Write me a Letter

beer, then I called the twerp.
    The twerp was in. Not only in but hovering over the phone; she answered it almost before it started ringing. ”Hello?” she said eagerly.
    ”Hello yourself!” I said warmly. ”Waiting for a call, were we? From anyone special?”
    ”Oh shut up,” she said.
    ”How are we this fine afternoon?”
    ”Bored out of my skull,” she said. ‘And you’re not helping.”
    ”What?” I exclaimed. ‘Are we not working? Are we not laboring over some sonnet writ in the Italian mode? Or leafing busily through our rhyming dictionary trying to find the perfect rhyme for pepperoni pizza? What is it, dear, writer’s cramp?”
    ”No,” she said. ”And it’s block, stoopid, not cramp.”
    ”Pardon me ever so,” I said. ”I knew it was writer’s something. I thought it might be knee. Anyhow, as you’re not doing anything, how about meeting me at the office in a half-hour or so, I just might be able to put you out of your misery, for a while, at least.”
    ”I’ll think about it,” she mumbled, then hung up. I did likewise. She’d show up, all right, like spring in springtime, like a crowd at a disaster, she was probably already circling over my office like a vulture waiting to dive on some hapless baby gazelle. And why not? Even doing simple chores for me must be more fun than scribbling odes in her bedroom; anything must be more fun, even eating beets.
    Sure enough, she was sitting on the bench outside Mr. Amoyan’s shoe repair establishment when I turned in and parked in front of the office. Mr. Amoyan was beside her, taking a breather and casting his experienced and appreciative Armenian eye on everything feminine that passed; his store was next to the laundromat that was next to Mrs. Morales’ Taco-Burger counter joint. For some obscure adolescent reason Sara professed not to notice me although I both waved and called out ”Yoo-hoo” as I passed.
    I opened up. I looked up William Gince in the phone book; there was no entry for him. Nobody was in the L.A. phone book, I’m surprised they keep putting one out. After a while, in her own good time, the twerp meandered over and came slouching in, then sat on a corner of my desk, then gave my locks a tousle, two things she knew got my goat. ”What’s up, Prof?”
    ‘A small job,” I said. ”Just a trifle. I’d do it myself but you know how I like to give work to the needy and unemployed, and try and find a better definition of a poet than that.”
    ”Doing what?”
    ”What I tell you,” I said, ”for once, and without any of your brilliant improvising, either.”
    ”So tell,” she said. ”What am I, a mind reader?”
    ”No, but you’re curly as a little lamb today,” I said, running my hand over her head for a change. She’d had all her hair cut off a while back, in the line of duty, I must admit, and it had grown back in its natural color, Guinea pig white, in a tangle of tight curls. It didn’t look that bad, actually, and anything was better than the way her hair shrieked during her long, tedious years of punkness. As for the rest of her, she was about five foot high on tiptoes, skinny as a billiard cue, with about the same number of curves, and tough as dried beef jerky. Her eyes were bright blue and cheeky, her mouth small, with an ironic twist at one corner. She had the usual number of ears, noses, teeth, and limbs, the latter of which were attired in tight short-shorts and a pair of those Spanish rope-soled sandals, with red laces that came up and tied behind the ankles. Over a T-shirt that was clean, all in one piece, and that didn’t say anything insulting, unlike the old days, she wore a man’s zip-up suede jacket, borrowed without a single doubt from Willing Boy’s cupboard. In case anyone from Gentleman’s Quarterly is interested, I was attired in my usual workday outfit of cream cords, a Hawaiian short-sleeved shirt not altogether lacking in striking pigmentation, socks that matched, and brown moccasins that did likewise.
    ”We’re looking for a skip,” I said. ”Which is someone who has skipped, and I don’t mean rope, I mean town.” She raised her eyes heavenward for some reason. Seeking the poetic muse, no doubt.
    ”He could be anywhere,” I said. ”Narrowing that down, he could be far away or he could be not far away, but still not here.”
    ”That’s a big help,” Sara said.
    ”If he isn’t that far away,” I went on patiently, ”I don’t want to frighten him into taking