Two
FLORAL CARPET. FLUORESCENT lights. Concrete walls painted industrial cream. And a big reception desk made from cheaply veneered wood, over which were clocks that showed the time in London, Chicago, San Francisco and (of course) here in Boston. This was the reception area of the Fairfield Inn, Logan Airport. It did not look promising, especially since there was already a huge line in front of the desk.
‘Must be all the X-ray people,’ said the man who had just joined behind me.
I smiled.
‘Yes, must be,’ I said.
‘“X-ray people”,’ the man said again, shaking his head at this comment. ‘Makes it sound like 1950s sci-fi. Not that you were around in the 1950s. ’
‘Glad you think so.’
‘I would say you were born in 1980.’
‘Now that is flattery.’
‘You mean, I got it wrong?’ he asked.
‘By about eleven years, yes.’
‘I’m disappointed.’
‘By my age?’
‘By my inability to guess your age,’ he said.
‘That’s a major personal fault?’
‘In my game it is.’
‘And your game is.?’
‘Nothing terribly interesting.’
‘That’s quite an admission,’ I said.
‘It’s the truth.’
‘And the truth is.?’
‘I sell insurance.’
I now stepped back and got a proper look at this insurance man.
Mid-height — maybe five foot nine. Reasonably trim figure — with the slightest hint of a paunch around his stomach. Graying hair, but not thinning hair. Steel-rimmed glasses in a rectangular frame. A dark blue suit — not particularly expensive, not particularly cheap. A mid-blue dress shirt. A rep tie. A wedding ring on his left index finger. He had a Samsonite roll-on bag in one hand, and a very large black briefcase on the floor next to it — no doubt filled with policy forms just waiting to be filled in as soon as he landed the necessary clients. I judged him to be somewhere in his mid-fifties. Not particularly handsome. Outside of the gray hair, not looking bloated or too weathered by life.
‘Insurance is one of life’s necessities,’ I said.
‘You should write my sales pitch.’
‘I’m certain you’ve got a better one than that.’
‘Now it’s you who’s flattering me.’
‘And where do you sell insurance?’
‘Maine.’
I brightened.
‘My home state,’ I said.
Now he brightened.
‘Born and bred?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely. Heard of Damariscotta?’
‘I live about twenty miles away in Bath. ’
I then told him where I’d grown up, also mentioning my years at U Maine.
‘I’m a U Maine grad as well,’ he said — and we quickly discovered which dorms we lived in during our respective freshman years and that he was a business studies major at the college.
‘I did biology and chemistry,’ I said.
‘Far more brainy than me. So you’re a doctor?’
‘What makes you guess that?’
‘The two science majors, and the fact that there is a radiography convention this weekend at this hotel — and all you X-ray people are delaying my check-in.’
That last comment came out with a smile. But I took his point, as there were fifteen people ahead of us and only two receptionists at work. We were going to be here awhile.
‘So you’ve decided I’m an X-ray person,’ I said.
‘That’s just deduction.’
‘You mean, I don’t look like an X-ray person?’
‘Well, I know I look like the sort of man who sells insurance.’
I said nothing.
‘See,’ he said, ‘guilty as charged.’
‘Do you like selling insurance?’
‘It has its moments. Do you like being a radiographer?’
‘I’m just a technologist, nothing more.’
‘If you’re a radiographic technologist, that’s a pretty important job.’
I just shrugged. The man smiled at me again.
‘Which hospital?’
‘Maine Regional.’
‘No kidding. Were you working there when Dr Potholm ran the department?’
‘Dr Potholm hired me.’
The man smiled and stuck out his hand.
‘I’m Richard Copeland.’ He simultaneously handed me his business card.
I took his hand. A firm grip. A salesman’s grip. I pocketed the card. I told him my name.
‘My first grade teacher was named Laura,’ he said, ‘though we called her Miss Wigglesworth.’
‘Well, my mother told me that, after much debate, the name choice came down to Laura or Sandra. My father preferred the latter, but my mother was certain I’d end up being called Sandy.’
‘Sandy’s a little bit Californian, isn’t it?’
Now it was my turn to giggle. Richard Copeland certainly had an easy conversational style. But he was also somewhat cautious with his body language, as if he was always fighting a certain physical shyness. I could see him looking me over and then trying to mask the fact that he was looking me over. The banter between us was simultaneously breezy and guarded. I characterized him as a flirt who was not totally at ease with being a flirt. But this was, without question, a flirtation — of the sort that two strangers have when caught together in a long line and they know that, in fifteen minutes, they’ll never be seeing each other again.
‘Funny you say that. When I was thirteen my dad mentioned to me that I almost ended up with another first name, but “Mother hated the name Sandra”. And when I asked her why she was so against that name, Mom said that Sandy would have made me sound like “a surfer girl”.’
‘Spoken like a true Maine mother.’
‘Oh, Mom would have been very much at home in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.’
He looked a little surprised by that last comment — almost flinching a bit.
‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ I asked.
‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it’s not every day you hear someone make reference to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.’
‘Most of us read The Scarlet Letter at some point in school.’
‘And most of us have forgotten all about it.’
‘Well, I can’t say I’ve downloaded it onto my Kindle. not that I have one.’
‘You prefer paper?’
‘I prefer real books. And you?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve crossed over to the dark side.’
‘It’s not a mortal sin.’
‘I do have twenty books in my in-box right now.’
‘And what are you reading right now?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘Let me decide that. What’s the book?’
I could see him blush. And stare down at his well-polished black cordovans.
‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.’
‘That is a coincidence,’ I said.
‘But the truth.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I could show you my Kindle if you don’t believe me. ’
‘No need, no need.’
‘Now I’m sure you think I’m weird.’
‘Or just weirdly literate. Anyway, The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne and all that.’
‘It remains a great novel.’
‘And rather prescient, given the current wave of religiosity sweeping the country.’