia comes back, my lie will be convincing.
Except it’s not business advice.
It’s a letter. A4, white, nothing special, though thicker than average printer paper.
And it’s handwritten.
it begins, and for a second I can’t get beyond those two words. Despite myMasterpiece Theatreimaginings, Reid doesn’t write in some kind of eighteenth-century cursive; instead, like most people these days, he has a sort of half-print, half-script style—theMof my name separate from thee, but theejoined to thegwith a smooth garland. The letters are close together, but the words themselves are given room to breathe—wide, even kernings that make me think of the way Reid’s jaw unclenched outside that crowded scaffold sidewalk.
Dark black ink. Even pressure. A rightward slant, a low vertical. I resist the urge to trace it with my finger.I force myself to read on.
I apologize for the questions I asked you on Wednesday.
