“I’ve got to get back to work,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re going to be alone for the rest of the day. Here’s your key—you probably remember, the square one is for the top lock. Genuine Harrods key chain, enjoy that. And there’s plenty of food. . . .”
He indicated the kitchen with a general sweep of his hand. Ginny caught the little silver glint of a wedding ring on his left hand. Ginny had managed to miss that ring when she first met him. God, she’d been clueless the first time she was here.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Promise. Sorry I’m busting in when you’re so busy.”
“Don’t be. I’ll be back around eight. Maybe nine . . . but I’ll try for eight.”
As soon as he was gone, Ginny dragged her suitcase up the steps. It was not an elegant trip, banging and clunking, smacking into the wall. The door to her room—Aunt Peg’s room—was open and waiting for her. It would always be strange coming into this room. The pink walls had an odd glow in the pale morning light. The glint of the wrappers and various pieces of trash that Aunt Peg had collaged on the walls stood in stark contrast to the large poster print of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Aunt Peg’s favorite painting. Richard had stacked towels and extra blankets on top of the patchwork quilt Aunt Peg had sewn.
Ginny dropped the suitcase under the window and sat on the floor with her back against the bed, looking up at the walls, the ceiling, taking it all in. There were two things she had to accomplish while she was here. Thing One: Get the letter. That was all arranged. She would meet Oliver at a coffee shop tomorrow at two and he would hand it over.
Which meant that she had today to accomplish The Other Thing.
In the two weeks that she had planned this trip, Keith had spent less and less time online. Their conversations, when they had them, had been short. Normally, this would have devastated her, but since she was on her way back to England, she had decided to use this to her advantage. The thing about her Keith seemed to like the most was the fact that she sometimes just turned up out of the blue, with some very unlikely story. So she hadn’t mentioned that she was coming. Today, she was going to appear on his doorstep.
This was a maneuver that required preparation. She had managed, through some creative questioning, to find out that he would be at home this afternoon. The timing was right. She also brought the proper tools. She reached over and unzipped the suitcase. Her favorite outfit was on top—a new black dress with white dots. With her new black boots and a pair of silvery tights, it was by far the greatest outfit she had ever owned.
Time for a shower, which required a wrestle with the shower-spigot attachment in the bathroom. She had soaked the ceiling many times with this contraption over the summer. Richard had also kept all the toiletries Ginny had purchased on her last visit and had stacked them on an empty shelf in the bathroom. One quick and not-too-serious spray-down of herself and the bathroom later (already an improvement on her previous technique), and it was time to get dressed. She made sure the seam of her tights lined up perfectly along her toes (an often-neglected detail). Then the boots. She examined the final product in the mirror. It was . . . good. She looked good. Not like a tourist. Not like someone who was trying too hard. She looked like herself . . . maybe just a little dressier than normal.
Quick hair check. When she got home from England in August, she felt the need to change herself a little. She had worn her hair very long for her whole life, and 80 percent of the time, she wore it in braids. The braids had become her signature, and the signature felt very tired. She impulsively chopped four inches off the bottom and dyed it a deep shade of auburn. Everyone loved the hair, but she still wasn’t used to it. She kept looking for it, expecting it to hang down lower, to get in her way when it was windy out, to be there to twist and curl when nervous. Still, it had a nice, deep shine. It was more . . . mature.
There was one more thing to get out of the suitcase—a small present wrapped in red paper. She carefully examined it to make sure the wrapping had not been ripped. The present had been tricky. She had to get something meaningful, but not too meaningful. Something personal, but not too personal. She had searched long and hard for it, and finally found it.
During the summer, Keith found her in Paris. They had kissed once. That had happened in a graveyard, on a stone monument shaped like an open copy of Romeo and Juliet. Copies of Romeo and Juliet were common, but the one she’d found was antique, from 1905. It had a blue leather cover and was illustrated in bright, jewel-like colors, with gold endpapers. It was the kind of thing you could give to a theater student, just because it was a nice thing for a theater student to have. And it was the kind of thing you could give to someone as a way of remembering your first kiss.
The paper had made the trip with no damage at all. She wrapped it in a plastic bag to protect it from any rain, put it in her messenger bag, and grabbed her coat and her keys. It was time to make her second entrance into Keith’s life. This time, she was ready.
Surprises and Explanations
The route to Keith’s house was perfectly preserved in Ginny’s memory—past Indian restaurants and dozens of newsagents, down street after street of rows of houses, all in various stages of repairs. Unlike New York, which was a city of big buildings and apartments, London was a city of houses, rows and rows of houses with little gardens in the front, houses that had known many families, known wars, known different eras and levels of wealth.
And there it was, the house she remembered so well, the house she thought about so often. There were the cheap black blinds, askew as always. There was the gold plastic window in the front door, the trash bin out front that was always overflowing, the little stone wall, and the shabby, tiny front garden, which always seemed to grow a thin crop of crumpled candy wrappers. As a little nod to the season, a string of Christmas lights was draped somewhat haphazardly around the upper windows, strung from one window to another across the front of the house. It blinked in an irregular pattern, one that suggested to Ginny that it probably wasn’t supposed to be blinking at all.
Out front was Keith’s small, battered white car. She peered inside the front window to see if it was as trash filled as ever. It wasn’t. He’d obviously given it a cleaning recently. Aside from two plastic bags and a few script pages on the front passenger seat, it was clutter-free. The first time Ginny saw this car, it had been stuffed with an entire theatrical set, including an inflatable palm tree (deflated, thankfully).
There were lights on in the two upstairs windows, and the muffled beat of music escaped the glass. Someone was home. It might be Keith, or it might be David, Keith’s lovesick roommate with the horrible on-off girlfriend, Fiona, the human cotton swab. She got closer and listened carefully. The noise was coming from the window on the left—that was Keith’s.
For the first time since she’d cooked up this idea, she felt a surge of nervousness. This had all felt so hypothetical up until this point. In the time between turning out her light at night and going to sleep, she had imagined this moment, the exact way she would knock, his face when he opened the door. . . . Now she was really here, and in a minute, she would really see Keith. Imagination was about to collide with reality.
“Relax,” she told herself. “You have the advantage of surprise. Just be normal.”
Of course, the first step toward normalcy probably didn’t include sneaking around in front of the house, looking through the car windows, and talking to herself.
She reached up and knocked hard on the plastic panel. One of the windows above slid open a little bit.
“THE DOOR IS OPEN!” Keith yelled out.
Ginny looked up to see if he was peering down at her, but there was no head sticking out of the window. He was just letting whoever it was come in. While that didn’t seem especially safe, it did work to her advantage. She pushed the door open slowly.
Instantly, she was overwhelmed by the familiar smell. Detergent, a spicy incense, some kind of dish soap, wet clothes, theater dust . . . it was Keith smel
l. The door opened onto a hall and a set of stairs. The little foyer area was crammed with things—plastic bags full of newspapers, Keith’s sneakers, umbrellas, books. There was, for some reason, a hammer in the middle of the floor and rolls of toilet paper piled in the corner. T-shirts and boxers were spread over the heater on the wall to dry.
“Top of the steps!” he called. “Just come up!”
Ginny steadied herself and quickly checked her warped reflection in a cheaply framed poster for Keith’s last show, Starbucks: The Musical. Someone’s black scarf had fallen just at the foot of the steps, marking the line she had to cross to continue. She stepped over it and made her way up the steps.
Keith sat on the sofa, his legs stretched out and his feet balanced on a plastic crate. The first thing she noticed was his hair. It was a little shorter, and not quite as shaggy as it had been over the summer. The haircut made it look darker and brown, not quite so reddish blond.
He was half-scowling at a computer screen, squinting a bit as he typed away feverishly. He was so intent that he didn’t notice her standing in the doorway. He turned and opened his mouth, ready to call out again, and caught sight of her in his doorway.
He actually jumped back an inch or two.
“Hi,” she said, grinning. “Remember me?”
For almost ten seconds, Keith did nothing but stare. Ginny clung to the door frame.
“There is something terribly, terribly wrong with you,” he finally said. “And I intend to have you put in a home. Are you going to come in, or are you going to hang in the doorway like that?”
He pushed some papers off the sofa to make room for her. She came in and sat down carefully, barely able to look at him directly at first. The sensory overload took some time to get used to. He wore a black sweater, ragged jeans, and a pair of bright socks with visible holes. She smiled at his toes poking out.
“Why didn’t you say you were coming?” he asked.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she said. “Do you let every weirdo who knocks come into your house? You didn’t even look.”
“I thought you were here to audition,” he said. “People have been coming here to read for the last few days.”
“Audition?”
“New play about the financial crisis. It’s called Break the Bank. It’s the evolution of something I started a while ago called Bank: An Opera of Greed.”
“Aren’t you in that . . . panto thing?”
“Ah,” he said. “I had an . . . artistic disagreement with the director of the panto. As it happens, I take issue with the objectification of women in Cinderella, and the reliance on shoes as a means of identification. Surely you understand.”
“You got fired?”
“Fired is such an accurate word. Also, I didn’t like being the back half of a horse.”
Ginny smiled and sat back into the couch. Rain was coming in through the half-opened window, but Keith didn’t notice or care. She reached into her bag and pulled out the present.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Is it a lump of money? Did you bring me money? You want to back my show again, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a lump of money.”
Keith held the gift for a moment and squeezed it lightly.
“You’re embarrassing me.” He looked down at the package. “I didn’t know you were coming. I don’t have anything for you.”
This was definitely a first—Keith, embarrassed. His cheeks even flushed a bit.
“Open it!” she said.
He tore through the paper, revealing the blue cover. He looked puzzled for a moment, then ripped off a few more strips until it was fully revealed. For a moment, he said nothing at all, just opened it and looked at the pages, the illustrations. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were wide and his expression raw and open.
“I don’t know what to say, Gin. It’s . . . it’s lovely.”
His embarrassment was catching. Ginny felt her face get hot, and she found that she was gripping bunches of her skirt in her fists.
“I know it’s one of your favorites,” she said.
“Well, who doesn’t like a romantic suicide pact?”
“Only bad people,” Ginny said.
“Exactly.” Keith looked up partway, avoiding her face, instead tracing the outline of her new haircut. “Your hair. You changed it. You look like a news presenter.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Clearly you don’t know about my childhood obsession with the woman who did the weather. My heart still flutters when I hear the word ‘precipitation.’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without braids. I thought your hair just grew that way.”
He turned back to the book and flipped the pages for a few moments. From the way his eyes were flicking across the pages, Ginny could see he wasn’t reading. He was thinking. The moments ticked on. Ginny managed to inch her way closer to him, until she was right at his shoulder. He didn’t turn to her directly, but he was moving toward her in barely perceptible increments. This was it. Her whole body was tingling. She could feel a kiss coming, the way you could feel a heavy rain approaching.
The door opened downstairs, causing them both to start a bit. A female voice called up a muffled hello. Keith glanced toward the noise, set the book on the coffee table, and stood up. Ginny assumed this horrible interrupting person was here for an audition until a voice called from the downstairs hall.
“It is foul out there! David had better thank me! I stayed late for him and got stuck in the rain!”
“Fiona?” Ginny mouthed.
“No.” Keith shook his head and crossed the room. “She’s gone. Been gone for ages. They split up right after you left. That’s why the grass out front started growing again.”
“He’s got a new girlfriend?” she said quietly. “Thank god. You must be happy.”
“Yeah. He does. It’s a relief. She’s a lot nicer. But then, your average angry snake is nicer than Fiona. I’m sure she’s happier wherever she is now, burning orphans or whatever she does with her time.”
There was a quick footfall on the steps and then a girl appeared in the doorway. The new girl was extremely pretty. Like David, she had very dark black skin. She was a few inches shorter than Ginny, with skinny jeans, scuffed-up brown boots, and an enormous, slightly ragged gray sweater. She wore no makeup, but her cheeks glowed brightly from the cold and damp. Her hair was a free-flowing halo of spirals that rose up high, at least six inches or more, all around her head. Moisture from the rain was trapped in the tips of her hair, which she was rubbing in disgust.
“Remind me to never . . . oh! Sorry! I’ll go wait downstairs until you’re done.”
“It’s all right,” Keith said. “It’s not an audition. This is Ginny. The famous Ginny Virginia.”
“No!” the girl exclaimed. “Was that you, with the letters? Your aunt is an artist?”
“That’s me,” Ginny said, oddly flattered that David’s girlfriend had heard of her.
“Oh! Keith’s always talking about you!” The girl came in and sat next to Ginny. “I’m Ellis. So nice to meet you! Did you just . . .”
“Kind of a surprise visit,” Keith said with a proud smile. “As is her way.”
“This is so exciting! What are you doing here? Just visiting for Christmas? Sorry I’m such a mess. Just had my last day of work. I took a Christmas job at H&M and now I am finished!”
She threw her arms into the air in triumph before collapsing on the sofa in the place Keith had just vacated, pulling off her boots. Ginny forced a polite smile. David’s new girlfriend was nice, but she was also settling in. She had no I-have-just-interrupted-a-personal-moment radar at all.
“People are so horrible when they shop for Christmas,” Ellis continued. “They do things you would not believe. David wanted me to pick up a shirt for his sister. I got the last one and a woman tried to rip it out of my hands, and when I didn’t let go, she pulled her hand back, like this. . . .”
She demonstrat
ed.
“That looks more like a punch,” Keith said. “Are you sure this was H&M you’ve been working at, and not some ultimate fighting league?”
“It’s hard to tell some days. But I got the shirt. He had better appreciate that.”
Keith began pairing his socks, putting them into little tucked bundles. Ginny had never seen Keith do his laundry before, but he certainly never struck her as a sock bundler. He placed each pair onto the mantel, making a little pyramid out of them.
“What’s this?”
Ellis picked up the copy of Romeo and Juliet and started paging through it. This was too much—the book was private. Keith glanced over, but he didn’t ask Ellis to stop. His pyramid of socks was getting out of control. It was going to fall apart at any second. Yet he just kept folding and piling.
“A Christmas present from Gin,” he said finally. “It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”
“It’s so lovely,” Ellis said, replacing it. “You have to tell us all about your plans for while you’re here. We’ll have to go out and show you around. There’s loads to do in London at Christmas.”
“Holly-eating contests and Christmas tree fights . . .” Keith’s voice was a low mumble. Ellis picked up a spare sock and threw it across the room at Keith. He half-smiled and pulled it off his shoulder. Suddenly, all in a second, Ginny understood everything. . . . Why Keith was off-line so often, why the door was really open, and what “kind of something” actually meant.
Ellis wasn’t David’s girlfriend. She was Keith’s.
The room was unbearably hot. The rain at the windows far too loud. She needed to get out of here, to get some air, to sleep . . . to do anything. She just had to get out.
“You know what?” she said. “I’m . . . I didn’t sleep on the plane. I think I . . .”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Ellis said quickly. “Or a coffee?”
“No.” Ginny stood. She was unsteady on her feet.
“Oh, look at you!” Ellis said. “God, you’re exhausted. You should just take a nap right here.”
The Last Little Blue Envelope Page 2