Dear Untiring,
This is only my second letter, but already I feel I’ve said my share. You ask for more of me—more of what? After giving my name and a few half-lies I’m reduced to crumbs. Though if you insist, I suppose I’ll examine one.
Not so long ago I was trying on glasses at the optician’s, but after the first pair of frames I could make nothing of the rest. Each one was simply something other than the one before it. A more decisive method, I thought, would have been to try on a pair, take some notes, and then come back the following day to try one more, till you had exhausted all your options, all the while hoping the notes—of doubtful use to begin with—would one day be made obsolete when at last you put on a pair beyond comparison and knew at a glance that you had found your fated specs.
But that’s not a hope to believe in and it’s no way to live. I muddled on in the regular fashion, wondering without letup if the one pair only looked too bold because the last was too tired, the one too wide or the last too narrow. In the end I half-doubted my choice. So when the optician stood back and ordained that a smaller size of the same frames would suit me even better, I barely wavered a wink before giving myself over to his idea. His firmness freed me, so I felt, from my bewilderment. More freeing still was the solacing thought that I was then loosening up and not making such a slog out of trying to fit myself out for the world. I’d unwound myself a turn: I’d done well.
A couple weeks later the frames had come in—too small.
Another crumb, and an older one:
The airport had just the one terminal, the one four-square parking lot, the one gull glowering at me from the concrete base of a lamppost. My flight had gotten in that morning, and I’d already made my way to town to check into our room and try and catch up on a little sleep—try some eggs instead. The plan had been to take the bus back to the airport far sooner than I needed to, so as to leave nothing to chance. In the end I took an even earlier one. The gull soon left.
Intermission.
According to the arrivals board, the flight I wanted would follow a half-hour break. I paced around outside, occasionally looking up at the low sky or crumpling my face into a fine gust of wind. There would be no question which flight was hers.
So when I could just make out the roar of the plane—and when I spotted it in the distance—only a plane…
How could she be in it? I felt a build-up as to a laugh. I nearly burst with it.
Yours veeringly,
Mitchell Cooper