She rolled her eyes. “Did you get the mail?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I just checked it and there was nothing there.”
“I heard the mailman come in. I guess there was nothing today. Why are you still preoccupied with the mail?”
“I’m not. I was just curious. Did you really not do anything today?”
“Not a damn thing.”
She undressed and climbed in bed beside me.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Nothing is ever okay.”
“Oh Christ, Stratton,” she said, disgusted. She rolled away and didn’t bother saying anything further. I had the urge to kick her out of bed, but I didn’t have the ambition to do even that. Instead I stewed in anger for a few minutes, and when that was gone, I simply languished.
“When is the last time you left the apartment?”
“Sunday.”
“Why don’t you go outside and do something?”
“Fear,” I said. Then I rolled over and tried sleeping.
3
The next day, I felt slightly better. Carolyn didn’t work. I woke at ten, finally got out of bed an hour later and showered, then listlessly shuffled out of the stuffy apartment. The sun was out, midseventies, blue skies and smooth sailing. I checked my email at the library but found nothing important. I ate lunch at a cheap Mexican restaurant and made it home by one. The mailman was sorting the mail. He was early. I waited for him to finish, then unlocked the box and pulled out three envelopes. The first two were junk. The third was a letter from my father, and I gave it nothing more than a cursory glance as I turned to throw it into one of the garbage cans outside. But then I stopped. Something didn’t add up. I had literally received hundreds of letters from him, each one the same—the capital block lettering, the return address, the penitentiary stamp over the back seal. But I had noticed something different in the split second my eyes had flitted across the envelope’s face with the preconception that comes with the overly familiar, and it was with heavy dread that I finally looked a second time. My heart sank, and the hand holding the envelope began to tremble. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. The name across the front, written in faint blue ink . . . it wasn’t mine.
It was Carolyn’s. And upon that realization, the world, and everything in it, seemed to stop moving.