opposite. He stepped up onto the stairs. 'Not half as chilly as Laura Secord's heart.'
Fred never had stopped ribbing him about Laura Secord. Even now, after she'd rejected him again, he couldn't get her out of his mind. He'd come home. He'd done well at Northwestern. He hadn't found a girl he cared about, though. He wondered if he ever would. He wondered if he ever could.
He opened the door at the top of the stairs, then quickly shut it behind him. Getting out of the wind felt good. He fumbled for the key to his mailbox. It wasn't easy to find, not when every key on the ring looked like one of twins. He almost gave it up as a bad job and headed for bed. But, figuring he'd probably have trouble finding his apartment key, too, he chose to regard the mailbox key as a test. He made a determined drunk.
'There you are, you sneaky little bastard,' he said, capturing the errant key. Making it fit the lock was another struggle, but he won that one, too.
A couple of advertising circulars fell onto the floor. Bending to pick them up made his head spin. He also had a letter from a cousin out in Denver and another envelope with his address written in a hand he didn't recognize. He'd taken two steps toward the stairs before he remembered to go back and shut and lock the mailbox.
He did have a devil of a time finding the key that opened the apartment door, but by luck he got it into the lock on the first try. He flipped on the electric light and tossed the mail down on the table in front of the sofa. He tossed himself down on the sofa and fell asleep.
Next thing he knew, the sun was streaming in the window. A determined musician pounded on kettle drums inside his head. His mouth tasted the way a slit trench smelled. His bladder was about to explode. He staggered off to the bathroom, pissed forever, brushed his teeth, and dry-swallowed two aspirin tablets. Black coffee would have helped, too, but making it seemed too much like work.
After splashing cold water on his face, he slowly went back out into the front room. He discovered he hadn't thrown out the circulars, so he did that. Then he read his cousin's letter. It had already started snowing in Denver, and David looked likely to get a promotion at the bank where he worked.
'Bully,' Moss muttered. His voice sounded harsh and unnaturally loud in his ears. He let the letter lie where he'd left it. Cousin David was not the most interesting man God ever made.
That left the other envelope, the one with the unfamiliar handwriting. It bore no return address. Something about the stamp looked funny. When he peered closely, he saw that Ben Franklin's portrait had the word ONTARIO printed over it.
'No,' he said hoarsely. He shook his fist at the window, in the general direction of the Northwestern campus. 'God damn you to hell for the practical-joking son of a bitch you are, Fred.' He found it much easier to believe that his friend had got hold of some occupation stamps than that anyone in Ontario should write to him. He knew only one person in the conquered Canadian province, and she wished she didn't know him.
But the envelope carried a postmark from Arthur. Could Fred have arranged to have someone up there put it in the mail? Moss knew Fred could have. His friend would go to great lengths to jerk his chain.
'Only one way to find out,' he mumbled, and opened the envelope with fingers not all of whose shaking sprang from his hangover. The paper inside was coarse and cheap. He unfolded it. The letter-a note, really-was in the hand that had addressed the envelope.
Dear Mr. Moss, it read, Now you have the chance to pay me back. I daresay it will be sweet for you. I would sooner do anything than rely on the word of a man to whom I offered nothing but insult, but I find I have no choice. The harvest this year was very bad, and I have no way to raise the $2001 need to keep from being taxed off my farm. So far as I can tell, all my kin are dead. My friends are as poor as I am. Even if you do find it in your heart to send the money, I can make no promise to feel toward you the way you would want me to feel. I would not deceive you by saying anything else. Laura Secord. Her address followed.
Moss stared. The letter couldn't be anything but genuine. He'd told Fred Sandburg some of what he'd said and done up in Ontario, but he'd never mentioned the promise he'd given Laura Secord. He'd known too well how Fred would laugh.
'What do I do now?' he asked the ceiling. The ceiling didn't answer. It was up to him.
If he threw the letter away, he would have his revenge. The trouble was, he didn't much want revenge. He hadn't been angry at Laura Secord when she turned him down. He'd been disappointed. He'd been wounded, almost as if by machine-gun fire. But what he'd felt for her hadn't turned to hate, though for the life of him he couldn't have said why.
If he sent her the two hundred dollars, he'd be throwing his money away. He knew that. Had he not known it, she'd made it very plain. But, that frozen day up in Arthur, he'd told her that if she ever needed him for anything, all she had to do was ask. Now she'd asked. Was he going to break his promise? If he did, what would that make her think of Americans? What would it make her think of him?
He'd never been a man in whom altruism burned with a fine, hot flame. He was well-to-do, but not so well- to-do that spending two hundred dollars wouldn't hurt-it wasn't as if he were playing with Confederate money.
'What do I do?' he said again. The ceiling still wasn't talking.
He went back into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked like hell: bloodshot eyes, stubble, hair all awry because he hadn't bothered combing it yet. If he threw Laura Secord's letter into the wastebasket, what would he see the next time he looked in a mirror?
'A lying bastard.' That wasn't the ceiling talking. That was him. Did he want to go through life thinking of himself as a liar every time he lathered up with his shaving brush? Some people wouldn't care. Some people would figure rejection made their promise null and void.
But he'd given that promise after Laura Secord had rejected him, in spite of her rejecting him. His headache had only a little to do with the hangover. He sighed, fogging the mirror. That proved he was still alive. He knew what he would do. He'd never tell Fred Sandburg. Fred wouldn't let him live it down if he found out. He'd do it anyway.
It was Saturday morning. The banks would be closed. The post office was open, though. He could send a money order-if he had two hundred dollars in cash. By turning the apartment upside down, he came up with $75.27. He cursed under his breath for a minute, then telephoned Fred Sandburg.
'Hullo?' When Sandburg answered the phone, he sounded as if he'd just been raised from the dead and wished he hadn't been.
'Hello, Fred,' Moss said cheerfully-the aspirins were working. 'Listen, if I write you a check for a hundred and thirty bucks, can you cash it?'
'Yeah, I think so,' his friend answered.
'Good. See you in a few minutes,' Moss said. Sandburg started to ask him why he wanted the money right away, but he hung up without answering. Throwing on some clothes, he drove the few blocks to Sandburg's flat.
'What the hell is this all about?' Sandburg asked. He looked like a poor job of embalming; he'd had more to drink than Moss had. 'You eloping with some broad and you need to buy a ladder?'
'Got it the first time,' Moss told him. He wrote a check and thrust it at his friend. In return, Sandburg gave him two fifties, a twenty, and a gold eagle. 'Thanks, pal, you're a lifesaver,' Moss said. He headed out, leaving Sandburg scratching his head behind him.
At the post office, Moss discovered he couldn't buy a money order for two hundred dollars. 'Hundred-dollar maximum, sir,' the clerk said, 'but I can sell you two.' Moss nodded. The clerk went on, 'That will be $200.60- thirty-cent fee on each order.' Moss gave him the money. When he got the money orders back, he put them in an envelope he'd already addressed. For another two cents, the clerk sold him a stamp.
After that, he drove home. Now that the deed was done, he wondered how foolish he'd been. Two hundred dollars foolish, he thought-and sixty cents. When he asked his parents for money, as he'd eventually need to do, they'd want to know where it had gone. They were liable to suspect he'd spent it on a loose woman. He laughed mirthlessly. If only Laura Secord were loose, or even a little looser!
He returned to the study of the law on Monday. Every day when he went home, he checked the mail in hope of finding another envelope with an overprinted stamp. Ten days later, he got one. The note inside read simply, / see there are decent Yanks after all God bless you. He read it a dozen times, convinced beyond contradiction that that was the best two hundred dollars he'd ever spent.
