... I see that
that letter grieved you, though only for a while.
2 Corinthians 7:8
(RSV)
Marc’s mind was
suddenly racing: Could this woman be part of some vaguely remembered
frat parties from two years ago? His memory was cloudy, and her
yapping didn’t help.
"I'm Maggie
Boyce,” she announced. Like he cared. "It's actually Mary
Margaret, but almost nobody calls me..."
She wasn’t
bad-looking, with platinum hair and bright green eyes. But she was a
little old for him, Marc thought, pushing thirty for sure. And a bit
too voluptuous for his taste. Then again, some nights it hadn’t
mattered who the girl was. In any case, she couldn’t expect him to
remember her name - could she? And this letter she mentioned - was he
being sued? Destruction of private property. Breach of promise. Oh,
God - paternity suit.
“Has a letter come
in for me lately?” he asked Esteban urgently.
“¿Como?”
Esteban yawned.
Hearing English
again had thrown Marc off. “Una
carta - ¿recibí una carta?”
Esteban lifted his
arm limply toward Marc’s desk for a second before letting it fall
against his leg. Marc saw just the girl, timidly pointing a finger at
the desk behind him. Only now did he turn away from her, to rifle
through the stacks of paper there.
“Actually,” she
ventured, “it maybe doesn’t matter so...”
Then he came across
an envelope he hadn’t noticed before. “¿Cuando
lo llegó?” he
shouted, studying the U.S. postmark. When
did this arrive?
There was a pause
and a sigh from the back room. “Mm
... una
semana pasado - dos tal vez.”
“Two weeks ago?”
Marc was raving as he ripped open the envelope. “Geez, if you don’t
specifically ask, they don’t tell you...”
“It’s no big
deal,” she tried again to interject. “It was just to sort of warn
you I was coming.”
“...knows I don’t
look through this junk ...” he mumbled as he pulled the paper out
and unfolded it. Instead of reading it, he glanced up at her. This
was not a legal notification of any kind - he knew, he’d seen
enough of them. It was just a hand-written note from a - he flipped
it over - from a Paul Schiffler.
“I got your name
from Paul Schiffler,” the girl was saying. “He said you ran an
air taxi down here, that you gave him a lift several months ago. You
transported his research samples sometimes.”
At last Marc could
breathe a sigh of relief. This ditzy chick had taken five minutes of
his time just to say that she was a business referral. And what was
she chattering about now?
“You see, I
connected with Paul on the Internet and he said he'd been down here,
and I said I wanted come too, and well, he mentioned your name."
She paused here for a breath.
He looked at her
blankly. "And..?"
She glared at him.
“Okay, fine. This isn't a social call,” she said, finally getting
down to business. “I need a lift into the interior right away,”
she said, pulling out a map. “To a research station. It’s right
on the map here.” She pointed, but he didn’t have to look.
“No can do,” he
said flatly. He decided to take a load off and look over this letter
after all. The handwriting was an effort to read, so he just scanned
for key words. “...referring
a client .... Maggie Boyce
...” Now why did that name sound familiar?
“You’d be back
here in a matter of hours,” the girl was saying.
“I said I can’t,”
he emphasized each word. “I got shipments to make. I’m out of
here - north to Guatemala by tonight.” He went back to the letter.
Frankly,
not professionally qualified and emotionally ... if you can talk
her out of it ...
"Oh, oh, I
see,” her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Well, in that case, I
guess I’ll just hang around here in the middle of nowhere doing
nothing, until that cargo pilot comes back sometime this week or
next...” He looked up again from the page. Was she still here? He
was trying to enjoy the first letter he’d gotten in months.
“...since it’s too damned inconvenient for you to help me out!”
Her voice rose a
little with each word she spoke so that she ended with a shout. He
looked a little surprised and let a smile escape one corner of his
mouth. This woman, he could see, was not about to be talked out of
anything.
In trying to finish
the last paragraph, he reached the words that stopped even him cold.
Mother
... six weeks ago ... now her sister ... cancer ...
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