Write me a Letter

my size twelves bashfully. Then she smiled at me; then my foolish old heart sang.
    ”He can be a bit of a handful, old Lew, when he’s riding the sauce express, that much is true,” I said, understating the matter considerably. When the moon was high and full and yellow around the edges and Lew donned his dancing shoes and drinking cap and was ready to howl, even six foot seven and a quarter inches and 241 pounds of V. Daniel had all he could do to drag Lew’s carcass home the following dawn, and once it was the dawn after the following dawn, relatively unscarred.
    ”Who is it you want collected, Miss Braukis?”
    ”My uncle,” she said.
    ”I had an uncle once,” I said. ”He had false teeth and his name was Clarence.”
    ”Fascinating,” she murmured. ”My uncle’s name is Theo. He’s coming from Estonia .”
    ”Even more fascinating,” I said. ”Is that the Estonia that’s just a few miles east of Kansas City ?”
    ”No,” she said, ”it is the newly independent country of Estonia , which is next to the newly independent countries of Latvia and Lithuania .”
    ”Oh, that Estonia ,” I said. ”On the Baltic Sea, I believe, not far from Leningrad , or whatever it’s called these tempestuous times. From where, I also believe, on the one or two days a year when the blizzard abates, one can see all the way across to brave little Finland.” As I’ve said before, kids, try to stay awake in school, you never know when you might have to impress a walking rhapsody.
    ”Theo is my mother’s younger brother,” she said. ”I’ve never met him but I’ve seen pictures of him and my mother talked about him a lot.” Her voice choked slightly; she looked away.
    ”Talked?”
    ”That’s really why I’m here,” she said. ”In L.A. , I mean, and not back home in Bismark, where we live.”
    ”What a strange coincidence!” I said. ”I eat your herring all the time.”
    She gave me a brief glance—of appreciation, no doubt. ”Mother was on a tour out here with some of her girlfriends, and, of course, also to meet her brother. She suffered a stroke two days ago. One of her friends got in touch with me, and I flew right out.”
    ”Bad?” I asked inanely, as if there was any such thing as a good stroke, medically speaking.
    ”Bad. She’s alive, but that’s about it, she’s still unconscious.”
    ”Ah, hell,” I said. ”I’m sorry.” I thought about telling her about my mom, who had Alzheimer’s and who was in a home in the hills out past Glendale, but I figured one mom at a time was enough for her to worry about; it was more than enough for me.
    ”How can I help?”
    She sighed. ”It’s all such a mess. I don’t know what to do. She was supposed to meet Theo at the airport, and then she was going to rent a car and drive him up north to some place near Lafayette, do you know where that is?”
    ”I do,” I said. ”It’s not far from Walnut Creek, which is not far from Oakland, which used to have a football team, which is not far from the home of a banana-fingered, no-hit baseball team, San Francisco. But why Lafayette ?”
    ”That’s where my uncle Teddy lives,” she said. ”My mother’s other brother.”
    ”Why doesn’t Uncle Teddy meet Uncle Theo?” I said. ”Because Uncle Teddy is on a home kidney dialysis machine,” she said. ”He’s waiting for a transplant but until then he has to wash his blood or whatever it is every day, which takes hours.”
    ”Gotcha,” I said, beginning to think I’d fallen into a particularly melodramatic episode of ” General Hospital .”
    ”So Mr. Lewellen suggested you,” she said in her husky voice.
    ”And how do you know him?”
    ”I don’t, really,” she said, ”but he and mother went to the same college. I think they were sweet on each other because they stayed in touch and still send each other Valentine’s cards.”
    ”Ahhhhh,” I said. I checked my watch. ”Excuse me a sec, I have to make a quick call.”
    I dialed the number of the courier service I always used. When the girl at the other end answered, I asked her if George was in.
    ”Just got back,” the dispatcher said.
    ”Tell him Vic says make it four o’clock, not three, would you please, sweetheart?”
    ”Consider it done, honey,” she said.
    I rang off. ”Sorry about that. Now, Miss Braukis, I take it that as Uncle Teddy can’t meet Uncle Theo, and you naturally want to stay near your mother, and there’s no other family available, you would like