9 Letters (9 page)

King had never barked that I’d
heard him, not once, but when I started singing, he started baying,
the same howl he’d let out when I tried to leave him at the
rescue. A singing dog. That was alright with me. A clean house, a
singing dog. It wasn’t so bad.

There were only six letters left.
It wasn’t enough. I wanted letters from now until I died. I
wanted to open up all six of them, I wanted to devour her words. I
wanted to stare at her handwriting, at the little loops she put on
her letters even when she wasn’t writing cursive. I wanted to
see her little turns of phrase.

I wanted to never open them. I
wanted to always have them, in case I needed them, unopened and
waiting. I wanted to read them at ninety on my death bed, so I could
drink in Emily’s thoughts, one last time, before pneumonia took
me to meet her in heaven.

I decided on an in-between. I’d
keep following the letters, but I wasn’t going to open the next
one right away. I’d give it some time.

Leave it to Emily to come up with
such an incredibly perfect way to give me something to look forward
to, such an incredibly perfect way to get me out of bed in the
morning. I wasn’t
better
,
not by a long shot, but getting out of bed is a good first step to
getting anything done.

“Well look at you,”
John Lawson said, as I walked up to the bar. I was whistling. Felt
alright. The spring air was perfect and I could smell the trees
coming into bloom.

“Hey John Lawson,” I
said. “I just want to say...”

“You don’t got to say
it,” he said. “You just got to mean it.”

I meant it. I was sorry. I
reached out, and he clapped me on the shoulder, and it was done. I
was forgiven. Would have been different if I’d hurt him, but a
man like John Lawson doesn’t bruise easy, nor does his ego.

I was about twenty minutes early
for my shift, but I got up to the bar, grabbed a rag, started wiping
it down, bussing some dishes.

“Damn, Luke,” Jake
said, watching me work. “You win the lotto or something? Royals
win the pennant last night and I forgot to watch?”

“I’m just in a good
mood, that’s all,” I said.

I thought about it a moment
longer, decided I should tell him more. Impart some wisdom learned
from my not-particularly-advanced years.

“When everything’s
dark for so damn long and your eyes get used to it,” I said,
“just a little glimmer of sunshine lights up the whole world.”

He nodded, then grabbed a bus bin
and headed back into the kitchen.

Warren though, Warren wasn’t
impressed. He was sitting by one of the daytime barflies, but he’d
stopped talking and was just watching me. I was on thin ice, and I
knew it. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. A heartbroken,
drunk, angry widower is probably as unemployable as the average
ex-con.

I came on at the end of the day
shift. Warren liked tending bar during the day, because it meant just
shooting the shit with the regulars. That day I had a smile for every
customer, sparse words of wisdom like day drunks want to hear.
Tending bar wasn’t my dream. But to hell with letting that make
me lazy. I kept the place clean, I poured drinks like I cared.

I was getting into the swing of
it when happy hour kicked in and a few more people filtered through
the door. Couple of middle-aged bikers, a retired couple that parked
their RV out front. And Maggie. Of course Maggie came in.

Maggie’s got two kinds of
outfits. Tank top and jeans, and tight short dress. She tends to work
in jeans, and believe me it’s enough to get anyone staring,
when you can see the hint of those tattoos that just draw your eye
towards the spots her clothes are hiding. But that night, she was
wearing her tight black dress. It was all I could do not to stare.
Some of the regulars, for their part, didn’t bother with such
courtesy.

“You’re not on
today,” Warren said. He must have been in a bad mood to say
anything mean to Maggie.

“Just here to drink,”
she said. She walked up to me, rested her forearm on the bar to lean
in a bit. “Just got lonely, all cooped up alone. Figured I
could use some human in my life.”

Maggie could have gone home with
anyone in the bar, had she set her mind to it. Anyone but me. The
only thing worse than telling a girl off is being so rude as to go
back and forth about it. It’s not fair to her, and honestly,
you quit someone as hot as Maggie, you’ve got to quit cold
turkey.

“What’re you
drinking?” I asked, keeping my voice level without a hint of
flirting in it.

“Coors Lite,” she
said breezily, like we hadn’t had words last time we spoke.

I knew she preferred microbrews.
She was saying what I wanted to hear. I poured her a pint. She turned
around, beer in hand, her back to me. One elbow resting on the bar.
Too-casual. Trying to play hard to get.

“You want to come over,
after you get off?” she tossed back over her shoulder.

“No thanks,” I said.
I’m glad her back was turned. Easier not to have to meet her
eyes. “I’m fine.”

Maggie laughed, but I could hear
the hurt under it. “You know I didn’t just want to fuck
you, Luke,” she said.

Arguing with her about
anything
where Warren might hear was scary. But what she was saying was scary
too.

“You could take me out
sometime,” she said. “It doesn’t have to only
be…what it is.”

I just kind of shook my head and
avoided eye contact. Maggie was wrong about what we had and we both
knew it. Outside of bed or the bar, we couldn’t stand each
other—we’d tried a few times, and the truth is that we
didn’t have much to talk about. But there was more to it than
that. What I’d learned over several years with Emily wasn’t
something Maggie was yet privy to—and that was that physical
chemistry wasn’t everything. Compared to being in love with the
person who sleeps in your arms at night, all by itself the physical
stuff wasn’t much at all.

Maggie let out a short, harsh
laugh, I guess finally realizing I wasn’t going to bite.

“Suit yourself, jerk.”
She strode over to her favorite booth, in the back corner, and got
out her laptop. We had some regulars who came in sometimes and read
books, nursing their beer. Maggie was the only person I’d ever
met who dragged a computer out to the bar, though, and got drunk and
did whatever it is she did with those things.

I went back to wiping down the
bar, though it was clean enough already. Just needed something to do
with my hands.

That’s what I needed. I
needed something to do with my hands. Tending bar wasn’t
enough.

“Which stage of mourning is
idiocy?” Jake asked, suddenly next to me.

“What?”

“There’s like,
denial, anger, uh, being sad. After that there’s got to be
idiocy. Because you’re being an idiot.”

I thought maybe he was just
trying to get at me, make me angry. But I looked at him, followed his
gaze over to Maggie in the corner booth, and realized he was jealous.
Even John Lawson, happily married to the sweetest gal I’d ever
met, was a little bit jealous.

Maybe I
was
being an idiot. But dammit, if I was going to be an idiot, at least
I’d be a stubborn one. That’s better than a wishy-washy
idiot, right? I gave Jake a shrug.

The door swung open, letting in a
little bit of that early-evening cold, and I glanced up to see a
crowd of three women, with two men. One of the women was a reddish
blonde, radiant. Sort of stole the light out of the room. It was Rae.
Our eyes met and her smile gave the room back its light.

She’d been in jeans at the
shelter, but she was in a blue dress now and she looked damn fine in
either. Took my mind right off Maggie, faster than I thought it would
be possible. I met her eyes, and she gave out a little gasp and
giggle. I was probably smiling in surprise myself.

The crowd came over to the bar.
I’d thought the other four were two couples, but I realized
pretty quick that the black girl with the afro was dating the quiet
white guy in a beard and glasses and tattoos, and that the other guy
was trying to impress Rae. He had a John Deere hat, but his clothes
were way too clean for me to buy it that he worked on a farm. I hated
him, right off. I probably would have hated him if he was the best
guy in the world, though. The other girl, she was tall, latina, and
for some indiscernible reason was interested in the poser farmer.

Most of the time, I’m awful
at reading people. But for some reason, at work I can tell you
everything about everyone who walks in the door. About who’s
into who, about who had a bad day at work. Who wants to get drunk and
miserable, who wants to get drunk and happy, who wants to get drunk
and start trouble. Maybe it’s some magic of the job, maybe it’s
just how people carry themselves at a bar. Helps with tips, that’s
for certain. You wingman right, and the money flows in.

Warren, he likes to upsell them
drinks when he’s doing that. Get them excited about the top
shelf. Not me.

“Hey, Rae,” I said.

“Luke,” she said.

John Deere looked at me like I
was the scum of the earth. And maybe I was, but if I was the scum
then he was... I don’t know, something worse than scum. Wannabe
scum.

She introduced me to her friends.
Nicole had the afro, her boyfriend was Eric. The girl with bad taste
was Irina, and John Deere had some name but honestly it went in one
ear and out the other. He was John Deere to me. Yeah, maybe I’m
an asshole.

“So, how do you know this
guy?” Deere asked, tossing me a look that said I clearly wasn’t
good enough to be friend with someone like Rae.

“Oh, he came in just the
other day. Adopted the sweetest dog, a bloodhound.” She turned
to me, flashing that dimple high on her cheek. “How is he? You
guys call a truce yet?”

“King’s great,”
I said. “I mean, he’s probably at home right now, eating
everything I’ve ever owned, but I figure I was due for a purge
anyway, right?”

It was a lame attempt at humor,
but Rae laughed.

“What can I get you all?
Friend of Rae’s is a friend of mine.”

I won’t lie, it felt good
to be nice to John Deere, because the scowl on his face when I handed
him a free pint was worth any trouble I might get in with Warren.

“I’ve never seen you
in here,” I said, keeping the conversation going.

“We’re celebrating,”
Rae said.

“Yeah?”

“Eric here just got a new
job,” Nicole said. “‘Assistant production engineer’
at this studio that just opened up down the street.” Her hand
was on her boyfriend’s back, and she’d never been
prouder.

Emily had been proud of me like
that, sometimes. She’d put her hand on my back like that, too.

But as sad as it made me, I was
happy for Eric and Nicole both. That caught me by surprise. It had
been a long time since I’d been anything but bitter about happy
couples in love.

“What’s an assistant
production engineer do?” I asked.

“It’s the shit end of
the stick at the recording studio,” Eric said. He had a really
low voice for someone so thin. Low and gravely, a good songwriter’s
voice. “I do all the work no one else wants to. I’ll be
hitting the record button in the booth for all the commercial
voice-overs, shit like that.”

“Sounds like a good deal,”
I said. “You get to work in a studio. Bet you’ll work
your way up pretty fast, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Eric said,
and a smile cracked across his beard.

“What about you, what do
you do?” I asked John Deere. I was hitting below the belt and
he knew it. Whatever he did, it didn’t match what he was
wearing. The only time that boy had seen a tractor was when he was
honking at it on some side highway, pissed it was going ten miles an
hour. Not that I’d driven a tractor. But I didn’t wear a
John Deere hat, either.

He didn’t answer, and the
five of them went for the biggest table.

Other customers came in, and I
got too busy to pay much attention to anyone who wasn’t
ordering.

Rae kept looking over at me,
though. Like she wanted me to come over and join the conversation.
Like she wanted me next to her. But who was I to know what she was
thinking. She kept looking over at me, though.

Her being there, Maggie sitting
in the corner. Half of me just wanted to be at home, nursing a beer.
Instead of standing behind a bar, trying not to drink.

Jake, I swear that boy saw
everything that happened in that bar. I swear he saw everything that
happened before it even happened.

“So that’s why you’re
ditching Maggie,” he said, while he was cutting limes.

“Naw,” I said. “It’s
not like that.”

“I take it back, you’re
not being an idiot, you’re being too clever for your own good.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to lose
them both, man. You’re playing hard-to-get with Maggie, and
that’s not going to work much longer. It worked tonight,
because she’s proud as hell. You say she can’t have you,
she just wants you more. But that’s not going to last another
week, man. Next guy she wants, she’ll get. I bet she’s on
her phone right now, looking at dudes who’d bang her.”

Maggie was, indeed, on her phone,
starting absentmindedly and tapping at the screen. But what she did
was her own business.

“And this girl, the
redheaded girl,” he went on.

“Rae,” I said.

“Yeah, Rae. You’re
going to fuck it up if you don’t go for it. She’s into
you, that’s clear as shit, but a girl like her you’ve
gotta actually try for. You can’t just take her into the
backroom on your break, if you know what I’m saying.”

“I’m not trying to
fuck her,” I said.

“You should be,” Jake
said. “You should be trying to fuck her and you should be
trying to marry her. In whatever order. That’s what you should
be doing.”