The Last Little Blue Envelope

by Maureen Johnson

  I’m fully aware that half the appeal bidders see in my paintings is that this madness that makes me see things will kill me, and I won’t paint any more. There is nothing the art world likes more than a dying artist with a limited output.

  Some people will say this is junk, that anybody could have messed up a tabletop, screwed up a painted window, and done a rubbing of a stone. Well, sure. But that’s the usual argument. Anyone could have dripped paint all over a canvas. But Jasper Johns did, because he knew it was right. Anyone could have painted a can of soup. But Andy Warhol did, because he understood more about modern society than those people. Idea meets execution. Feeling becomes action.

  I don’t know why people find this idea so hard to get. I mean, you can throw any two people together, it doesn’t mean they’ll fall in love. Everyone knows this. No one quite understands how it works. It’s just those people, where they are in their lives, how circumstance throws them together. Sure, it’s happened before, but never quite in that way. Maybe they seem to come together all wrong. Maybe they’ve loved others. Maybe they don’t always do right by each other . . . but it’s still there, the love. The event. And no one would dare criticize it just because it’s common, it’s a little asymmetrical, and anyone can do it. It is unique. It is theirs. It is beautiful. They have made something that has been made a million times before and has also never existed before that moment.

  All right. Is that maudlin enough? When you have cancer, people let you get away with murder, I’m telling you. This is how Nicholas Sparks has been getting away with things for years. Anyway, Probably has come back up on the sofa and wants her head scratched, so I gotta go pet my cat.

  I don’t want this letter to end, so I won’t conclude it. I’ll just pause as if I am still writing and

  There was no period. It just stopped in midair.

  “You have to be kidding me,” Ginny said.

  She set the letter aside and stared at the ceiling. All these weird endings. Keith. Ellis. Oliver storming out of the auction house. One of these stories had to end properly. Who was Oliver, anyway? Why hadn’t she taken the time to find out more?

  She grabbed her computer from its spot next to the bed. She could write to him, but he wouldn’t reply, that was certain. She would have to look him up. Google turned up a lot of Oliver Davies, but no pictures matched Oliver—at least, not clearly. There were a few large group shots he may have been in, but they weren’t really useful.

  There had to be a time where he gave some information. Had she seen his passport? No. Any ID at all? The only time he even had it out was at the train station, when they were going to Paris.

  He bought the tickets to Paris. . . .

  They made you give information when you did things like that. She rolled out of bed to the floor and pulled over her bag. She’d been shoving things in the front pocket. She unzipped it and felt around. Two crumpled napkins, a wrapper . . . and there it was, shoved down at the bottom, the unused ticket. Train number 234 to Paris. Seat number. Reservation number. Contact information for the railway company.

  Oliver wasn’t the only one who could pull off a trick.

  Ginny was dressed and ready in the kitchen with the kettle on the boil when Richard came down.

  “I didn’t expect to see you up,” he said.

  “I just wanted to do a few things on my last day.” She passed him a mug of tea, but he waved it off and continued tying his tie.

  “Should we meet at the train station at ten? I may have to leave through a window to get there. January sales. If I’m covered in blood, say nothing.”

  “See you there,” Ginny said.

  She had already completed the first step in this plan. She had checked on the availability and obtained an email address on easymail.co.uk. Now she just needed to sound convincing. And a little stupid. Oh, there were advantages to having an American accent—a real one. Nothing could quite replace a real one.

  The phone lines for the rail company opened at seven in the morning, which is exactly when she dialed.

  “Hi,” she said, dragging out the vowel. “I bought a ticket for one of your trains the other day, but I never got the receipt? I bought it online and it said they would email it. . . .”

  “Reservation number?”

  Ginny read it off the ticket.

  “Oliver Davies?” the man asked.

  “No. My name is Olive Davies. My email is olive273@easymail.co.uk. I’m an . . . exchange student?”

  That was good. Make everything sound like a question. They’d just want to get her off the phone.

  “Just a moment.”

  Sound of typing.

  “Oh, I see what happened,” the man said. “They put an r in there. They had oliver273. I’ll just take that out and resend it.”

  Five minutes later, there was a message. Tickets issued to Davies, Oliver. Credit card number x’ed out. Address: 15A York Road, Guildford.

  “Gotcha,” Ginny said.

  This time, there would be no loose ends.

  This Is Not a Pool

  Guildford, according to the good folks on the internet, was a town just a few miles outside of London. Market town, suburb, part of something called the “stockbroker belt,” home of the occasional music festival. Made famous by the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as being the home of Ford Prefect, who claimed he came from there as a way of seeming boring and normal and from Earth. There were plenty of trains to get there. Thank god for the English and their love of trains. So many train stations, so many trains at all times. She should have been sick of trains by now, but she wasn’t.

  There was a line of cabs waiting at the station, which was larger than she expected. She tried to get in the closest one, but was told to walk all the way to the end of the line, to the first parked cab. Cabs lined up here, and cabbies did not jump their place in line. It wasn’t a black cab either—just a regular car with a sign and a meter. The driver set his paper down as she got in.

  “I’m going to Fifteen York Road?” she said. Why did she do that, with the making things sound like questions? The driver hit the meter and pulled out.

  “What brings you to Guildford?” he asked. “You’re American, yeah?”

  “To see a friend,” Ginny said.

  “Whereabouts in America are you from?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “I was in New Jersey once,” he said. “I went to a mall there. A big one.”

  The ride was maybe a minute long. The hardest part was waiting at the lights and getting through the morning traffic. She was deposited at a row of identical yellow-brown brick houses with peaked roofs. On the corner, there was a pub, a fancy-looking mattress store, and a store that seemed to sell nothing but lightbulbs. There was a lot of construction going on in the street. Three of the houses were being worked on, so there was cement dust and bags and planks and wheelbarrows all over.

  Fifteen A was a house with a half-broken stone wall and a collection of recycling bins in the stone garden out front. There were a lot of cat food cans in the bins. A lot. She knocked on the door, and a moment later, a woman in a pink fleece with her hair tied back in a ponytail answered. The TV was on in the background, showing some morning show, and an ironing board was open and in use. There was laundry hanging everywhere.

  This was definitely Oliver’s mom. They had the same dark eyes. Her hair was black with chunks of frazzled gray. She looked very tired, and nervous. She had deep purple bags under her eyes.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. “Is this about the bins, because . . .”

  “I’m looking for Oliver.”

  The woman looked surprised, like friends didn’t just drop by for Oliver very often—certainly not this early and certainly not with this accent.

  “He’s at work.”

  “At work?”

  “Yes. At the Elephant on the High Street. Just opposite the Oxfam.”

  “The High Street?”

  “It’s just that way,” she said
, stepping out and pointing. “Up to that crossroad and make a right. You’ll see it right away.”

  High Street, Ginny quickly realized, basically meant “Main Street”—and the High Street of Guildford was a busy place in the morning. It was entirely paved in cobblestone and set on a hill. They were at the top, looking down at a long street of shops, ending in a narrow river. Every kind of store was represented. There was the McDonald’s. There was the Starbucks. The many clothing stores. The drugstores, the bookstores, the stationery store, the supermarket . . . The middle of the street was filled with a variety of carts, selling jam, baskets, dried flowers, curry sauces, fresh roasted pig.

  Elephant was right in the middle of it all. It looked like a family restaurant, or possibly a coffee bar. It had vaguely African decorations on the walls, and a stridently merry sign in a jungly font. There were big posters advertising world music CDs on the front. He wasn’t hard to find. The place was almost empty at this time of the morning. There was one waitress in the back, setting tables, and one tall guy with black hair sitting at the bar, reading a clipboard and making some notes. It was a little strange to see Oliver in a black polo-neck shirt with a bright logo and a pair of khakis. His carefully cultivated image—the thrift-store designer coat, the dress shirts, the posh voice, the constant playing with the cigarettes. It was all busted.

  He must not have been able to hear her come in over the near-deafening music—a chorus of cheerful children and heavy drums. She stood right behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He jerked in surprise, sending his clipboard clattering to the floor.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice, as he retrieved it. “How do you know where I work?”

  “You’re not the only one who does their homework.”

  She had gotten that line ready on the train, and it was extremely gratifying to be able to deploy it so soon.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You brought me here,” she said. “You contacted me. You started it. Now I know where you live, and I’m not going to leave you alone until you explain what this was all about.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane back to America?” he asked.

  “In a few hours. If you don’t talk to me now, I’ll give your address to Keith. I’ll tell him where you work. He’ll come and visit you.”

  That got his attention.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He went to the back of the room for a moment, had a quick word with the waitress, then reappeared with his coat on. He brushed past Ginny and went outside, the implication being that she should follow.

  Outside, he started walking away at a furious pace. They paused next to what looked like a medieval town hall, stark white with black beams and an ornate hanging clock.

  “I told you,” he finally said. “I found the envelopes in your bag. I did some research on your aunt’s name and read about the sale online. I thought I could make some money off of it. That’s the entire story. What are you expecting?”

  “You could have had the money,” she said. “You walked away. Why?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “And the letters were my business. You found out about me. Now I want to know about you.”

  He groaned and fumbled for his cigarettes. A crowd of high schoolers passed by, all in uniforms, laughing, talking, clutching coffees and PE bags. The guys were all in blazers and ties. The girls were all in matching blue skirts, with the same ties and blazers. The general effect was that everyone looked older and more dignified and fancier, but they all had that stunned oh-my-god-the-holidays-are-over-and-school-still-exists look on their faces. She would have that look on her face in two days.

  “What good”—he shoved a cigarette between his lips—“what good do you think it will do, coming here? Why does it matter why I did it? It’s over. I just didn’t want to take it in the end. Do you want an apology? I’m sorry. There. Are you happy? Will you leave now?”

  No. She would not leave now. She didn’t know what good it would do, or even what she expected to hear. She just wanted more of something.

  “So, you’re a waiter?” she asked.

  “I’m the manager.”

  “What kind of restaurant is that?”

  “It’s a fancy McDonald’s with hummus. Is this Question Time?”

  “You read the last letter,” she said. “You know how it ends. It just cuts off. I’m sick of things cutting off without any answers.”

  “Well, then you’re in good company. That’s how everyone in the world feels.”

  He continued walking down the hill, through the crowds of shoppers. He was once again doing what Keith had derisively described as the “dashing” walk, his coat snapping around his ankles. Ginny had a hard time keeping up, with her suitcase. It was too hard to drag it over the cobblestones, so she had to keep to the sidewalk. He waited for her to catch up at the bottom of the street, once he’d reached the tiny bridge over the small river that ran through the center of the town.

  “The station is that way,” he said. “The crossing up by the Friary is tricky, so take care.”

  He pointed toward another offshoot of shops and restaurants and a very complex intersection. Ginny was not going to be dismissed like this, but she had no idea what came next. It was time to do something, say something. Anything.

  “My aunt would have liked you,” she said.

  She wasn’t quite sure where that statement came from, but she knew it was true the moment she said it. Aunt Peg would have liked Oliver’s plan, even if it did involve taking half the money. She would have liked him even more for going to all that trouble and then not taking the money. She would have liked the card tricks and the memorizing. In fact, it was almost like Aunt Peg had planned for him to be there all along. But, of course, she hadn’t. Oliver was right. Aunt Peg had nothing to do with the people Ginny met. She attracted people like Oliver all on her own.

  Truth or not, the statement did not have the intended effect. Oliver made a rueful little laughing noise.

  “Somehow I doubt that,” he said, as he walked away.

  There was no point in chasing him again. He didn’t want to see her. It was time to face facts. She had to get on a train and go.

  The crossing was tricky, like Oliver said. She had to wait with a group of people for the little green man to appear in the signal box, then stand on a traffic island and cross again. And then again.

  She didn’t notice Oliver come up behind her.

  “It’s a tricky path to the station,” he said. “I’d better show you.”

  He extracted the bag from her grip and walked on—but slower this time, so she could walk beside him. It turned out that the path to the station was not nearly as straightforward as he had indicated. It wound through a multistory parking lot, past a movie theater, over another footbridge . . . Guildford was much more complex on foot. She would never have found her way back.

  Oliver was shaking a little. His hands were unsteady. He tried to hide them behind his back, but before he could, Ginny reached out and took his hand and squeezed it. At first, it shook harder; then it slowed. He wouldn’t look at her directly; he read the board instead.

  “Your train is on platform five,” he said.

  He made a halfhearted effort to pull his hand free, but she wouldn’t let go. He blinked and rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. It wasn’t a dismissive gesture. It was the kind of thing you did when you didn’t want to react or get emotional.

  “We used to have a little bit of money,” he said. “It came from my gran. It wasn’t a lot, but enough for my parents to send me away to school. Hence the accent. So I don’t really know much about how my parents got on when I was a kid. It seemed all right. Not great, but all right. When I went away to university, my dad walked out.”

  “Sorry,” Ginny said.

  “He’s
a bastard,” Oliver said plainly. “I don’t care about him. It was my mum I was worried about. When she called me, she was completely falling apart. So I left for a few days to take care of things. Then a few days became two weeks, and then I had accidentally left university for the year. It was all supposed to be temporary, but . . . I didn’t go back again this year.”

  “That’s why you’re not in school?”

  “That’s the reason,” he said. “My dad handled the money. My mum has never been good at that sort of thing. She was a bit broken; she couldn’t handle the bills and the paperwork coming in. So I came back and got the job at Elephant. She didn’t want me to. She felt bad about my leaving uni, but . . . it had to be done. Anyway . . . around October, I couldn’t really take it anymore, so I took a little of the money I saved and went off to Greece for a few weeks to think about what I wanted to do next. My bag broke, and I wound up getting yours. Then I found the letters. They were just so weird . . . I started looking up the stuff I read in them. They gave me some focus. That’s when I found out about the sale. And I could see that you’d never opened the last one, and there was no record of a last piece like the one described, so there was something else out there. I figured if you had already made a bunch of money off the first sale . . . it wasn’t like I was taking from someone who was broke. Then I could give my mum enough money to help her get by, and I could go back to school. But the only way I could do it is if I never blinked. So I tried. I tried to do it and be honest and up front about it.”

  A crisp voice announced the impending arrival of Ginny’s train. Time was very short.

  “If you’d told me that,” she said, “I would have gone along with it. You wouldn’t have had to do all this. I would have just given you some of the money.”