“What’s that?”
“I read the Post,” she said. “I figured you were behind it somehow, though I don’t know how you finessed it.” I let her talk. I liked the sound of her voice. “Don’t want to discuss it, huh?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You drunk, Stefanos? You sound a little drunk.”
“Tired,” I said.
“Well, it is late. So I’ll get right to the point. Listen, I was wondering-you didn’t call, so I thought I’d take the initiative here-I was wondering if maybe you wanted to take in a double feature tomorrow night, down at the AFI.”
My cat sat on the radiator, watching me twist the phone cord around my hand. “What’s on the bill?” I said.
“Some shoot-em-up out of Hong Kong, and a Douglas Sirk melodrama. Magnificent Obsession. Something for you, something for me.”
“No Liz Taylor?”
“Nope,” she said. “And no Isaac Hayes.”
I grinned. “Sounds good to me. You buy the tickets, I’ll spring for whatever comes up next. Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll pick you up at your place,” she said. “About six-thirty.”
“You know where I live?”
“Your number’s on the card. I crossed-referenced it to your address in the Hanes Directory.”
“You’re a hell of an investigative reporter.”
“See you tomorrow night, Stefanos.”
“Right.”
I got off the couch with the phone in my hand, and I stood in the center of the room. A Dinah Washington number played from my landlord’s apartment above. I danced a few steps and put the phone down. My cat watched me and blinked her eye.
I took the coffee cup to the kitchen and found the note that had been signed “A Fan” on t he plain white card, in the basket where I dumped my overdue bills. I walked with the note to my bedroom, and I opened the top dresser drawer.
I wasn’t certain that night as to why I kept the note. Call it a feeling, listening to the woman’s voice on the phone, that something right would happen next. But as spring became summer, I began to understand.
That was the summer that I first noticed the texture of the crepe myrtle that grew beside my stoop, the summer I woke each morning to the sweet smell of hibiscus that flowered outside my bedroom window. That was the summer that a tape called The La’s played continuously from my deck, the summer that a Rare Essence go-go single called “Lock It” raged from every young D.C. driver’s sound system on the street. And that was the summer that I held hands in the dark with a freckly, pale-eyed redhead with the perfectly musical name of Lyla McCubbin.
Under a shoe box filled with trinkets from my youth, in the bottom of the dresser drawer, lay the envelope that held the few memories I had chosen to hold on to through the years. I placed the white card into the envelope, behind the photograph of me and Billy Goodrich sitting high on the fire escape in New Orleans. I slipped the envelope back under the shoe box and closed the drawer. My cat walked slowly into the room and settled at my feet.
