Greg pushed in the temperamental drawer slowly. How many years had passed since that caramel sauce fell on the metal and gummed it up? Lifting the draw slightly over the bump allowed it to fully close.
Fifteen years, said the calendar. Fifteen years.
In a fit of disappointment and stale rage he had once thrown that old calendar away. But before taking the whole thing out to the alleyway and into the dumpster, he had dug it out. Luckily he hadn’t been eating much during those days so there was little else in the garbage other than papers. Sheets and sheets of papers with stories on them that wouldn’t allow him to sleep until they came out.
Turning away from the midmorning sunlight that always hit his desk in the wrong spot, producing a glare off the miniature sundial just enough to directly hit him in the right eye, a vague memory of his editor visiting him during that time and …did he take papers out of the garbage? Greg leaned back into the shadows of his study and tried to pull those days out of his foggy brain. Those days of the engagement announcement and subsequent in party with the neighborhood, the two of them coming home from their honeymoon he had tried to forget by wading directly into his sadness and setting up a permanent tent. Greg scoffed at the analogy. Like Terah who settled in Haran. Impossible the things he could remember from his early studies of the Torah. Things he never remembered when he was thirty or forty and trying to make an impression on the Rabbi.
Greg doodled out Terah onto the large paper pad he kept underneath his computer. To make notes on as he wrote. Next to it he wrote out the name of his agent from fifteen years ago, tapping his pen against the white until the last name appeared like magic: Harold. John Harold. Yes, he always thought it odd the man had a first name as a sur name. A sure sign of Anglican heritage.
Sitting back upright, Greg blinked the sunlight out of his eye and clicked on the computer screen. The strange box that somehow stored everything and allowed him to make videos while shopping simultaneously whirred to life, then cranked and sighed until it finally stabilized into breathing heavily like an obese man trying to run a marathon. It took some minutes before the digital piece of white paper appear, ready to be typed on by digital ink.
Like a magic invitation to procrastinate, the blue door across the street and to the right opened. Greg smiled. He knew what time it was without even looking at the clock: 10am. Time for her walk.
At only five feet, three inches tall Sojourner was only a little over half the length of her ten-foot front door. From the third story in his apartment she always looked like a miniature doll. A vivacious miniature doll who captured his heart from the first day he met her. He had been so grumpy at the knock on his door that kept coming every few minutes despite him trying to ignore it. He had been writing his third novel that morning, one that placed him solidly on the best-sellers list. His novels all centered on crime suspense fiction. The ones published, at least. Greg glanced at the seven binders on the middle shelf of his study. The books he was never brave enough to publish. The blue one was about Sojourner. Their first meeting was in there.
For the first time in years he tipped the binder out of the shelf and brought it to his lap. Outside the window on the street the woman he had hoped to marry was chatting with a neighbor. Probably about their flowers they each grew on their windowsills. He had overheard Sojourner saying she grew tomatoes and peppers on her inner patio the other day which mysteriously drew him to Staichowski’s where he bought ripe, red hothouse tomatoes and tried to envision they were hers as he ate them. But they had little taste, which ruined the entire exercise. He was quite certain tomatoes grown by Sojourner would burst with flavor.
Greg snapped the memory out of his mind and turned back to the binder. There is was. Ten pages in.
She stood rim-rod straight with a genuine smile on her face despite what looked like a heavy mail bag and what he considered shoes with too large of a heel to be comfortable. The glow of her smile was what stopped him from saying the next words out of his mouth which might or might not have included some choice words his father said should never be spoken in front of a lady. And she was all lady.
The next thing he noticed was her smooth, dark skin that showed no signs of age. She could have been twenty-five. Or she could have been forty. He hoped she was closer to forty, as noticing so much about a twenty-five year old would make him feel as though he could no longer disparage Ken who was always driving around in his convertible with someone much too young for him.
“Good morning,” she said, still holding out a fat, brown envelope.
Her voice was smoother than her skin and held a slight accent that was foreign to this northeast neighborhood of Philadelphia.
“Good morning,” he managed to answer back after swallowing to wet his throat. “Where’s Tom?”
“Tom is out with his wife sick. They gave him some leave, which I’m hoping is paid leave,” she said, the last part spoken quietly like a dream. “This envelope looked important so I wanted to place it into your hands. Tom told me you’re a writer and that anything that looked like it was your book coming to you for editing that I should give directly to you in case it rained or snowed or anything.”
Greg squinted at the blue sky.
“It doesn’t look like rain, but I didn’t want to take the risk,” she explained hurriedly, a small crease appearing on her forehead.
“What’s your name?” he asked, taking the envelope.
“Sojourner.”
“Are you here only temporarily, Sojourner?” he asked, leaning his weight against the doorframe. An impulsive, and imprudent, invitation to have tea with him on his ack patio, threatened to be spoken aloud. He hoped leaning into the exposed nail in the doorframe would keep him from saying things that could give her the wrong impression. Five years after his divorce he was rather rusty on how to smooth talk to a woman.
“I hope not, sir,” she said, not understanding his play on her name. “Though I do hope Tom comes back to this route. I don’t mean to say that I don’t. I just hope that I’m not temporarily working here.”
Her eyes darted to the left as she tried to cover any tracks of misunderstanding in her words.
“Well,” Greg said, “I’m sure they’ll hire a good worker like you. If you need a hand in that process, let me know. I’m friends with your boss’s boss.”
Her dark eyes sparkled like polished onyx at those words. The effect was so devastating to his male hormones that he was forced to hold the envelope more directly in front of him to avoid a hint of embrassement.
“I appreciate that sir.”
“Greg,” he said, his hormone now under control. Like a grown man.
“Greg,” she repeated, the name rolling off her tongue like caramel.
Greg nodded sharply to stop any more thoughts about her tongue and stood up straight.
“Do you like reading?” he asked, barreling on when she nodded. “Well, I have quite the library of books. If ever you want one, feel free to knock and ask me for one. You can come with a sister or friend, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression with me inviting you in.”
That last part he added quickly when her eyes narrowed slightly.
“Well, thank you kindly, Mr. Greg. I best be going on now. Got more mail to deliver,” she said with a smile and a pat on her USPS canvas bag.
Greg nodded his good-bye, then shut the door before giving into his desire to watch her walk down his five steps. For all he knew Mrs. Pappadousky was watching and already forming a story in her head about him talking so long with the new post girl.
Greg shut the binder and sighed. Today was the day he wrote his yearly love letter to Sojourner, who despite his bland attempt to woo her through books, ended up marrying Patrick across the street nine months later. Patrick had had more guts than he, uncaring if the neighborhood would accept such a mixed couple, and his dare paid off. They were still there, in the same house, where Greg watched them grow in love and family for the past fifteen years.
Fifteen years.