Write me a Letter

Parton, autumn leaves, and bygone days, but I didn’t. Evonne, I didn’t even think of it.
    When I had all the legitimate details I thought I might need from her jotted down safely in my memo pad (courtesy M. Martel, Stationers), I escorted her to the door. She said she’d call later in the week if there was any change of plan. I said she could call anyway, just to say hello, merely to hear a friendly voice, if she wanted. She declined my offer to chase up or call a cab for her, saying she had some shopping to do before returning to the hospital. She held out one dainty hand. I took it gingerly in my big mitt. She laid her other hand atop mine as gently as a goosedown feather settling on black velvet, gave me her tremulous smile again, and then she was gone.
    I went back inside.
    The office looked shabby suddenly... but then it always did.
    I looked at the six hundred dollars in traveler’s checks she’d signed over to me.
    I looked at the chair in which she had so briefly reposed. I thought I could detect an elusive, lingering trace of her perfume still in the air. What an enchanting woman, to put it mildly, what a vision of incredible loveliness. And she was tall, too, of course. Great beauty of person requires that one should be tall, shorties can’t cut it, Aristotle wrote, although maybe not in those exact words. Would I ever see her again? Who knew what tricks impish Fate had yet in store up his tattered sleeve for V (for Victor) Daniel.
    I had but one slight twinge of unease, of regret—too bad she was so full of shit.

2

    Don’t get me wrong.
    I didn’t suspect Ruth Braukis of being the biggest liar since the Big Bad Wolf merely because she was stunningly beautiful, although lesser males might be so inclined. That sort of juvenile, chauvinistic prejudice I eradicated from my character eons ago—to be precise, last Tuesday morning just before lunch. Believe me, I had other reasons for my suspicions.
    Lew Lewellen was a film producer. Was it likely a film producer would send Valentine’s cards to anyone except himself, let alone a college sweetheart from thirty years ago? And I could have been wrong but didn’t I vaguely remember Lew’s wife telling me once Lew had never even finished high school let alone got into a university. And all that stuff about uncles and Estonia and kidney machines, really. I may be gullible, especially when violet eyes are batting my way, but even I have my limits.
    First thing I did of course was to call up the Lewellens. A pretty senorita I’d seen several times at Lew’s but whose name I couldn’t recall answered, and after I’d said it was me, she said the Lewellens were away for the weekend and could she take a message. I said, ”No, gracias,” and hung up.
    Away for the weekend, eh? A likely story. No doubt Mrs. Lewellen had so instructed her minion to say if I called as she was too nice to lie to me directly. And was Monday, which day it was, a part of the weekend anyway? Not even in Beverly Hills it wasn’t. So what was going on? How and why were my old friends the Lew Lewellens involved? Curious, eh, amigos?
    I called the Fairfax Hotel; there was no one by the name of Ruth or June Braukis registered. Well, conceivably Ruth was staying in her mom’s room and conceivably mom had a girlfriend roommate as double rooms are cheaper than two single rooms and conceivably the room was registered in her mom’s girlfriend’s name, if you are still conceivably with me, so then I called Kaiser, and guess what, no Mummy there, either.
    Then I called up Uncle Teddy in Lafayette or thereabouts. No answer. Then, just to see if there was any truth at all in Ruth’s tissue of fibs, I phoned TWA. Lo and behold there was a flight arriving daily from New York at 3:44 p.m., which was some small progress, although toward what, who knew? Then, just for a giggle, I took down my Reader’s Digest World Atlas from the small shelf of reference books that hung a mite lopsidedly between the Armenian beauties and the fire extinguisher to see if there still was an Estonia . There was, south across the icy floes from Helsinki .
    I looked fondly at the loving dedication inside the front cover of the atlas: ”God knows where ya came from. Maybe this’ll help ya figure out where you’re goin’. Luv, Sara. XXX.”
    Luv, Sara. What a twerp. Sara was a punk poetess I helped out once in a while, God knows why, by giving her some easy chore to do and then giving her big bucks for doing