Write me a Letter

just didn’t know—and there’s one to start you off—thespians had to prepare anything, except their wigs. I thought all you did was bring up the footlights and they immediately started emoting.
    After a while Willing Boy crossed over to us and muttered tensely, ”OK. Ready. Let’s get it on. I’m up for it.” Sara gazed up at him lovingly. I just gazed up at him.
    ”There’s the phone, Marlon,” I said.
    He picked it up, dialed, and then unleashed a torrent of French, which, after he’d hung up again, he roughly translated as, ”Madame? Congratulations! It’s Provigo here, Provigo, your friendly family grocers? You’ve just won a free, ten-pound, glazed Virginia ham for your Easter dinner! No, madame, you do not have to enter any competition, you do not have to purchase any goods from any of our thirty-two retail outlets in the province of Quebec; all you have to do is make sure someone’s home when our delivery van passes your door. Of course you will have to heat it up, heh-heh, and we don’t supply the sweet potatoes to go with it.... Really? This is the first you’ve heard of it? Madame, we’ve been doing it for years, twenty-five glazed Virginia hams at Easter, twenty-five free-range turkeys at Thanksgiving, and then of course the same number of geese, or turkeys, your choice, and there’s always plenty of choice at Provigo, for Noel.... Well, how we do it is, and I’m not supposed to really tell you this, it’s my daughter Debbie, she’s almost four already, she does it, she just points to numbers at random on different pages of the phone book, and of course I have to check them after to make sure none of the winners works for Provigo or has any family member who does.... You don’t? Good!
    ”Something else I always do, I always give the winners a call to see if they are still at the same address ’cause I’d hate for one of our vans to get out there and find you’ve moved recently because people often keep the same phone number when they move, but not the same address.... heh-heh, that would be tricky, wouldn’t it...”
    Here Marlon had covered up the receiver briefly and whispered frantically, ”Pen! Pen!”
    ”You can sign autographs later, you ham, you,” I whispered back. I handed him a pen.
    ”St. Michel, eight five five, um hum, that’s what we have... just below Beaubien, the house with the white fence and there’s only the one bell, fine. And your name? Mrs. François Leduc. Would tomorrow afternoon suit you? Anytime between two and five, swell, Mrs. Leduc, we’ll be there... and thank you, Mrs. Leduc. Congratulations again. Bye-bye.”
    Marlon hung up and fell back on the bed, utterly drained by his labors. Ham is right, I thought. Actors—give them one simple call to make and they not only have to spend twenty minutes preparing but they have to go to a health farm afterward to recover.
    ”You would’ve really been in the shit if she was Jewish,” the twerp said, stroking Marlon’s fevered brow in a motherly fashion.
    ”I happen to know many Jews do eat ham,” I said. ”Only they call it zebra. Anyway, well done, Marlon, although I did think it was a mite niggardly of you not to throw in a few spuds.”
    ”Thanks, thanks,” Marlon managed to gasp. ”No flowers, please. Telegrams, OK.”
    ”Now what?” Sara asked.
    ”As soon as Sir Marlon has recovered,” I said, ”from giving the definitive performance of a Provigo clerk, we might just go take a look at eight five five Rue St. Michel and see what we can see.” I opened up the Montreal map I’d retrieved from the car after breakfast and spread it open, then put my glasses on so I could read the damn thing.
    ”There’s Beaubien,” Sara said after a minute, jabbing at the map with one finger. ”And there’s St. Michel.”
    ”Can you get us there, Marlon?” I said.
    ”Can I act?” he said. ”Easy. We’ll take like Sherbrooke over, then turn left and then turn right.”
    ”Well, mush, you huskies,” I said. They went next door for their coats, I got my parka out of the cupboard and we went downstairs to the underground parking lot, climbed in the Ford, and mushed, Marlon not only navigating and translating but providing a running commentary as we did so. It was cold in downtown Montreal , and snow lay unevenly round about, on lawns, in trees, on roofs, on parked cars and fire hydrants. It might have been April and thus spring for some, but not yet for Montrealites.
    ” Sherbrooke ,