Pen Pal

5

3

Dear Kayla,

You didn’t respond to my last letter, which I understand, because you think we’ve never met. You’re wrong. I could bore you with the details, but for now just trust that I know you.

In every way one person can know another, I know you.

I know the sight, sound, taste, and smell of you.

I know your darkest darks and your lightest lights.

I know your dreams, your nightmares, and every secret you’ve ever kept hidden, all those nameless desires you never admitted even to yourself.

I know the shape of your soul.

I know your hands tremble as you read these words, and your heart beats as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. I know you want to tear this letter up, and I also know you won’t.

How I need to touch you. How I need to hear your voice. I can’t, of course, because I’m here and you’re there, but the distance doesn’t make the longing go away.

I can still taste your skin.

Dante

4

I

stand next to the kitchen window with the letter in my hands and read it again in the gray afternoon light. Then again. Then once more, because it’s so bizarre, my brain refuses to come up with any plausible explanations for it.

Probably because there aren’t any.

The overhead lights flicker back on, illuminating the room.

Throwing my arms in the air, I say to the ceiling, “I wish you’d done that when Mr. Everything’s Great Eddie was here!”

Then I fold the letter, put it back into its envelope, set it on the table, and pour myself a glass of red wine. I gulp it down, deciding on impulse that I need to make sure the house is secure. I go from room to room, checking window latches and door locks until I’m satisfied that I’m locked in tight.

After that’s done, I sit down at the kitchen table and make a list. I always think best with a pen in my hand.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS

· Someone is f*****g with you.

I immediately cross that out, because obviously someone is f*****g with me. The question is why? And why now?

· This Dante person saw the article in the newspaper about the accident

· He smells money

· He’s trying to pull a lonely-widow scam

As soon as I write that down, I think I’ve nailed it.

He’s in prison, after all. To get there, he had to do something bad. So the man has what could be politely called compromised morals. He probably trolls the obituary section of the newspapers and sends these letters out to new widows all over the place, hoping one of them will take the bait and write him back so he can strike up a relationship and seduce her into sending him large sums of cash.

But the letter is too weird to be scam bait. And too specific. He should’ve just said he was a lonely guy looking for a pen pal, not that he could still taste my skin.

Or that he knows the shape of my soul.

What does that even mean, anyway? What does any of it mean?

“Nothing,” I mutter, glaring at the envelope. “It’s a fraud.”

I specifically don’t address the mystery of how a letter arrived on my kitchen table without me knowing how it got there—again—because I suspect I’m having more lapses in memory and brought it in from the mailbox myself.

I take a little consolation in the fact that the letter from the mysterious Dante had no overtones of hostility. Admittedly creepy with all the “I know you” business, at least he isn’t threatening me harm.

Though I suppose he wouldn’t be able to. I think I read somewhere that prison correspondence is monitored. He’d probably get in trouble if he tried to send a violent threat through the mail.

Not that he’d have a reason to send a threat. Michael didn’t have any enemies, and neither do I. We’re your average middle-class married couple, both overworked and overtired so our idea of fun is snuggling together on the sofa to watch a movie on Friday nights.

Was. Our idea of fun was watching a movie together.

We’ll never do that again.

The sudden tightness in my chest makes it impossible to breathe. Dizzy, I rest my head on my forearms and listen to the rain tapping against the windows like a thousand fingernails.

“He’s just a jerk felon who’s trying to prey on a vulnerable woman,” I tell the tabletop.

It doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it makes me feel worse.

Who does this guy think he is, sending me this crap?

Whoever he is, he clearly has mental problems.

I sit up abruptly. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s not trying to run a scam on me at all.

Maybe the mysterious Dante is simply out of his mind.

I’m not sure which I feel more: empathy or trepidation. I mean, if the poor guy is only locked up because he’s got some kind of mental illness that wasn’t diagnosed and he should really be medicated, not incarcerated, that’s one thing.

On the other hand, he did something to land himself in prison. What if it was something violent?

He could be dangerous.

I remove the letter from the envelope and read it again. An odd impulse makes me lift it to my nose and sniff.

A faint whiff of cedar and wood smoke fills my nostrils. And something else, earthy and musky, like the scent of a man.

Or an animal.

The thought unsettles me. I fold the letter quickly and slide it back into the envelope, then take it upstairs to my bedroom and stuff it in the back of my underwear drawer.

Then I go back downstairs, log on to my computer, and do a search for Seattle roofers.

When the doorbell rings two days later, I’m in the laundry room, folding towels. I head to the front door, hoping an actual person will be there this time when I open it.

There is.

And he’s everything sweet, smiling Eddie is not.