His car found its way to the apartment. He climbed up the stairs, noticing that it was quieter than usual. The key in the lock seemed to echo in the silent hallway. Henry set the keys on the kitchen counter and went to the bookshelf. He removed the book she had given him, and let the two letters fall from its pages. He set the letters and book on the kitchen table and turned on his record player. The 45 of the Chordettes was still waiting, and he set the needle down carefully.
Henry pulled out a bottle of vodka and placed two glasses across from one another. He poured a shot in each. Sitting down, he closed his eyes and picked up the first letter with his left hand, downed the shot, and opened his eyes to read again.
Chapter Two
Henry thought about the first time he saw her.
In 1942, Henry spent his days recovering from his less than heroic return from the war. At least, that’s how he viewed it. The medals in his dresser drawer didn't change Henry's recollection of the events. Truth was sometimes a little murky. Each night he tried to erase the memory of his third night abroad. Each morning around 8 a.m., he would drag himself to the diner for breakfast before passing out for the day.
Her hair was long, straight, and dirty. She walked into the diner with a couple of other women who worked at the factory. He couldn't recall having seen a woman so filthy from head to toe who also glowed like a flawless diamond. They ordered breakfast, talked quietly, and seemed exhausted.
Was it the three extra cups of coffee that kept him from sleeping that day? He didn't think so.
That night, Henry had stayed home, skipped the bottle, and gone to sleep early. The next day, he shaved, put on his best suit, and picked up a Wall Street Journal before he went to the diner. Becky, the waitress who worried about Henry most mornings, was taken aback when she saw him. Henry played it cool and told her he was getting on with his life. He ate breakfast for two hours that morning.
She didn't come in.
Three weeks later, Henry had gotten into a routine, found a job with a local P.I., and had mostly forgotten about the woman with the long hair. He was eating some toast when she sat down next to him at the counter.
Henry gave her a nod and she smiled. She was wearing a dress, had her hair all done up, and the grease had been replaced with makeup. She ordered a cup of coffee. When she had stirred in the cream for about five minutes, Henry asked if she was alright.
She had a voice that was deeper than he imagined...but not too deep. Her words had a bit of warmth to them. Her fiancé was going to ship out in a week, and she was taking the train to D.C. to see him one last time before he left. She said that the train didn't leave for four hours, but she was so excited that she just had to get ready and wait.
He remembered how she talked about her beloved. He had envied the young man waiting for her in D.C. because, if for no other reason, her dark brown eyes were so in love.
Now, Henry took another shot of vodka. He could imagine her with the chiseled cheek bones, button nose, and those piercing eyes, sitting across the table. It hurt to think about her.
Henry stood up from the table and walked around the room. Her face was firmly fixed in his mind. She wasn't the love of his life…that painful wound belonged to another memory. She was something, though. Henry took a hit from the bottle and stood looking out of the window. The cars rolled past. A woman chased her bonnet making an attempted getaway. A police officer was giving directions to an elderly couple. Henry noticed a man lighting up a cigarette with a cabbie on the corner, but as he turned away from the window, there she was again, in his mind, walking around his soul and bumping into all of the bottled up emotions he had hidden away. If she wasn't careful, she might knock one over and let those feelings spill out. That wouldn't do at all.
He was more tired than drunk. Back in the day, Henry really knew how to crawl into a bottle, but it seemed that those days might have passed, too. He didn't go to bed, though; he lay down on the couch and put his arm across his eyes. He tried to shut out the dim light from the street and the burning light of her face in his mind's eye. He wondered if she realized the pain she had inflicted when sending him the record.
She was the kindest person he knew. It seemed unlikely that she envisioned him spending months being torn to shreds emotionally when he failed to find her. It just wasn't her way.
His mind retrieved a happier moment. It was the day they spent looking at early works of art by Henri Matisse. Henry didn't care much for art, until he saw it through her eyes. She talked with ease about Matisse's first paintings. Henry didn't understand much of what she was saying, but he never dismissed art again. In fact, there were many times, over the years, when he found himself drawn into a museum for comfort. The quiet appealed to him. Eventually he started to enjoy the paintings, too.