Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  So maybe that discomfort—that risk of confrontation—is worth it.

  I pitch my trash and snag another napkin, cleaning up more before I take my phone from my bag. Then I snap a few pictures, all from Joe’s storefront. The P from pizza, the L and the A from the Italian ice sign, the Y from the open 7 days. I wait until my phone’s clock turns from 4:59 to 5:00, and then I attach all four of the pictures in a message to Reid.

  I type a single question mark, press send, and wait.

  Within a few minutes my phone rings, and I can’t help but smile, knowing it’s him even without looking at the screen. I press the tab on my headphones, hoping my cheery “Hiya” chases away any of the lingering heaviness from our last conversation.

  “So,” he says, and from that one syllable I realize that I’ve missed his voice. “You couldn’t find a question mark on a sign?”

  My smile widens. It’s worth it. “Damn. You got me.”

  There’s a small silence during which I hope Reid is smiling, too, though not at anyone in his immediate proximity, since I also realize that I’d feel more than a little jealous if someone else got to see the full force of a smile I caused. It can’t be good, some of these stray, soft things I feel about Reid, but it’s so good to feel something other than stressed or lonely or blocked.

  “You’re out walking?” On the other end of the line, there’s suddenly more noise, as though Reid’s only now stepped out onto the street. It’s nice, thinking he might’ve called me while he was still inside his office building, wherever it is. Nice to think he might’ve been excited.

  “Yeah. In Brooklyn, though.”

  “Ah.” Does he sound—maybe disappointed? It’s hard to tell over the phone.

  “I thought maybe if you’re walking home from work, maybe we could . . .” I trail off, stopped at a crosswalk. I don’t want these two people waiting beside me—even though they are definitely not even paying any attention to me—to be witnesses to my potential rejection.

  “Walk together?”

  I look beside me, at the two people who are still simply staring down at their phones. One of them is tapping a thumb frantically on tiny, fuzzy monsters that float and scramble across his screen, which seems to me to be a terrible game.

  See? I want to say to both of them, feeling smug. It was a good idea that I reached out to him.

  “Yes,” I say, starting to cross the street. “I mean, we need a game, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” he repeats, and actually I think I can tell something over the phone. I think he might be enjoying this already.

  I feel sheepish now, not having thought of an idea before I called him. Doing our names had been easy, obvious, safe. I could suggest something similarly bland—spell out your birthday month, or the name of your first pet. But that feels ludicrously like the beginnings of an identity theft scheme, and anyway, I find myself wanting to have a different kind of conversation with Reid.

  “Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “One word to describe your day.”

  I think the sound Reid makes is a groan, and it makes me break stride, hearing that noise from him. It’s so—unbuttoned.

  I swallow, collect myself. Collect a lot of unruly thoughts about Reid being unbuttoned.

  “We can pick something else.”

  “No, one word is”—there’s a pause—“fair. Hand-lettered only?”

  “You trying to take the easy way out?”

  “Alas,” he says, and I worry I’m going to start developing some kind of Masterpiece Theatre library of sexual fantasies. Alas, alas, alas. I’m thinking about the word cravats when he finishes his sentence. “I am not in an area known for its hands-craftsmanship.”

  I’m guessing that means he’s downtown. Phallic-skyscraper city, dollar-sign-eyed people all around him. Neckties, not cravats, which is a shame.

  “Not hand-lettered only,” I say, but I’m already snapping a picture of a chalk-drawn sandwich board, focusing on the S. I already know what my word is going to be. “I can be flexible.”

  Reid and I decide we’ve got fifteen minutes to find the letters for our respective words; then we’ll send them to each other all at once when the time is up. At first, I feel a pang of nervousness—will we hang up, find our letters separately? Or will we stay on the phone, a distant sort of togetherness, trying to find something to talk about?

  But Reid settles that for us, because as soon as we start the time he asks where I am, what it’s like in the neighborhood I’m walking through, as though he wants to minimize the distance between us. I snap photos as I walk, do my best to describe the particular flavor of Park Slope on a Tuesday early evening. Strollers and schoolkids on the sidewalks, Subaru wagons on already-clogged streets. I tell him about how I was surprised, when I first moved here, that some of the shops close so early, and I tell him—as I make my way all the way down Twelfth—about my favorite bakery, which stays open until seven. When I get there, I tell him my cupcake options and ask him what I should pick, and he says, “I don’t eat many sweets,” which makes me laugh.

  I order a Brooklyn Blackout—four different kinds of chocolate—but decide not to eat it while we talk.

  Reid tells me, too, about where he is. But he says he’s not as good at describing things as I am. He says that when he looks around, he has a hard time seeing anything that stands out.

  “It looks uniform to me. Everything is tall. Gray. Busy. Dirty.”

  “That’s what I used to think, too.” I snap another photo, the lovely, lowercase blue r from the bakery’s front window. “Before I moved here.”

  “Yes, but you’re in Brooklyn. It’s different.”

  “I didn’t always live in Brooklyn. I used to live in Manhattan, when I first came.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure, Hotshot,” I say, teasing. “You and your fancy job. You think I’m not cut out for Gotham, or something?” I snap another picture, not quite believing the way Reid and I are talking. It’s even better than the game. For all I’m walking along by myself here, I don’t feel lonely at all.

  “That’s not what I mean.” There’s another long pause, and I wonder if he’s taking a picture. “But . . . I don’t associate you with here.”

  The way he says “here” somehow makes this feel like a point in my favor, and maybe I should take it that way. Maybe a place that Reid sees as gray and dirty is not a place I should want to be associated with in his mind. But maybe it’s only that he met me here, in the shop I’m still only blocks from, drawing out wedding programs for a wedding that never happened.

  I hear a series of tinny beeps and Reid says, “Time’s up,” which is something of a relief. I’m not sure where I would’ve taken the conversation after that. “Ladies first.”

  I duck under an awning, tuck myself close to a building so I can send him my photos. A mix between hand-lettered and not, but I don’t really mind. In fact, I appreciate the look; it suits the word I’ve chosen.

  S-U-R-P-R-I-S-I-N-G.

  It takes a minute for all the photos to go through, and once they do there’s a few seconds of silence while I’m guessing Reid looks them over.

  “I like the G best,” he says, and I smile. That’s my favorite, too. It’s the third letter I snapped and right away I thought of it for August. Also my birth month, not that we’re doing the identity theft thing. Then he says, “Why surprising?”

  “I met with a new client,” I tell him, leaving out the part where I’m still repeatedly surprised about knowing Princess Freddie in real life. I’m guessing that he, like Lachelle, would not understand what a poet-sandwich boyfriend is. “I used a game to help her make a decision.” I pause, clear my throat. “You inspired me.”

  He doesn’t say anything for what feels like forever. But then he says the nicest thing.

  “That’s quite a compliment. To be an artist’s inspiration.”

  Quite a compliment. An artist.

  I almost say, from some old, knee-jerk place too many wom
en have within them, I’m not an artist! But I stop myself. Of course I’m an artist, and a good one. Instead I’m grateful he can’t see my pink face and I say, “Your turn.”

  “Mine seem somewhat inadequate. Only five letters.”

  “Quit stalling. Cough up your winnings.”

  He maybe sighs.

  When the letters come through, I can add another reason why my day’s been surprising.

  “What the heck!” I say loudly, and a woman pushing an extremely fancy stroller gives me a startled glance. I give her back a brief, apologetic smile before looking back at my phone screen. “These are all hand-done!”

  “I walked to South Street Seaport,” he says, and I think I detect a note of self-satisfaction there. “Many painted signs here.”

  “I feel like you’ve cheated me, somehow! You’re a card sharp, but with this incredibly nerdy game that only we know about.” I wish Lachelle were here; she would definitely have something to say about this.

  But I also don’t wish that. Because then I wouldn’t be alone, in on this secret game with Reid. Then I wouldn’t be alone the first time I hear him laugh. Even through the phone, it’s lovely. Soft, low, hardly a laugh at all. A chuckle. I see that word, drawn out. I’d make it so there were no ascenders, so all the letters were on the level. I’d make it so there was hardly any space between them, so that the word would look as snug and as warm as the sound feels.

  Then I really look at what he’s sent. What he’s spelled. T-E-N-S-E.

  “Oh. Not a good day, huh?”

  “It was—as I said. Or, as I spelled, I suppose.”

  “You want to ta—”

  “No,” he says quickly. “That word about covers it.”

  Reid says so little about his work that it almost makes me wish I understood that Wikipedia page better. But maybe I should be grateful, given how tied Reid’s work is to the things that made our last meeting so awkward: Avery, and Avery’s father.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  I wonder if he’s standing still where he is, too. People and cars and buses rushing by, but a tiny, cozy pocket of quiet in the lines between our phones. Maybe I’m sorry and It isn’t your fault are things Reid and I should’ve already said to each other, in other contexts, but it doesn’t matter.

  It matters that we’re saying them now.

  “So,” I say, after the quiet stretches a beat too long. “South Street Seaport, huh?”

  “Yes, it’s not that far from my office.”

  “That’s not gray. Or dirty, really.” I like it down there, in fact. Sibby and I went to a fall stall market down there a couple of years ago and bought a bunch of misshapen but colorful root vegetables that, as happens to most casual farmers’ market visitors with no talent for cooking, we only ended up using half of. In the shadow of the Financial District, South Street feels . . . low. Pleasantly so. Low to the ground, and at the edge of the water. The buildings are older—washed-out brick, charming stretches of storefronts. A respite from the sometimes dizzying heights of what stands at its back. I open my mouth to tell Reid about the Big Gay Ice Cream parlor that’s opened down there, but then I remember he doesn’t eat sweets.

  “No, I guess it’s not.” I think I hear him start to take a deep inhale, as if he can finally breathe, but the honk of a horn intrudes at almost the same time.

  I feel . . . disappointed. I wanted to hear the full range of that deep breath.

  “Unfortunately,” Reid says, “I have to head to another meeting. A work thing.”

  Alas, I think.

  But I also feel a bold stroke of pleasure swoop across my middle, thinking of Reid leaving work for a few minutes, only to play. Maybe he’ll go back in there, some of what was tense about his day slightly less so. Maybe I gave some of the surprise of my day to him.

  “Sure. Thanks for the company.” Then I add something, something honest, something Reid once said to me. It feels right to add it, like I’m helping us build some kind of routine.

  Like we’re more than just company. Like we’re friends.

  “I had fun.”

  There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, and I hope I haven’t somehow made it weird. Something I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks is that I am extremely talented at making it weird with Reid.

  “Are you free on Saturday?” he asks. Bluntly. Directly. Reid-ly.

  I smile.

  This time I don’t hesitate to answer.

  Chapter 9

  When I hung up the phone with Reid on Tuesday evening, I felt a lot of things.

  Eager, for one: about going back to my apartment, and getting back to Make It Happyn, armed with newly formed ideas and newly loosened leg muscles.

  Confident, for two: I hadn’t needed Reid to tell me I’m an artist, but it’d been nice to have the reminder anyway, especially building off the work I’d been doing as a result of our first game.

  Hopeful, for three: about the progress I’d made with Lark, about some of the pain and anger I seemed to be sloughing off about Sibby, about how I’d taken a risk, playing another game with Reid.

  Excited, for four: We’d made plans. We were going to play again, and in some ways, we’ve been playing since. We send photos back and forth to each other, mine mostly of local business signs and Reid’s mostly of faded advertisements from the sides of buildings, the kind of relics we’d looked for on our first walk together. We don’t even say much in the messages—sometimes we add an address, or a note about which letter is our favorite—yet they feel full of the promise of our next meeting.

  But by the time Saturday comes, I feel exactly one thing.

  My period.

  I should’ve known, and not only because The Planner of Park Slope obviously has a very specific method by which she tracks her cycle—an extremely genius tiny red dot next to the expected date in my monthly log. I should’ve known because I woke up on Friday morning in the kind of mood that swings wildly between “ten seconds from murdering someone” and “three seconds from crying because you noticed a layer of dust on your windowsill, you absolute filthy pig.” Lucky for the world at large I did not have to leave the apartment all day, but unlucky for me there was a marathon of House Hunters on, during which I listlessly made my way through a few regular client jobs while fantasizing about murdering every single house hunter who complained about paint colors. Then I cried about the per-square-foot cost of housing in Missouri (it’s really very affordable!).

  At one point I’d rallied, trying again to finish the sketches I’d been working on since Tuesday night, when my phone had honked with the obnoxious horn sound I’ve assigned to my dad’s text messages, which come in pretty rarely. I’d swiped it open and there’d been a photo of him, tanned and smiling, shaking the hand of some man in a suit with a flag pin on the lapel, a framed certificate between them. Behind my dad was Jennifer, the woman he married two weeks after he and my mom officially divorced, which was also, as it turned out, barely three months after I’d left home.

  was my dad’s caption, bland and informative, and I’d felt a spike of old, awful anger. I’d opened my notebook and swept my hand through a single word, adding a few dramatic swashes for decoration, and snapped a photo to send back to him.

  it read, beautiful and celebratory, but four of the letters there—L-I-A-R—fell minutely beneath the baseline, so minutely that only I would notice.

  And then I’d thought: Reid would notice.

  I’d felt so bad to have done it, so petty and small, that I’d almost, almost texted him to cancel, my fingers hovering over the keypad on my phone.

  But then I’d thought of him spelling out that word to me—T-E-N-S-E—and I’d known—in some certain, specific place inside of me—that I didn’t want him spending his Saturday alone. I’d gone to bed early with that dull, anticipatory ache in my lower belly, hoping for better luck with the premenstrual mood pendulum in the morning.

  And when I wake
up, I do feel less like murdering or crying. Of course, that’s because the main event has arrived, which means the dull ache has turned into something heavier and sharper. My lower back aches, everything I put on feels a half size too small, and I would very much like to attach a vacuum hose to my mouth that connects directly to a bag of chocolate, clutch a heating pad to my middle, and watch a series of rom-coms where no one ever seems to get a period, ever.

  But I said yes to Reid, and I don’t want to go back on my answer—not only for him, but for me, too. I want to walk and play and get inspired again.

  So I shove a few extra tampons in a small purse—I can’t imagine hauling my bag today—knock back a couple Advil, and take a long subway ride to the Village.

  He’s waiting for me when I walk up the steps from the station, as he’d promised he would be, his casual-Reid uniform in place: sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, jacket. His face, obviously, looks fan-fucking-tastic, which I’d appreciate more if he didn’t look immediately at my own and wrinkle his brow.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, in lieu of a greeting.

  The only solace I take in this question is the private speculation I indulge in about what would happen if I loudly announced to Reid on a public street that I got my period. Imagine the throat clearing! It would be legend.

  “Oh, you know,” I say, waving a hand back toward the station. “Long ride over.”

  He straightens his already straight posture. “I would’ve come to Brooklyn.”

  He’d offered, actually, when we’d first made these plans, but it’d been my suggestion to meet in the Village, where I know there’re tons of examples of old, painted signs. I force a smile, try to smooth over the wrong-footed start—whatever my face was doing when Reid first saw it, that note of embarrassed defensiveness in his voice.

  “I know,” I say lightly. “Your turn to come up with a game.”

  I start walking, not really caring if he had another direction in mind. I’ve just had a fresh bout of cramping, the kind that snakes all the way down the front of my legs. If this is going to work out today, I need to clench my teeth and keep moving.