“Thank you,” Leonard said, then indicated the food, “for this.”
“You’re welcome.”
When they were through eating, they finished off the bottle of wine and talked about work, about family, about life. As the night progressed, Leonard began feeling more and more like his old self. And with the mailbox removed—he wasn’t sure, of course; possibly it was the wine going to his head—maybe he had solved his problem. Time would tell, however, but he felt confident that things might be looking up.
He felt good, felt human again, felt more like the Leonard Perry he knew than he had in weeks. And when Julie took his hand, moved in, and kissed him, he let her. And after a while of this, he took her into his bedroom.
When he woke up the next morning Julie was still asleep beside him. He watched her for a while, feeling a terrible mixture of things. Heather was coming back in just a couple of days, and look at what he had just done. Still, he couldn’t deny that there had been something very nice about it. Maybe more than just a one-night stand, maybe not. Last night and even this morning, he saw something in her he hadn’t seen before, a whole new side of Julie. One he liked a lot more than he ever thought he would.
It was late, even for a Saturday. Closing in on noon.
He kissed her forehead gently, and when he did, she stirred and opened her eyes. “Morning,” she said, her voice groggy with sleep and the previous night’s wine and activities.
Leonard got out of bed, nervous and worried. He stretched for a moment, then turned to her. “Coffee?”
She smiled. “Sounds good.”
Wearing only his boxers, he walked to the kitchen, then stopped dead in his tracks. His blood ran cold. Next to the microwave the mailbox was packed to the breaking point. Letters were crammed in and poked out the sides of the door, which was held shut by a rubber band. The hairs on his back and neck stood up, and a mixture of fear and rage swirled. He reached out and removed the rubber band. The door shot open and letters spat out and spread onto the floor, a postcard landing on his foot. It was the postcard he’d sent to himself. On it was his own handwriting, but it was not the message he’d written, which had been a smiley face and his initials. It now read:
Leonard,
Seems kind of like hell, huh?
Well, there you are.
Or you are there.
“Leonard?” Julie entered, rubbing her eyes, wearing nothing but one of his T-shirts.
Leonard spun on her. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
Taken aback, Julie furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“You think it’s funny, is that it? How are you doing this?” He advanced on her, backing her into the living room.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I just brought it in last night. And then you happen to call, you happen to come over, and then . . . then . . . ”
“Leonard, you’re scaring me. What are you talking about?”
“You nasty bitch. I’m only gonna tell you this once. Cut it out. Just cut it the fuck out.”
Julie stood there a moment, staring at him with disbelief. Leonard could see in her eyes a genuine fear, a genuine confusion. But all the pieces fit. He didn’t entirely know how it had worked, but it did make a strange sort of sense.
“Get your ass out of here,” he told her. When she kept standing there in amazement, he screamed and raised his hand.
Julie raced back into the bedroom and slammed the door.
Leonard went back to the kitchen and picked up the mail. He put it on the table and drew a deep breath. A minute later Julie came out dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing last night, tears raining down her cheeks. She grabbed her oven trays and made for the door. “If this is how you feel, if you think you were cute last night, just wait until Heather gets back.”
He heard the front door slam. He picked up the still-full mailbox and slammed it against the floor, then took one of his kitchen chairs and beat the thing, crushed it, and kept hitting it, pulling at it with his hands, throwing it, smashing it, until it was four separate sheets of thin, crumpled metal. He put one piece in the kitchen garbage can, another in the bathroom wastebasket, tossed one into his backyard, and put the other in his car, where he later threw it into a trash can at a gas station.
He piled the mail onto his kitchen table and ripped up the postcard. Then he went out to various bars and spent the day getting drunk. No matter how much alcohol he had, every time he closed his eyes he was repackaging someone else’s mail.
That night Heather called. She was concerned about the way he sounded.
“Just went drinking with some of the guys,” he told her. “I’m a little tipsy, and I’ve been kind of down not having you here.”
“I can’t wait to see you,” she said.
His guilt of being with Julie tied a knot the size of Kentucky in his stomach and tensed his shoulders like so much sculpture chiseled from stone. “I can’t wait to see you either,” he said. “You’ll be here Monday?”
“My flight gets in around ten. I should be back around eleven, barring unforeseen delays.” She gave him her flight itinerary.
“I’ll take an early lunch,” he said. “We’ll go somewhere special.”
“I would love that,” Heather said. “How about I’ll meet you at your house; in case I’m running a bit late, you don’t have to be stuck somewhere waiting for me.”
“Sounds good,” he said, hearing Julie’s voice when she’d said those same two words this morning.
It wasn’t long after speaking with Heather that he passed out.
He dreamed about Julie.
Sunday he didn’t do much of anything. There was no mail that day, yet there was still the enormous stack on his kitchen table, not to mention the bag stuffed in the back of his pantry. For a long time he thought about it. He had removed the mailbox and brought it into the kitchen, and still there had been mail in it the next day. But now the mailbox was destroyed, torn into pieces. There was no longer a place for him to receive his mail. And since he was receiving so much of it, no postal worker was going to leave a stack of twenty, thirty, or forty letters just sitting on his doorstep, were they? Didn’t seem likely. Of course, nothing that had been going on seemed likely. Still, given what had happened, he concluded that it had to be the mailbox. Something about it had been causing all of this to happen. He felt terrible for how he’d acted towards Julie. On reflection, it didn’t make any damn sense that she would be doing it.
He went to the phone and called her. When he tried to apologize she called him a psychopath and said to leave her alone. When he tried to explain she wouldn’t hear it. She called him a crazy bastard and hung up.
Leonard almost called her back but didn’t. Instead he allowed his rage to take control. He picked up the letters from his kitchen table and began ripping them up, one by one, several at a time, whatever he got his hands on. Some he fed into his sink disposal and others he burned at the stove. He went to the back of his pantry, removed the bag, and did the same. He tore them, ripped them into shreds, then went at all the pieces with scissors.
In the end he had a garbage bag full of shredded paper and some ashes. He loaded it into the back of his car, drove it down to his office, and tossed it into the dumpster.
When he got home he called Julie again. This time he got her answering machine. He left an apologetic message and said he wanted to talk with her.
He spent the rest of the day drinking and calculating how much it would have cost him in envelopes and stamps to resend all the mail he’d just destroyed.
A deadline at work the next day, which was supposed to be a month away, had suddenly moved to the end of the week. The men’s room was out of order and Julie wouldn’t even look at him when they passed in the hall. But so far, anyway, no one else in the office seemed to know about what happened
Friday night and Saturday morning. For the moment, she seemed to be keeping quiet, thank God.
It was right before he left for lunch that she came to him.
“I’m ready to talk,” she said.
“I would like to,” he said, “but I have to go right now. Can we talk when I get back from lunch?”
“We can’t have lunch?”
“I have to meet somebody.”
“Heather?” Her tone was menacing when she said the name.
He looked away and nodded.
“You going out to eat?”
“I’m meeting her at my house; then we’re going somewhere.”
Julie leveled an icy gaze on him. “We’ll talk when you get back from lunch.”
Leonard drove home, stopping by a floral shop on his way to pick up a dozen roses. He almost bought a card but had second thoughts. At home he cut the stems and put the flowers into a vase, then turned on the television and waited.
After watching an entire soap opera he realized he’d been home over half an hour. He got up from the couch and called her cell phone. He had to leave a message. He then looked at the flight itinerary, called the airline, and asked if the flight had come in on time. It had. He tried her cell phone again, and again had to leave a message. He’d give her a few more minutes. He could take a long lunch—it was important that he take a long lunch—even if he knew he’d catch shit for it later at work, for a couple of different reasons.
Another fifteen minutes passed. He was just about to call her cell again when the doorbell rang, followed by several sharp knocks. He took the flowers from the kitchen table, brought them into the living room, and set them on the coffee table. He straightened his hair, straightened his shirt, and opened the door.
On the doorstep was an enormous sack of mail, a dirty white canvas sack with the words “DEAD LETTER OFFICE—ALTERNATE ROUTING REQUIRED” stenciled over it in faded black letters.
Leonard slammed the door, locked it, then deadbolted it before returning to the kitchen for a stout drink.
He’d taken three steps in that direction when his foot caught on something, and he went over with flailing arms and a scream of outraged shock. He landed on the white canvas sack, clearly stuffed with more dead letters, and something else that was large and almost round.
The sack cushioned his body, but his head struck the floor hard. His last conscious thought as he blacked out was How did it get in? I locked it outside!
Sometime later he came back to his senses. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, maybe minutes, maybe hours; all he knew is that it was still day. A hard, slanting shaft of sunlight struck the open mouth of the bag inches from his eyes, spotlighting the thing inside.
A dead letter that had obviously been meant for him, though it wasn’t addressed.
Julie had died screaming. He knew that because her mouth and eyes were still open wide. Her teeth were covered in blood, her tongue a slimy red slug plastered to her cheek, glued to it by dried blood. The head was sealed inside a clear plastic bag, partially filled with her blood, but not a drop stained the hundreds, maybe thousands of dead letters it rested in.
“She was making trouble for you, Leonard.”
Startled, Leonard began to push himself up to run, but a heavy-booted foot planted itself between his shoulder blades and pushed him back to the floor.
“You don’t want to do that, mate.” Brief laughter, then the voice continued, “Much better off never seeing my face, I think.”
“Who are you?” The foot had lifted from his back, but Leonard stayed where he was, face pressed against the floor, eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to look at Julie’s dead face in the mailbag. “What do you want?”
“Who I am isn’t all that important, Leonard. What I want is to not have to come back here again.” The dry humor had left the man’s voice. Now it was spiced with irritation. “It’s a pain in the ass, to be perfectly frank. I have enough shit to do without babysitting dead letter officers.”
“What . . . ?”
“No questions,” the man said. “You have a job to do, and I think you’ll find the benefits more than adequate once you’ve completed your probationary period, but you don’t get to ask questions.”
There were several tense seconds of silence before the man spoke again, as if he was making sure his no-questions edict had gotten through.
“Good man,” he said at last. “You’re a quick learner. I knew that when you worked out the process as quickly as you did, but you’ve got a willful streak that is distressing. Since my gentle reminders weren’t enough to keep you in line, I’m here for our one and only face-to-face.”
Laughter again, a little less restrained than the last. “That is a figure of speech, of course. If you ever do see my face, it’ll be the last one you ever see.”
Frustration and fear overwhelmed him. Leonard began to weep.
“Oh for crying out loud, there’s no need for that. I’m not here to hurt you, just to straighten you out.”
With effort, Leonard silenced himself.
“Now open your eyes and look in the bag.”
Leonard groaned, but did as he was told.
Julie’s head was gone. In its place was a Polaroid.
It was a picture of Heather, stripped to her bra and panties, bound to a chair, gagged, horrified.
“The worlds grow, borders stretch, times change, but things stay together, and communication is the key. We can’t have a million and one dead letters clogging the system. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” Leonard said. “I don’t understand any of this.”
He closed his eyes against the tortured image of Heather, but it was burned into his brain. He’d never be able to unsee it.
“Ah, you don’t really need to, just as long as you do what you’re supposed to. Take care of your business and things will continue to move forward, but if you try anything . . . ” he paused for a second, as if in search of the right word, “ . . . ill-advised, I’ll have to send you another reminder.”
Leonard thought he understood the man’s meaning perfectly. He was sure the next head he received would belong to someone a lot more important to him.
The new silence held for a long time, but Leonard was afraid to open his eyes, to move from his place on the floor, and after a while, something that may have been sleep stole him away.
He awoke in the dark, and after a few moments of confusion he remembered where he was and what happened. He pushed himself up slowly, and when no one protested or pushed him back to the floor, he stood.
It was night now, late night, pitch-dark outside.
He turned on his living room lights.
Julie’s head was gone. The picture of Heather was gone. The mailbag, “DEAD LETTER OFFICE—ALTERNATE ROUTING REQUIRED”, was still there, open and spilling its contents onto his floor.
Leonard kicked the stray letters back into the open mouth of the bag and dragged it to his kitchen table.
He didn’t bother going to work the next morning. The phone rang several times but he didn’t answer. Instead he stayed in bed, stared at the ceiling, and thought about moving and where to move. Where could he go? Texas? California? France? Somehow, inside he knew that wherever he went it wouldn’t do him any good, though he knew he would have to try. He knew he wouldn’t be here long.
And if he did try to run, he knew he’d wake up some morning to find Heather’s head in a plastic bag.
He thought about all the messages on his machine from both yesterday and today from his work, wondering just where in the hell he was.
Fuck them. He was too busy.
He didn’t get out of bed until the early afternoon when the doorbell rang, and even then he almost didn’t bother. He knew what was there. It was always going to be there, coming in and coming in like an unfixable leak.
Seems kind of like hell, he thought, and removed a box of envelopes and a roll of stamps from a kitchen drawer and set them on the table. Kind of like hell, yeah, but there you are.
Or you are there.
Cocoa
Bob Pastorella
Sometimes we get a story that is so . . . odd we don’t know what to make of it. We’re not sure if we like or dislike it, but we can’t reject it because it’s like an earworm song you can’t get out of your head. The following story was like that. It sat on our short list until we could understand its attraction. We’re still not sure—other than the notion that the nature of one’s existence and place in our careening universe is not always a choice, but a mandate. And that seems to be okay . . . until an entity decides it wants to be something else . . .
Dad gently pushed me towards the other barn. We were already past the fence, the one he told me to never pass, and I never did, not once, not even after me and Alisha got married. There was Dad’s barn, and the other barn, for as long as I could remember. Passing the fence was going to get you a whipping for sure, and after you’d grown and married, it came down to respect. He pushed me again, and I looked back to see him smiling. All his teeth were gone now, and his tongue lolled in his mouth, tobacco stained and spotted. Finally, we stopped and he stood behind me, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing. He pulled his hand away, and I could hear the suckers on his palm pop off my windbreaker.
“Why are we here, Dad?”
He came around me, reaching into his jacket with his good hand, the one that looked like mine, and pulled out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes. He used his left hand, the misshapen one, to light the match because it was easier with his long nails. It was the cancer that did this too him. It made him stay home all the time and miss church every Sunday. It changed him, made him strong, and made him feel good, all the time. Strange how cancer was supposed to send you to the grave. Dad’s just kept him from it.
Until recently.
He pulled a long drag off the cigarette, then looked at me. “Your time has come.”
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