Lost in the Mail

The intercom buzzer sounded like a cardiac defibrillator giving a jump-start to a dying man. I sprang from my chair, not even pausing to save the article I was working on, threw back the dead-bolt, and hurried into the corridor. My apartment was next to the stairwell, so I swung through the fire door and bounded down the three flights to the lobby, through the inner glass door, and into the building’s entry chamber.

The Pope was digging through his bag. Of course, he wasn’t really the Pope—he probably wasn’t even Catholic—but he bore a definite resemblance to John Paul II. The underarms of his pale blue Canada Post shirt were soaked and he was wearing those dark uniform shorts that made him look like an English schoolboy. We exchanged greetings; he spoke in an obscure European accent.

A hole in the panel above the mailboxes puckered like an infected wound. John Paul inserted a brass key into it. The panel flopped forward the way a pull-down bed does, giving him access to a row of little cubicles. He began stuffing the day’s round of junk mail into these—a bed of fertilizer for the first-class goodies. He left my mailbox empty, though, and instead dealt out a full set of leaflets and sale flyers onto the counter that jutted from the wall.

For most people the real mail amounted to one or two pieces, but I got a lot more than that—including a copy of the Ryerson Rambler, the alumni magazine from Ryerson Polytechnic University. When he was finished, the Pope scooped up my pile and handed it to me. As usual, it was too much to fit comfortably into the box. “Thanks,” I said, and headed back into the lobby.

I’d promised myself that I’d always take the stairs up to the third floor—one of these days I’d lose that spare tire—but, well, the elevator was right there, its door invitingly open…

Back in my apartment I sat in the angle of my L-shaped couch with my feet, as always, swung up on the right-hand section. The mail contained the usual round of press releases, several bills, and the Ryerson Rambler. The cover showed an alumnus dressed in African tribal gear. According to the caption on the contents page, some relative of his had abdicated as chief of a tribe in Ghana and he was off to take his place. Amazing how people’s lives can change completely overnight.

I was surprised to find a second magazine stuck to the back of the Rambler. University of Toronto Alumni Magazine, it said. Down in the lower-right corner of its blue-and-white cover were three strips of adhesive partially covered with a frayed paper residue. Its address label must have torn off and the glue had stuck onto the back of my magazine.

Intriguing: I’d been accepted by U of T after high school, but had decided to go to Ryerson instead. If I’d stayed with U of T, I’d be a paleontologist today, sifting through the remains of ancient life. Instead, I’m a freelance journalist specializing in the petrochemical industry, a contributing editor of Canadian Plastics, an entirely competent writer, and the only life I sift through is my own.

I began thumbing through the magazine. Here, in thirty-two glossy pages, was my past that could have been but wasn’t: graduation ceremonies at Convocation Hall, an article about the 115th year of the campus paper, The Varsity; a calendar of events at Hart House…

If I’d gone to U of T instead of Ryerson, the photos might have stirred nostalgic laughter and tears within me. Instead they lay there, halftone shadows, emotionless. Fossils of somebody else’s life.

I continued leafing through the magazine until I came to the final pages. There, under the heading “Alumni Reports,” were photos of graduates and blurbs on their careers and personal triumphs. I was surprised to find a paleo grad—it was such a small program—but at the bottom of page 30 there was an entry about a man named Zalmon Bernstein. The picture was hokey: Bernstein, a toothy grin splitting his features, holding up a geologist’s pick. He’d finished his Ph.D. in 1983, it said, the same year I would have likely finished mine had I gone there. Doubtless we would have known each other; we might even have been friends.

I read his blurb two or three times. Married. Now living in Drumheller, Alberta. Research Associate with the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. Working summers on the continuing excavations in Dinosaur Provincial Park.

He’d done all right for himself. I felt a twinge of sadness, and put the magazine aside. The other mail was nothing urgent, so I ambled back to my computer and continued poking at my article on polystyrene purification.

The next day, John Paul greeted me with his usual “ ’Morning, Mr. Coin.” As always, I felt at a disadvantage since I didn’t know his name. When he’d begun this route two years ago, I’d wanted to ask what it was. I fancied it would be a mysterious, foreign-sounding thing ending in a vowel. But I’d missed my opportunity and now it was much too late. Anyway, he knows far more about me than I could ever hope to know about him. Because my bank insists on spelling out my name in full, he knows that my middle initial—which I use in my byline—stands for Horton (yuck). He knows what credit cards I have. He knows I’m a journalist, assuming he’d recognize a press kit when he saw one. He knows I read Playboy and Canadian Geographic and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine . He even knows who my doctor is. He could write my biography, all based on the things of mine he carries around in his heavy blue sack.

As usual, he was placing my mail in a separate pile. He topped it off with a thin white-and-orange book sealed in a polyethylene bag. I gathered my booty, wished him good day, and headed back. The elevator was only on two, so I called it down. I did that occasionally. If it was on three, I hardly ever waited for it and if it was on the top floor, well, once in a blue moon I might use it.

Someday I’m going to lose that spare tire.

As I rode up, I glanced at the white-and-orange book. It was a scholarly journal. My step-uncle, a university professor, had hundreds of such publications making neat rows of identical spines on the shelves of his musty den. This one looked interesting, though, at least to me: The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology .

For some reason I swung my feet up to the left instead of the right on my L-couch. The Journal’s table of contents was printed on its cover. I recognized some of the words in the titles from my old interest in dinosaurs. Ornithischian. Hadrosaurs. Cretaceous.

I glanced at the piece of tractor-feed paper that had been slipped into the mailing bag: my name and address, all right. Who would have sent me such a thing? My birthday was rolling around—the big four-oh—so maybe somebody had got me a subscription as a semi-gag gift. The poly bag stretched as I yanked at it. Having written 750,000 words about plastics in my career, you’d think I’d be able to open those things easily.

Subscription rates were printed inside the journal’s front cover. Eighty-five American dollars a year! I didn’t have many friends and none of them would shell out that much on a gift for me, even if it was meant as a joke.

I closed the book and looked at the table of contents again. Dry stuff. Say, there’s an article by that U of T guy, Zalmon Bernstein: A New Specimen of Lambeosaurus lambei from the Badlands of Alberta, Canada . I continued down the list of titles. Correlations Between Crest Size and Shape of the Pre-Orbital Fenestra in Hadrosaurs . “Pre-orbital fenestra.” What a great-sounding phrase. All those lovely Latin and Greek polysyllables. Here’s another one—

I stopped dead. Scrobiculated Fontanelle Margins in Pachyrhinosaurs and Other Centrosaurinae from the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico , by J. H. Coin.