I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m not the most natural conversationalist, and I was nervous. I relied on discussing matters I know more about. Matters I know more about than art, at least. This is no excuse for what bad company I was.
Yesterday morning I went back to the building we got stuck on. Before 7 a.m., it’s different, as I’m sure you know.
Traffic noise, construction noise, people noise: It’s all still there, but quieter, which is why I should not have suggested meeting when we did. The light wasn’t great, and the scaffolding is still there, so I still couldn’t see the letters, but
I made a trip somewhere else after work and found what
I’ve enclosed here. I hope it helps.
For whatever it’s worth, I enjoyed watching you work. I wish you every success.
Reid Sutherland
I stare at what he’s written for a long time, ignoring for now whatever it is he’s enclosed. I’m not looking for a code, because I know now Reid wouldn’t leave one. If he asks, he wants to know. If he says something, he means it. If he writes to you, he’s written exactly what he wantsyouto know.
Instead I pick out the phrases I like most, the ones that make me want to agree with him, answer him, ask him.I was nervous, I read again, and I want to say:I was, too.No excuse, and I think:No, but I forgive you. Before 7 a.m., and I wonder:What time do you get up in the morning? What time do you have to be at your weird calculator job?
I enjoyed watching you work. I love that word,enjoyed. It sounds small and polite, but it contains something big, passionate. In my head I see it as it should be, I think. Theen-and the -edshould be small, but sturdy. Like bookends, or like hands, supporting something that’s lean and tall, but fragile and new. A fawn’s legs.J-O-Y.
It’s a photograph he’s enclosed, or a photocopy of one, but I can tell that the original is black and white. On the bottom right corner I can see a snippet of a label, something that must’ve gotten caught in the copier, aYPLthat I know must have anNbefore it. Photo archives in the New York Public Library. That’s the trip Reid took after work. To thelibrary.
It’s a ribbon cutting of some sort, though it must be a pre–big scissors and smiles moment, men in dark suits standing around behind a long, thin line of fabric. Behind them is a newer version of the building that had, only a few days ago now, been covered in scaffolding. But if you let your eyes drift up, up and over, you can see it. Top left corner. Three-quarters of the sign we squinted at. Notfreshlypainted, I don’t think, but newish. Clear and bright, and though I can’t see it all, I can see enough of what we’d missed on the street. The script I’d strained so hard to see is for a brand of men’s clothing, nothing I’ve heard of before, but I can picture the clothes, somehow, from that script—cap lines and ascender lines almost the same, swooping cross-strokes that nevertheless stay within the boundaries. Organized and elegant and aspirational.
Beneath it, the line of lettering that had faded almost completely, that I almost hadn’t known was there. An unassuming, narrow all caps. What’s written there makes me smile, and I wonder if it made Reid do the opposite. I wonder what this line of text means to him.
it reads.
A literal sign, but maybe the other kind, too.
I stall on the way home, not wanting to seem too eager. I stop for a few groceries and get caught up talking to Trina, who works the register most Fridays and who was hilariously insistent about showing me the infection she’s got from her belly button ring. On my walk home I bump into one of my clients who’s coming out of her Zumba class, and when I compliment her on her extremely fashionable exercise outfit, she is thrilled to give me a coupon code for a friends and family event at her favorite athleisure store. When I’m finally on my street, I see my neighbor Artem crouched outside the front door with his young daughter, valiantly attempting to draw a unicorn for her with sidewalk chalk. The head resembles a thigh with a dagger sticking out of it, so I am professionally obligated to take over, fixing it up and drawing his daughter’s name so it curves over the unicorn’s back, all the way down its windswept tail. She claps and hugs my knees, and Artem gives me a grateful smile, and for the first time in a while I feel as if I’ve had a good hour of my own brand of.
Upstairs I carefully unpack my groceries, not giving in to the petty temptation I have to put a few of my things on Sibby’s side. I make my notes for the job with Lark, catch up with a few social media comments, sort a giveaway for a new set of notebooks.
Then I take out the envelope and set the photograph Reid sent me on the center of my bed. I sit on my desk chair, put my feet up on the mattress, and take a deep breath.
He answers on the first ring. Hishellois exactly as I’d expect it. It’s a declarative rather than an inquisitive hello.
Hello, period.
“Hi. I got the photograph.”
“Good,” he says. “I’ll thank my guy.” The messenger, I guess he means. I wonder what people who work for Reid think of him. Probably they think a lot of wrong things, like that he’s never, ever nervous.
“Thank you. For the photograph, and for the letter.”
There’s a couple of seconds of silence, and I wonder if he’ll repeat the apology, say it out loud, too. The thought is so jarring that I reach a hand beside me, absently feeling for the cord of my headphones. If he says it when I have the phone pressed right up against my ear—I don’t know. It feels too close.
He only says, “You’re welcome.”
But I still put in the headphones, set my phone on the desk so I don’t stare at the shape of his name on my screen.
“So. You went to the library.”
“I did.” After a beat, he adds, “I like research. I did a lot of it, in graduate school.”
“You went to graduate school?”
“Yes. Masters and doctorate. Both in mathematics.” It’s not a boast, just a completion, an anticipation of the follow-up I would’ve certainly asked if he’d only said yes. I know I’m not great at numbers, and it’s not that I think he’s lying, but it’s hard to believe that Reid—who doesn’t look much over thirty—has both of those degrees. Maybe I am also not great at estimating age.
