Write me a Letter

coffee in a used paper cup.”
    Fran accepted the pretty compliment gracefully, checking with one hand the back of her recently permed coiffure. If the younger generation felt suitably abashed, they hid it well. I remembered that I needed to know if Will had a passport; I asked him casually and he said he did. I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to know that might be useful in the future, so I then asked him if, from his side of it, there were any details we hadn’t covered. Again, I did so in a casual fashion as Mrs. Leduc was supposed to be ignorant of her sweetheart’s latest escapade, and we three had been introduced to her as acquaintances from out west who had amazingly run into each other at the game. If she had any suspicions, she kept them to herself.
    Will thought we’d pretty much covered everything. In that case, I said, could Sara kindly use their phone to make us airline reservations as unfortunately business was calling and we would have to tear ourselves away from the joys of Canada in April and their hospitality almost immediately. ”Help yourself,” said Will. ”It’s in the hall.”
    ”I’ll do it,” Marlon said quickly, untangling his long legs and getting to his feet. ”As soon as possible, right?”
    ”Right,” I said. He left. I wondered vaguely why Willing Boy had volunteered as I had noticed he was deeply inclined to let girls do the chores for him, and did they ever. Whether this is a character trait of the very handsome, or the actor, or both, I am not in a position to state from personal experience.
    We made small talk until he returned—about Canada , about Canadian weather, about California , about Californian weather. Mrs. Leduc said she’d met Will (who she called William, by the way) in Cleveland when she was in her final year of nursing college, it was so many years ago she shuddered to think about it. William was an ambulance driver then, she said, and the cutest little thing you ever saw in that cap he had that was too big for him. The whereabouts of a Mr. Leduc was not mentioned.
    ”Aw, Jeez, Fran,” Will said happily.
    Marlon returned just after Fran told us about winning the ham. Really! we said. Imagine that!
    ”It’s all set,” he reported. ”The flight leaves at two-fifteen, plenty of time to go back to the hotel and make it to Dorval . With the time change in our favor, that means L.A. by eight-thirty this very night.” He made a small bow.
    Soon after, we made our reluctant good-byes, offered our profuse thanks, got invited back anytime, then began donning our snow gear again in the front hall. Will wrapped his Canadiens scarf around my neck as a farewell present. I still have it, I ran across it the other day on the top shelf of the clothes’ cupboard, wrapped around a shoe box hidden from Mom in which I keep my junior G-man disguise kit, such as it was. I know she wasn’t living with me anymore but so what, you don’t stop hiding things from people just because they aren’t around any longer. They both waved us good-bye from the porch. I detoured into the next yard, jammed the head back on the snowman, sneakily made a snowball, and let it fly at the back of Sara’s toque, missing it by a whisker. By the time she had whirled around I was looking innocently up into the clouds, whistling aimlessly.
    The fight began in le metro, continued in the lobby of the hotel, in the elevator and down the hall to our rooms, and was still going on twenty minutes later when we met up again downstairs, luggage all packed and ready to go. Now, as in the envelope given me by Will there resided the tidy sum of $2,500 in used U.S. hundreds, and I was not about to inform the kids of this, some may think the fight just referred to was one between me and my ever-watchful conscience. This was not the case. Some others might surmise that the spat in question was the one that occurred while checking out, between me and le desk clerk over a ”trifling error” in the bill, a thousand regrets, monsieur. This was not the case, either, this was but a sideshow, a minor engagement, while the real battle raged on between George and Sara.
    George started it all by putting on his most boyish and guileless look and then saying how sorry he was he couldn’t take the same plane as us but he’d promised his mom he’d visit her while he was in Canada.
    ”Why can’t Mom see both of us at the same time?” Sara responded. ”She losing her vision all of a sudden?”
    ”Aw,