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I run outside, across the lot and to
the neighbor’s porch where he’s slipping letters into boxes and I
beg him, on my knees, even,
please
, but he says “Sorry, no. I
can’t.”

APRIL 23, WEDNESDAY

Late April, and already July’s
humidity saddles the spring heat. I wipe at a moisture ring with my
sleeve cuff, back, forth, back, forth on the table with the wall
clock’s
tick tick
.
Later, maybe, the batteries will have to come out.

The sheet of paper in front of me
says, “I’m sorry sorry sorry so so sorry.”

I crumple it, tear it, and throw the
pieces on the floor.

From as far away as the kitchen, the
gun from the grocery store’s junk aisle—“What’s that for, hon?”
Olivia said—loses a lot of accuracy. I miss the Vice President’s
head entirely, and instead cover the current time with the rubber
suction cup.

One in the morning, there, which
means he is sleeping.

I wonder if he’s called Olivia
again.

She would have called me.
Maybe.

It’s lonelier when he sleeps. Four
more hours, or so, until his alarm goes off, if he does indeed wake
up at five. Five sounds right, sounds good. He wrote in his letter
that he was up for sunrise, but maybe he was awake before that,
since he was already drinking coffee at the time.

Jake
(tick
)

Jake (
tick
)

Jake (
tick
)

Jake (
tick
)

Not his face, not memories, but the
name, repeating and repeating like a compulsive twitch, a skipping
lyric. I whisper—to the air that just might someday reach
him—“Sick, sick, sick of you.”

I use my last dart when the anchor’s
head fills the screen, but miss and hit the blurry space beside his
ear.

APRIL 24, THURSDAY

The lobby is blue.
Gray-blue, rain, the same as the cubicles beyond the reception
desk. Five minutes ago it was “Just another minute” and there are
no magazines on the coffee table, or on the spill-spotted counter
with the cups and coffee pot, or on the end tables with the
dust-covered, plastic plants on skid-proof mats. Behind the
receptionist speaking into a shiny black phone, a man and a woman
stand just outside the entrance to a cube. He holds a small
Styrofoam cup and curls a hand over the top of a wall. She stands
with one leg bent, one skirted hip thrust, a one-sided smile
working.

My
résumé
starts to wrinkle between my
thumb and finger, so I smooth it, set it on the chair beside
me.

There is a buzz and the
receptionist says, “Oh, will you hold on? Just a minute,” then
presses a button. “Yes, sir…yes…okay.” She presses something again.
“I’ll call you back.” Her finger beckons and I get up and stand at
a counter as tall as my chest, a small child’s big-people table.
“He’s very sorry,” she says. “He thought he would be able to meet
with you, but something’s come up. You can leave your
résumé
…” She raises a
beauty-queen palm over the counter and takes my resume and glances
at it, then sets it somewhere underneath, where I can’t see. “Thank
you. We’ll be in touch.”

“Before I go,” I say,
“what—just so I know—exactly would my duties be?”

“Basic
administrative.”

“Which is…?”

“Data entry. Answering
phones. Filing. Printing. Copying. Appointments. Collating.
Envelope stuffing.”

“I see.”

“It’s work,” she says, and
more quietly and with a look around, “Work is work,
right?”

“I guess it is.”

Today, there is a letter.
Thin, the envelope containing not my real name, but his play on it,
“Mi Amore.” I smell it, and it smells like sweat and mud. Aainst my
cheek it is soft with fine grit. Too short to read now, because as
soon as I open it, it will be over, so I sit down, first, to write
my apology.

April 24

Jake,

Please, please, please
ignore my last letter. I didn’t mean to send it. Or to write it.
Too much to drink—it’s not a good excuse, but it’s mine. I honestly
don’t remember much of…I’m lying. I do remember. All of it. I’m so
sorry. She’s really a perfectly lovely person, and…well, you’re not
going to believe that, either. But I
am
grateful to her for driving down
to see me! Jake, if I could write “I’m sorry” as many times as I
want to, this letter would reach from me to you. I’m sorry I’m
sorry I’m sorry!!! There’s really nothing worse than having that
letter out there floating around between us on top of everything
else. It’s killing me. You’re mad at me about something new and you
don’t even know it, yet!

What does an ulcer feel
like?

Don’t hate me. Read my
mind! Read it right now and call me! Call me today. Call me
tomorrow. Any time before that letter gets there.

I have to talk about
something else, now.

So! The weather has been
beautiful. A little too warm—you can’t kick me from there, ha!—but
beautiful, anyway, and not at all humid today, for once. You should
be glad you have a dry heat.

One season down,
Jake!

I miss you!

Oh! Denise said you might be
coming home sometime for leave. Is that right? You must have
forgotten to tell me on the message you left.. I asked your mom
about it (leave), and she seemed not to know anything. In fact, she
said she hadn’t heard anything about it at all. Maybe you’ll
actually tell
me
something first. (Just kidding! Ha!) Anyway, Denise really
wants to know if you have any idea when you—or William—will get to
come home. I do, too, of course. I’m just trying not to get excited
until I hear something from you.

This letter won’t be very
long. My head won’t stay straight, today… I’m in such a wonderful
mood. The windows are open and the curtains are swaying and
everything feels like spring, SPRING! I want to go for a walk, or
go for a drive, or something. You know how it is when you just
can’t stay inside, anymore?

(I hope this doesn’t make
you think I’m not still sorry. The whole letter shouldn’t be about
that, though.)

I might finally take down
the tree (even if I have grown used to its bulk in the room, and
the brown color is really kind of nice and nature-y, in an autumnal
way).

I still read the note you
gave me in the hangar, sometimes. And I’m trying not to care so
much, Jake. I’m really trying not to take it personally. I want you
to know that.

Love,

Mia

P.S. Did I tell you I quit
driving? I did. I almost had an interview today, but I didn’t. I
didn’t make an appointment, or anything, but just walked in, so I
was lucky they even took my resume. They said they’ll
call.

When the letter is
addressed, stamped, and left downstairs for pickup, I read
Jake’s.

Mia,

You know I don’t want to
pressure you or anything, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you
wrote again. I miss you, M. I’m starting to think I made you up. If
I did, I’m surprised I haven’t gotten awards for my superior
original design. Specifically in the breast area. (I miss your
breasts. I could write about them for pages.)

Seriously, though. It’s not
about wanting letters or keeping up with William’s six letters a
week from Denise. It’s really about wanting to know what you’re up
to and how you’re doing and getting your thoughts. I tried to call
after I got here, but the line was busy. From now on I’ll try to
write more often, too. I could probably do more of it than I do,
seeing that I seem to have enough time to stare at the pages of
this book I’ve been trying to read. I’ve been on page 97 for twelve
days.

Today is April
16
^th
.
Late. Did the news cover the capture of the guy they’re calling
“the third in command”? It happened this morning. William and I
were part of it and we’re still so pumped I doubt we’ll sleep
tonight. We’ve been on plenty of missions since we’ve been here,
but when it’s something like this and something that’ll be in
history books as a huge point for our side…he was bad, M, so I
don’t feel wrong for having killed him. Or for having helped kill
him. I don’t know if I did it or if someone else did, but if it was
me, it was me. And if it wasn’t, maybe I kind of hope it was. Fuck
him. He deserved it. He deserved worse. I know I was against all
this before, but I don’t know anymore. It’s starting to feel
different.

Hey! Now April
16
^th
is
a day to remember for two reasons. You remember the
16
^th
,
don’t you? I remember your skin against those black sheets of
yours. The best first time, have I told you? It took years, but it
was worth the wait, I tell you. Well worth it.

Sometimes there’s so much
time to think that all I do is remember, and it’s like taking a
vacation and coming home for just a few minutes. (Before William
comes in and knocks something over, or just makes loud noises in
general. He has this picture of Denise in a heavy as shit frame,
and he knocks it over every day. I’m not kidding. Every single day.
I’m starting to wonder if maybe he does know about that guy from
last year, because how many times can someone accidentally knock
over the same thing? But it hasn’t cracked yet).

Anyway, those few minutes
with you refresh me like you wouldn’t believe.

Speaking of William, he
just came in and now we have something to do in a few minutes.
Meeting, he said. Surprise, surprise. More later. -J

APRIL 26,
SATURDAY

Out. Going out, getting out,
doing something new, and giddiness—foreign, now—pinkens my skin; no
need for lipstick-rouged cheeks. Just the lips, full and
soft-looking, the stick labeled kidney-bean red.

Fifteen minutes until Denise
is due. I slip in another quick drink and it spills, some, down the
front of my dress when I try not to ruin the lipstick. A blow dryer
takes care of most of it; the stain is hardly
noticeable.

In the mirror, makeup is
good. Breasts are successfully lifted to crescent shadows. I
covered dark eye-circles with a skin-colored stick, and though the
dress bunches differently now that it’s home, it still works and is
still, as Denise said, stunning.

I put the glass on the
counter, pet Chancey, and go downstairs to wait behind the
door.

________

“
You’re so fucking skinny!”
she says through her open passenger window. “How are you keeping
that thing on?”

Her date smiles from the
driver’s seat and then looks away, puts the car into
gear.

Denise grips the pewter
flask in her lap. “You’d look so much better if you had a flower to
tuck in your hair. Remember I said—? Don’t you think so, Brian?
Or…I don’t know. Is that a stain? What happened?”

I wait for one of them to
unlock the back door.

________

Cheap, wrinkled velvet
curtains the same bright red as my tree skirt hang from rods draped
with uneven light strings across tall living room windows. Good
furniture has been carried away to make room for white plastic
patio chairs edging the walls like school-dance benches, and the
dance floor is a bamboo area rug. A man and a woman Denise
introduced using names I’ve forgotten are the only two bouncing to
reggae; the rest mill at the edges.

Before the reggae it was
country and synchronized line-dance stomps, Denise stumbling over
Brian and Brian curling her to him, guiding, spinning her when the
step called for women to be spun. She looked over once, over his
shoulder, and smiled and winked and mouthed to me,
Just a friend
, laughing
when his hand moved from the small of her back to the satiny lump
of her behind. I laughed back and raised my drink, and now they’re
I don’t know where.

“…needed something like
this,” says the girl to my right. She is nineteen, maybe twenty,
with yellow hair and blue eyes. “I just got so sick of being at
home all the time, you know? He called, like, once, and that was
about a month ago.” She shrugs and closes her lips over a narrow
straw, sucks some punch, then pushes the straw away with the tip of
her tongue. “I love him and all, but whatever. If he’s not going to
write… You know?” She is not addressing any one person, but our
two-man, three-woman cluster, most of us preferring a punch bowl
and the crackers-and-nuts platter to dancing. The third woman, who
introduced herself as “Dick’s Fiancée,” wobbles in her heels and
wrings the ends of her silk wrap while searching the room for
something. Not Dick, because he’s gone with the rest of
them—“Convoys ‘round the clock, the way he puts it,” she said—but
something, constantly something.

“You’ve already defended
yourself ad nauseam, Charlene,” Dick’s Fiancée says. “No one is
judging you, okay?”

“Of course they are,” she
says. “And they’re judging you. What do you think this whole thing
is for if not to see who’s doing it?”