Writers & Lovers - Lily King Page 0,32

policy, she says—and other benefits.

Muriel told me I should ask about the ‘mission’ of the organization, so I do.

‘Rich people’s unwanted crap transported to poor families who are desperate for it.’ She pulls out three blank pieces of paper from her drawer. ‘This is just pro forma. I don’t know what a master’s in creative writing means exactly, but I’m sure you can write circles around all of us here.’ She pairs the papers with an index card and stands up. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Richard Totman of Weston have donated an old refrigerator that went to a home in Roxbury. I’d like you to write a brief thank-you to them.’

I follow her down the hallway to a windowless room with a chair, desk, and typewriter. ‘Just bring it to me when you’re done.’ She shuts the door behind her.

I look at the card. Both the organization’s address and the Totmans’ address are on it. I don’t know where to put the addresses on a formal business letter. I strain to think of all the business letters I’ve gotten, the kinder ones before my debts were turned over to collection agencies. I make my best guess and start in. The typewriter’s electric, and it takes me a while to figure out how to turn it on. It has one of those balls in the middle with all the letters on it. The keys are sensitive. I go through the first two sheets of paper quickly because it keeps typing letters I didn’t mean to touch. I’m careful with the last sheet and manage to get both addresses on without errors, one above the other on the left side of the paper. No idea if that’s right. I begin:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Totman,

Or should I have written ‘Mr. and Mrs. Richard Totman’? My stepmother always got mad at me when I addressed a letter to her as Mrs. Ann Peabody instead of Mrs. Robert Peabody. But it’s too late.

Thank you very much for your donation of the refrigerator.

I don’t know what to say after that. Something about the family in Roxbury. You have made a lovely family in Roxbury very happy? Is that true? Already used ‘very’ above. It has been installed in the house of a family in need in Roxbury? Three ‘ins’ in one sentence. It was very generous of you? ‘Very’ again. My pinky touches a key and six semicolons shoot out onto the page. Fuck. I scan the room for Wite-Out. Nothing. The desk has one thin drawer below the surface. No Wite-Out, but a small stack of white paper. I yank the sheet out of the machine and begin again.

It takes me eight drafts and forty-five minutes. Lynn is on the phone when I emerge from the room. She asks me with her eyes what happened and I don’t know how to mime the answer and she doesn’t signal for me to wait. I set the letter on her desk and leave.

I feel like kissing every step of the staircase as I climb up to the restaurant that night in my comfy black sneakers. I never have to go back to that office on Boylston Street again and sit in uncomfortable clothes and type in a windowless room. I get to move and talk and laugh and eat good food for free. And my mornings, my precious mornings, are saved.

Victor Silva, who recently told me he writes poetry and essays, comes in late in his big black cape and overhears me talking to Harry about the interview.

‘Why on God’s green earth would you ever think about a desk job?’

‘Financial security. Health insurance. Fingers that doesn’t smell like aioli.’

He bunches my fingers in his hands like a bouquet. ‘But I love the smell of your aioli-scented digits,’ he says in his wife’s Brazilian accent, then, in his best Bard: ‘ “Universal plodding poisons up the nimble spirits in the arteries.” ’ Then back in his own voice: ‘You know they have a health plan here.’

‘What?’

‘It’s not bad. We use it. Bia’s plan at Polaroid is crap.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Would I lie to your wounded fawn face?’ He goes off with his two pots of tea in long strides.

‘He has kind of an asexual writer thing for you, doesn’t he?’

‘Is that what it is?’

I go to see Marcus about the health insurance. It’s a Cambridge Pilgrim plan, and the deduction is manageable.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this when you hired me?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it was because you looked