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Home before ten-thirty on a night in late July
in the village of Fjord, Wisconsin, David Fischer
went to his oak desk and composed a thank-you note.
Thank you, good Nadine, for the walk through the
churchyards tonight, your stories of sainted Lutherans,
for sharing the moonrise-by-cell-phone-tower (didn’t Ansel
Adams take a famous picture of it?), for the visits to sainted
and someday-to-be-sainted Catholics, for politely eating gritty
lemon pie, for letting me and — tell you we ... rather a lot, for
driving me home, for driving me crazy, for changing your shoes,
and for cleaning the floor of your Ford here in Fjord, Wisconsin.
Knowing that Nadine had not gone back to her home when she
left him, Fischer did not immediately send the message, blue
typography on a bright, white, lighted computer screen. He left it
to season for an hour. He washed his supper dishes, did his other
bedtime chores, and then reviewed his prose. Though Fischer found
what for anyone but the addressee might be ambiguities, he was content.
And so he sent the note and went to bed and slept dreamfully till dawn.
Dave got up to pee, but he had to see, immediately, whether Nadine replied.
♦
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