Page 58 of Be My Valentine

“She told the whole story. You should have heard her, as she quoted all those verses from memory, she was…” he restrained the words on the tip of his tongue: extraordinary, seductive, fascinating… he could have continued the list but decided it would get him no where. That evening, he had been able to see for a brief moment the drive and dedication she was capable of pouring into what she really wanted to do; nothing at all like the young woman with her head down on her desk or the one who was busy organizing receptions. Kate had been simply herself for a moment, and he realized that he never wanted to see her otherwise: mortified, discouraged, lost….

“Attorney Arrow?” Meg called to him.

He blinked, unsuccessfully chasing away the thoughts.

“Would you tell me if you knew where she is?”

Meg looked him straight in the eye.

“No, sir.” She walked out with her head held high.

After two hours, when he heard an argument outside the studio, his head was still throbbing, as if the pills he had swallowed were just sugar. He opened the door annoyed.

“What’s going on here?” He barked at a delivery man who was yelling at Annie Carson.

“I need to deliver this envelope to Attorney Arrow himself.” Reiterated the boy.

“I’m his secretary, it’s my job!”

Mark snatched the envelope from the couriers hands.

“You’ve done it. Now get lost.” The boy didn’t let him say it twice.

Mark opened it immediately and was breathless.

Kate’s resignation letter, two laundry receipts, for a dress and a coat, and a check for nine hundred dollars.

“I’ll pay you back every penny,” she had said.

He turned the envelope over in his hands: there was only the address, no stamp, no receipt to sign, no nothing. It was strange. Then a memory ripped through his mind: the messenger!

He ran like a madman down the stairs and grabbed him on the street before he rode off on his bike.

“You!” He yanked him violently and slammed him against the wall. The bicycle crashed to the ground “I know you! You used to work at the pub with her, it’s you! ‘Hello, gorgeous!’ you greeted her. Tell me where she is! Where!” he yelled.

“I don’t know.” Said the boy in a choked voice. Mark loosened his grip.

“I can call your company, I can get your name and where you live, I can come to your house and take her back!”

“Take her back? She’s not an object, she’s a person!

Mark’s eyes went blank. It was a slap to the soul; he finally let go.

“Then she’s at your house! You’re more than friends if she ran to you.” he closed his eyes defeated “How is she? Just tell me that.”

“Fuck…” he muttered “You can come to my house right now. My husband sleeps late, he’s a chef. There’s no one else. Kate is just a friend; we’ve both been struggling with two jobs to get what we are wanting. For me it’s painting, for her…”

“… college. I know, now I know.”

“I don’t know where she is, but I know who you can ask.”

“I already went to Allie, the friend who works at the shoe store, she hates me, she’ll never talk.”

“Go to her mom.”

“Thanks, but she hates me too.”

“Not if she sees what I saw: a desperate man.” He got on his bike again and disappeared into traffic.