Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

Rolly looked stupefied. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m telling you she’s going to be okay.”

“But,” he said slowly, as if unable to take it all in, “those doctors, they told her she was dying. And now, what, they say they were wrong?”

“You know,” I said, “this is not what I’d call bad news.”

Rolly blinked. “No, of course not. It’s wonderful news. Better than getting good news and then getting bad, I suppose.”

“True.”

Rolly glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to go.”

So did I. My creative writing class started in one minute. The last assignment I’d given them was to write a letter to someone they didn’t know, and to tell this person-real or imaginary-something they didn’t feel they could tell anyone else. “Sometimes,” I said, “it’s easier to tell a stranger something very personal. It’s like there’s less risk, opening yourself up to someone who doesn’t know you.”

When I asked for a volunteer to kick things off, to my amazement, Bruno, the class wiseass, put up his hand.

“Bruno?”

“Yes, sir, I’m ready.”

It was unlike Bruno to volunteer, or have completed an assignment. I was wary but at the same time intrigued. “Okay, Bruno, let’s have it.”

He opened his notebook and began, “Dear Penthouse.”

“Hold it,” I said. The class was already laughing. “This is supposed to be a letter to someone you don’t know.”

“I don’t know no one at Penthouse ,” Bruno said. “And I did just like you said. I wrote them about something I wouldn’t tell nobody else. Well, not my mama, anyhow.”

“Your mama’s the one got a staple through her belly,” someone quipped.

“You wish your mama looked like that,” Bruno said, “’stead of like somebody’s photocopied butt.”

“Anyone else?” I asked.

“No, wait,” Bruno said. “Dear Penthouse: I’d like to tell you about an experience involving a very close personal friend of mine, whom I shall henceforth call Mr. Johnson.”

A kid named Ryan nearly fell off his chair from laughing.

As usual, Jane Scavullo sat at the back of the room, gazing at the window, bored, acting as though everything that was happening in this class was beneath her. Today, perhaps she was right. She looked as though she’d rather be anyplace but here, and if I could have looked in a mirror right then, I might have found myself wearing the same expression.

A girl who sat ahead of her, Valerie Swindon, a pleaser if there ever was one, had her hand up.

“Dear President Lincoln: I think you were one of the greatest presidents because you fought to free slaves and make everyone equal.”

It went on from there. Kids yawned, rolled their eyes, and I thought it was a terrible state of affairs when you couldn’t be earnest about Abraham Lincoln without seeming like a dweeb. But even as she read her letter, I found my mind wandering to the Bob Newhart routine, the phone conversation between the savvy Madison Avenue type and the president, how he tells Abe maybe he should unwind, take in a play.

I asked a couple of other kids to share, and then tried Jane.

“I’ll pass,” she said.

At the end of class, on her way out, she dropped a sheet of paper on my desk. It read:

“Dear Anyone: This is a letter from one anyone to another anyone, no names required, because nobody really knows anybody anyway. Names don’t make a hell of a lot of difference. The world is made up entirely of strangers. Millions and millions of them. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. Sometimes we think we know other people, especially those we supposedly are close to, but if we really knew them, why are we so often surprised by the shit they do? Like, parents are always surprised by what their kids will do. They raise them from the time they are babies, spend each and every day with them, think they’re these goddamn fucking angels, and then one day the cops come to the door and say hey, guess what, parents? Your kid just bashed some other kid’s head in with a baseball bat. Or you’re the kid, and you think things are pretty fucking okay, and then one day this guy who’s supposed to be your dad says so long, have a nice life. And you think, what the fuck is this? So years later, your mom ends up living with another guy, and he seems okay, but you think, when’s it coming? That’s what life is. Life is always asking yourself, when’s it coming? Because if it hasn’t come for a long, long time, you know you’re fucking due. All the best, Anyone.”

I read it a couple of times, and then at the top, with my red pen, I printed an “A.”

I wanted to drop by Pamela’s at lunch again to see Cynthia, and as I was walking to my car in the staff parking lot, Lauren Wells was pulling into the empty spot next to mine, steering with one hand, a cell phone pressed up against her head with the other.

I had managed not to run into her the last couple of days, and didn’t want to talk to her now, but she was powering her window down and raising her chin at me while she kept talking on the cell, signaling me to hold on. She stopped the car, said, “Hang on a sec” into the phone, then turned to me.

“Hey,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since you went back to see Paula. Are you going to be on the show again?”

“No,” I said.

Her face flashed disappointment. “That’s too bad,” she said. “It might have helped, right? Did Paula say no?”

“Nothing like that,” I said.

“Listen,” Lauren said, “can you do me a favor? Just for a second? Can you say hi to my friend?”

“What?”

She held up the cell. “Her name’s Rachel. Just say hi to her. Say, ‘Hi, Rachel.’ She’ll die when I tell her you’re the one whose wife was on that show.”

I opened the door to my car and before I got in said, “Get a life, Lauren.”

She stared at me openmouthed, then shouted, loud enough for me to hear through the glass, “You think you’re hot shit but you’re not!”

When I got to Pamela’s, Cynthia was not there.

“She called in, said the locksmith was coming,” Pamela said. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly one. I figured that if the locksmith showed up on time, he’d have been gone by ten, eleven at the latest.

I reached into my pocket for my cell, but Pam offered me the phone on the counter.

“Hi, Pam,” Cynthia said when she answered. Caller ID. “I’m so sorry. I’m on my way.”

“It’s me,” I said.

“Oh!”

“I dropped by, figured you’d be here.”

“The guy was late, left only a little while ago. I was just heading over.”

Pam said to me, “Tell her not to worry, it’s quiet. Take the day.”

“You hear that?” I said.

“Yeah. Maybe it’s just as well. I can’t keep my mind on anything. Mr. Abagnall phoned. He wants to see us. He’s coming by at four-thirty. Can you be home by then?”

“Of course. What did he say? Has he found out anything?”

Pamela’s eyebrows went up.

“He wouldn’t say. He said he’d discuss everything with us when he gets here.”

“You okay?”

“I feel kind of weird.”

“Yeah, me too. He might be telling us that he hasn’t found a thing.”

“I know.”

“We seeing Tess tomorrow?”

“I left a message. Don’t be late, okay?”

When I hung up, Pam said, “What’s going on?”

“Cynthia hired- we hired someone to look into her family’s disappearance.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, it’s none of my business, but you ask me, it happened so long ago, you’re just throwing your money away. No one’s ever going to know what happened that night.”

“See you later, Pam,” I said. “Thanks for the use of the phone.”