Write me a Letter

politely, I inquired if I could have a word with her husband, if he was back from wherever it was he hadn’t been. As soon as he was on the line, I said, ”I just called to tell you I’m never going to one of your movies again.”
    ”Oh come on, my main man,” he said. ”What would you do if someday someone said to you, ‘Your country needs you, so put up or shut up?’ ”
    ”I’d probably put up,” I said, ”but I’m still never going to one of your rotten films ever again. Do you know what you got me into?”
    ”Yes, I do,” he said. ‘And I’m sorry, Vic, especially about your good buddy.”
    ”Me too,” I said. ”But how did you find out about it all?”
    ”Had a phone call.”
    ”Gee, wonder who it was from. Well, let me be telling you this, Mr. Patriot. I’ve booked an ambulance airplane for Benny this weekend to bring him down here if the doc is saying it’s OK, you are in for half. You are also in for daily deliveries from the delicatessen of his choice when he does get here.”
    ”Anything else?” he inquired mildly.
    ”I’ll let you know,” I said. ”That blabbermouth who phoned you with all the latest news, I don’t suppose you know where I can phone her.”
    ”No idea,” he said.
    ”Good,” I said. ”I never want to see her or talk to her again. Oh, by the way, Lew, if you’ve got Michelle Pfeiffer in your rotten film, I’ll think about it. Farewell forever. Love to your wife.” I hung up forcibly. Well, you have to be forceful with movie producers, otherwise they’ll steamroller all over you. Then I bestirred myself all the way to Mom’s closet, where she stored all her useful some-rainy-day you-never-know items. Such as used paper bags in assorted sizes, old wrapping paper, Scotch tape rolls with only a couple of inches left (and you could only get at those if you broke a fingernail), an assortment of empty boxes of various sizes, used Christmas cards, ditto Easter, ditto Mother’s Day, a one-glove set of gloves, a string of plastic beads without the string, need I go on? Ah, women! Would that we could fall into their arms without falling into their hands, or something like that.
    I do not mean to suggest that we men do not have a shelf in our own bedroom closets where we store our rainy-day bits and pieces, our flotsams and jetsams from other tides and times. However, ours do tend to be either of obvious value or undoubted practicality, such as my rubber band collection, my old Gil Hodges first baseman’s mitt, an almost intact five-thousand-piece ”Fishermen Unloading Their Catch” jigsaw puzzle, and several Scandinavian publications of an uplifting nature, to name but a few at random.
    Anyway, Mom’s one-glove set of gloves gave me an idea: gloves. So before I went any further, I squeezed my digits into a pair of leftover washing-up ones. Then I extricated the Scotch tape, the string and some brown wrapping paper from the jumble, then exchanged the brown wrapping paper for Christmas wrapping paper as it seemed more fitting. I emptied the money belt of its contents, which turned out to be one list and $7,545.00. I emptied the shoe box of its contents, which turned out to be one snuff box, I guessed, silver; one set Eisenhower commemorative dollars, mint; one cameo brooch; one unrecognizable pointed thing, mayhap a jeweled hatpin and mayhap not; and one pearl-handled ladies’ two-shot .22-caliber derringer. Plus my surprise gift from Mr. Elkins. It was a small—say, a foot by a foot and a half—needlepoint portraying an airport at night, much as a child might see it—there were rays of light done in yellow wool beaming out from the windows of the control tower, an old-fashioned biplane taking off, the pilot waving, and in one corner an owl with orange eyes on a post and in the other a bunny rabbit sleeping under a bush. If you want to see it, drop by the office, it’s hung where that outdated calendar of Armenian lovelies Mr. Amoyan had given me used to hang.
    I wrapped up the right amounts with the correct artifacts, then tied them and sticky-taped them. Then addressed them clearly, using the street addresses provided by Mr. Elkins. He hadn’t provided any names, and I couldn’t remember them all, nor had I remembered to bring a list of the names with me, so I packed them all into the shoe box, where they just fitted snugly, and addressed that to Katy, whose last name I did remember—Goode—and wrapped that most securely. Then I unwrapped it, went