Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

I’ve stolen cash — these crisp, crackling, brand-new twenty-dollar bills the fathers and grandmothers send, sealed up in sheets of wax paper. Once I got a fifty. I’ve stolen presents, too. I got a sweater and a football. I didn’t want the football, but after the package was messed up on the mail table, I had no choice, I had to take the whole thing in my day pack and throw it out on the other side of campus. I found a covered garbage can. It was miles away. Brand-new football.

Mostly, what I take are cookies. No evidence. They’re edible. I can spot the coffee cans of chocolate chip. You can smell it right through the wrapping. A cool smell, like the inside of a pantry. Sometimes I eat straight through the can during my shift.

Tampering with the United States mail is a federal crime, I know. Listen, let me tell you, I know. I got a summons in my mailbox to go to the Employment Office next Wednesday. Sure I’m scared.

The university cops want to talk to me. Great. They think, “suspect” is the word they use, that one of us is throwing out mail instead of sorting it. Wonder who? Us is the others, I’m not the only sorter. I just work Saturdays, mail comes, you know, six days a week in this country. They’ll never guess it’s me.

They say this in the letter, they think it’s out of laziness . Wanting to hurry up and get done, not spend the time. But I don’t hurry. I’m really patient on Saturday mornings. I leave my dorm early, while Lauren’s still asleep, I open the mailroom — it’s this heavy door and I have my own key. When I get there, two bags are already on the table, sagging, waiting for me. Two old ladies. One’s packages, one’s mail. There’s a small key opens the bank of doors, the little boxes from the inside. Through the glass part of every mail slot, I can see. The Astroturf field across the street over the parking lot, it’s this light green. I watch the sky go from black to gray to blue while I’m there. Some days just stay foggy. Those are the best. I bring a cup of coffee in with me from the vending machine — don’t want to wake Lauren up — and I get there at like seven-thirty or eight o’clock. I don’t mind it then, my whole dorm’s asleep. When I walk out it’s as quiet as a football game day. It’s eleven or twelve when you know everyone’s up and walking that it gets bad being down there. That’s why I start early. But I don’t rush.

Once you open a letter, you can’t just put it in a mailbox. The person’s gonna say something. So I stash them in my pack and throw them out. Just people I know. Susan Brown I open, Annie Larsen, Larry Helprin. All the popular kids from my high school. These are kids who drove places together, took vacations, they all ski, they went to the prom in one big group. At morning nutrition — nutrition, it’s your break at ten o’clock for donuts and stuff. California state law, you have to have it.

They used to meet outside on the far end of the math patio, all in one group. Some of them smoked. I’ve seen them look at each other, concerned at ten in the morning. One touched the inside of another’s wrist, like grown-ups in trouble.

And now I know. Everything I thought those three years, worst years of my life, turns out to be true. The ones here get letters. Keri’s at Santa Cruz, Lilly’s in San Diego, Kevin’s at Harvard, and Beth’s at Stanford. And like from families, their letters talk about problems. They’re each other’s main lives. You always knew, looking at them in high school, they weren’t just kids who had fun. They cared. They cared about things.

They’re all worried about Lilly now. Larry and Annie are flying down to talk her into staying at school.

I saw Glenn the day I came to Berkeley. I was all unpacked and I was standing there leaning into the window of my father’s car, saying, “Smile, Dad, jeez, at least try, would you?” He was crying because he was leaving. I’m thinking oh, my god, some of these other kids carrying in their trunks and backpacks are gonna see him, and then finally, he drives away and I was sad. That was the moment I was waiting for, him gone and me alone and there it was and I was sad. I took a walk through campus and I’d been walking for almost an hour and then I see Glenn, coming down on a little hill by the infirmary, riding one of those lawn mowers you sit on, with grass flying out of the side and he’s smiling. Not at me but just smiling. Clouds and sky behind his hair, half of Tamalpais gone in fog. He was wearing this bright orange vest and I thought, fall’s coming.

I saw him that night again in our dorm cafeteria. This’s the first time I’ve been in love. I worry. I’m a bad person, but Glenn’s the perfect guy, I mean for me at least, and he thinks he loves me and I’ve got to keep him from finding out about me. I’ll die before I’ll tell him. Glenn, OK, Glenn. He looks like Mick Jagger, but sweet, ten times sweeter. He looks like he’s about ten years old. His father’s a doctor over at UC Med. Gynecological surgeon.

First time we got together, a whole bunch of us were in Glenn’s room drinking beer, Glenn and his roommate collect beer cans, they have them stacked up, we’re watching TV and finally everybody else leaves. There’s nothing on but those gray lines and Glenn turns over on his bed and asks me if I’d rub his back.

I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. In high school, I was always ending up with the wrong guys, never the one I wanted. But I wanted it to be Glenn and I knew it was going to happen, I knew I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to stay there. It would happen. I was sitting on his rear end, rubbing his back, going under his shirt with my hands.

All of a sudden, I was worried about my breath and what I smelled like. When I turned fourteen or fifteen, my father told me once that I didn’t smell good. I slugged him when he said that and didn’t talk to him for days, not that I cared about what I smelled like with my father. He was happy, though, kind of, that he could hurt me. That was the last time, though, I’ll tell you.

Glenn’s face was down in the pillow. I tried to sniff myself but I couldn’t tell anything. And it went all right anyway.

I don’t open Glenn’s letters but I touch them. I hold them and smell them — none of his mail has any smell.

He doesn’t get many letters. His parents live across the Bay in Marin County, they don’t write. He gets letters from his grandmother in Michigan, plain, even handwriting on regular envelopes, a sticker with her return address printed on it, Rural Route #3, Guns Street, see, I got it memorized.

And he gets letters from Diane, Di, they call her. High school girlfriend. Has a pushy mother, wants her to be a scientist, but she already got a C in Chem 1A. I got an A+, not to brag. He never slept with her, though, she wouldn’t, she’s still a virgin down in San Diego. With Lilly. Maybe they even know each other.

Glenn and Di were popular kids in their high school. Redwood High. Now I’m one because of Glenn, popular. Because I’m his girlfriend, I know that’s why. Not ’cause of me. I just know, OK, I’m not going to start fooling myself now. Please.

Her letters I hold up to the light, they’ve got fluorescent lights in there. She’s supposed to be blond, you know, and pretty. Quiet. The soft type. And the envelopes. She writes on these sheer cream-colored envelopes and they get transparent and I can see her writing underneath, but not enough to read what it says, it’s like those hockey lines painted under layers of ice.

I run my tongue along the place where his grandmother sealed the letter. A sharp, sweet gummy taste. Once I cut my tongue. That’s what keeps me going to the bottom of the bag, I’m always wondering if there’ll be a letter for Glenn. He doesn’t get one every week. It’s like a treasure. Cracker Jack prize. But I’d never open Glenn’s mail. I kiss all four corners where his fingers will touch, opening it, before I put it in his box.