Day 9: An Old Fashioned Letter

Another story that wouldn't let me go.  I hesitated to start it.  I was afraid I wouldn't get it right.  I am afraid that it does not stand on its own.  Maybe it doesn't.  Oh well.

(By the way, I have to mention, if only in passing, this excellent article on creativity.)

And oh, yes, the public time stamp on this post is utter fiction.  It's 5:20am on the 10th when I post the final form of this story.

Enjoy.

An Old Fashioned Letter

My Dear Feline, K.,

I could not face the pile of work on my desk, and I wanted to write a proper letter, full of things that are true.  So I went out for a walk to order my thoughts.  It is so much cooler in the evening, almost pleasant.  I pass under the windows of my colleagues, I see apartments I have visited, although some I know only by the ugliness of their curtains.  I'm sorry, I'll try to be kind as well as true.

This is a very quiet place at night, aside from the whirr of air conditioning--an unfortunate luxury, I think. The reactors have been up and running for only a couple of months.

Coming around the corner of J Block I almost tripped over a forgotten tricycle. Rebecca and Ilya must be relaxing. You'll remember when you left last month that they seemed mortified to be having a second child, and embarrassed that they already have a three-year-old.

No one here is completely comfortable enjoying what we have. It all feels so provisional. Perhaps we even feel guilty.

Your friends in the Army are busy. Trucks going in and out every morning. I spoke to one of them, a Lt. Chahine. Friendly but distant. I suppose I am an alien to him, too.

We have at last had some good results recreating the PTFE process this week, which if they prove out will be an enormous help to people up at Rocky Flats. Reactors are an awfully messy business.

The mountains are very beautiful in the moonlight. Even at this distance I can see the orange glimmers of the settlements. Those faraway lights make me sad, although I'm not sure if that's nostalgia or fear at the heart of that sadness.

So now I've made it to the top of a second page. Normally I would have just typed this up and sent it via private blip when there was time, but that's scheduled to be down for the next few days (thank you, Lt. Cahine, for the information...are you the cause of the outage, as well?) and besides, what I want to say deserves, I think, a very old fashioned letter. If only I'd had time to learn to write in cursive! But there are only so many Lost Arts one can retrieve at once.

I can't stop thinking about you. Sometimes it's your fingers, which are long and capable and childishly soft. Sometimes it is your hair, or that is, the way you unconsciously tuck it behind your ear when you're trying to explain something, such as how it is even possible for air to move uphill (which is anabatic, right?). There are three fine lines at the corner of each of your eyes, which I don't think you want to hear about, but for my part I love them.

In fact, I love you. I know it's terribly unsubtle of me to blurt it out like that, or even to write it so plainly on this translucent and noisy onionskin parchment which I will shortly, anachronistically, fold up and slip into an envelope. But I want to expose myself to you, give up my secrets, lay myself bare before your eyes.

You hide yourself behind words and an imperturbable affect, whether you're speaking about an unexpected, secretive, and dangerous mission, or the weather. (Which in your case, might be the same thing.) You write beautiful letters. You are wry and clever and elegant. Your smile, rare and precious, promises that you understand things exactly as I do.

Your colleague has now embarrassed himself. He supposes that he's also embarrassed the recipient of this letter. He apologizes profoundly if this supposition is true.

When do you come back? I don't want to sound too much like your teenaged lover, but then again, why not? Everybody has spent the last quarter century living in fear, often with good reason. But the planet, and our local patch thereof, both of them seem to be entering a time of relative calm, perhaps even renewal. Can I at last allow myself a bit of hope?

We have a lot to talk about. I know you are very keen on boundaries. Perhaps you are not ready to cross this one. But, you see, hope prompts me. I hope that I am not mistaken.

It is late, and I must finish writing this before my courier departs. I hope (there's that word again) that he will not open it along the way, although I am sure that it would furnish him with a good laugh.

In just a few seconds I will fold this up, seal it, and hand it to the strange but trustworthy Lt. Chahine.

Yours in affection and, yes, hope,

Paul

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein