Chapter 24: Desk Nine

Dear Marguerite,

Two years ago I wrote to a stranger and signed with the hour of the night.

I am writing from desk nine, where the chair still squeaks.

This is the first letter I have signed with my full name.

Hallie Park

I wrote that letter at six on Monday morning, because the weekend belonged to something else.

We left the gala by the kitchen, past the dessert table, through a room full of men in white jackets who watched us run.

We took a cab to Capitol Hill.

We climbed the four flights, and on the third landing she stopped and turned around and said it.

"I love you."

She said it plainly, and then she looked horrified.

"I'm sorry. I had a speech."

"Say the speech."

"The speech was worse."

I laughed, and then I could not laugh, because she was crying.

I put my forehead against hers on the landing, under the flickering bulb.

"I love you too," I said. "I have since the ferry piece, when you wrote in my margin."

"Honest."

"That one."

She gave a soft, tearful laugh and kissed me.

I kissed her back, with my hands in her short silver-flecked hair.

We made it up the last flight somehow.

She unlocked her door and left the overhead light off, and we did not need it.

She was gentle with me that night, and then she was not, and then she was again.

I said her name so many times that it stopped being a word.

I will not tell you the rest.

I will tell you that around two in the morning the lamp by the bed was on.

Her head lay on my stomach, and I combed her hair with my fingers while she breathed.

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