Memory

She was digging for some spare change hoping to find more than a 25 cent tip for the delivery man. She'd ordered a bagel from the downstairs deli because she'd left for New York in a rush and until the shops opened she was a prisoner in yesterday's wrinkled clothes stll groggy from the sweet perfume of last night's furious lovemaking behind her knees and trembling on all her pulse points and stinking up the place.



The sound of the bowl of change toppling over jarred her back to her senses. Underneath, a folded up letter about the thickness of a book. She read the first page and stuffed it back into the box where it had been kept, because hidden wasn't the proper term. It had been left, sort of out in the open, but not. The box itself was just sort of there, under the bowl where he kept his loose change. The bowl was always full after she left because she hated the rattling of coins. She went back to picking up the coins, scraping them off the smooth floor with her fingernails like a cat scratching at the litter box.



She was not a sentimental person. She kept few things from her former loves and certainly not something like that. She tried to be understanding, to see it from his point of view. It could be seen as reasonable to keep a letter from an ex-girlfriend that glorified your penile organ. If you were stupid and knew nothing about women.



Having replaced the coins to the bowl, she found enough change to make a dollar and tried to read anything but the letter. She read fourteen pages of Murakami, listened to The Smiths, read the newspaper from two weeks ago, and the back of a carton of free trade orange juice. By the time she got back to the letters, she was convinced that he was still in love with her, and that made her feel pathetic.



She made a cup of tea and when the doorbell sounded, half-smiled at the delivery boy's cheerfulness in the opened door. Then she sat at the counter on the bar stool and watched eggs and cheese and country ham congeal on toast.