“Who’s your other Sunday man! Who’s your other Sunday man! Tell me!” implored Thomas wildly.
“Stop it! Stop it this minute, Thomas!”
“Who?” It was his last question. He could not continue the interrogation because he had begun to sob.
“Thomas? Thomas?” Vera realized he had fled his station when she heard him trip over the loose tile in the hallway. Vera clambered out of the tub, rushed to the door, listened. The faint sounds of Thomas moving about in the kitchen penetrated to her. They were muffled and indistinct, unidentifiable except when she heard him blow his nose loudly. The dim noises shifted location, now they seemed to muddle about the living room. After a bit the apartment door slammed. It seemed Thomas had gone off. Vera proceeded cautiously nevertheless, scissors in hand. She did not rule out tricks. Perhaps he lay in waiting for her. She discovered his message in the living room where the word CUNT was written on the davenport in mustard, the letters a foot high.
Vera arrived for work Monday, hopping mad, determined to slap Thomas’s face in front of everybody. If he thought he could get off scot-free after the disgusting thing he had done to her davenport, he had another think coming. And if anybody wanted to know why she had slapped his face, she’d tell them, word and all.
But there was no face to slap. There was no Thomas. A relief projectionist was in the booth and rumours were flying. Someone had heard that Thomas had phoned Mr. Buckle at home, on Sunday, and quit his job. No, said another, he hadn’t quit, only requested sick leave because he was rundown, needed a rest. Despite the differences in the rumours all seemed to be agreed that Vera had had a hand in Thomas’s disappearance. Doris and Amelia hinted to Vera that Mr. Buckle was furious with her and held her responsible for the loss of the best projectionist he had ever had, one who didn’t smoke in the booth in the midst of highly inflammable film and didn’t show up for work drunk. When Frank spoke to Vera he did so gently and mournfully, in a doe-eyed manner appropriate in addressing the wretched in love, the heart-broken.
Vera didn’t give a tinker’s fart for what they thought as long as she was rid of that geek Thomas. It looked as if she was. But shortly after she decided that, the letters began to arrive.
Dear Miss High & Mighty,
I dont expect anyone to feel sorry for me hut isnt it funny. Here I am without a job and no savings because I spend my money on the Dodge all for you to make you happy. And now I cant enjoy it myself without the money to fill the tank or even buy a spark plug. Well remember lifes a funny thing and those who think there on top dont always finish that way.
People have played Thomas for a fool before like at school and whatnot. But tell your Sunday man that this fool has often fooled them and got what Thomas wants. So dont bother to laugh yet the two of you. Another thing Ive got my ways of finding out who he is.
Yours,
Thomas
Several days after this letter was delivered Vera came out of the theatre after it had closed for the night and spotted Thomas. He was across the street, huddled up in the dark doorway of a music store. It gave Vera quite a fright to see him there, spying on her. Her first inclination was just to walk quickly, to pretend he didn’t exist. But maybe that was running away. She took three or four brisk steps, then changed her mind, swung round, and saluted him by waving to him in an exaggerated fashion, like a woman flagging down a bus from the side of a highway.
Thomas betrayed not a flicker of recognition. He remained slouched and unmoving until Vera exhausted the novelty of her performance and walked on with an angry toss of the head.
Dear Miss High Opinion of Yourself,
I suppose you figure it was a big laugh waving like that the other night. Well I wave to my freinds and I have plenty of them good ones more than you think and I dont wave to people who think waving is to make fun of somebody. I could have waved back maybe for a joke if I didnt love you Vera. But love is not a joke. It is the most serious thing there is. More serious than death is love. If you could learn that Vera you might be happier I can see you arent always so angry. Dont make jokes about me or my love. I have been awfully forgiving but it is hard when you are so miserable like me.
Your freind,
Thomas
Vera put a paring knife in her purse and slid a hat-pin into the sleeve of her coat where she could get to it in a hurry if she needed to. It was November. The nights came early and there were fewer people in the streets because of the cold. Vera’s walk home after work seemed lonelier and longer than it had in the summer.
One night she stepped out of the lobby of the theatre and into a change of weather. There was a smell of snow in the air and a harsh wind was scurrying scraps of paper down the street and moaning through the telephone wires overhead.
Change of any sort, even the passing of autumn into winter, always had the effect of temporarily lifting Vera’s spirits. Now the stinging wind which burned her cheeks braced and energized her. She went forward briskly, the rapping of her heels on the sidewalk sounding crisp and metallic in the frosty, clear night. Only the occasional late-night diner showed any signs of life. In them Vera could see cabbies arguing and drinking coffee at the counters. These were the same men who prowled their hacks back and forth in front of the theatre when the movies let out, hoping to snap up a fare. But tonight the hunting had been bad, a sparse crowd for a bad movie. So they were sitting on their duffs, trying to make up their minds whether to call it a night and go home to the little woman or to keep trying to scare up a buck against the odds. Vera might have joined them for a cup of hot chocolate if the wind hadn’t felt so good in her face. It was blowing her head clean of the reek of cheap perfume, men’s hair oil, and the close, hot, overpowering smell of bodies packed shoulder to shoulder so they could be entertained. She turned up her collar, hugged her coat to her bosom, lengthened her stride.
After five minutes at this determined pace, Vera turned into a narrower, quieter street of small shops over which their proprietors and families lived. For almost a year Vera had passed this way each day on her way to and from work but its strangeness had not worn off; it still seemed to her foreign and a touch romantic. Sometimes she imagined it was a street in Europe because she knew this was as close to Europe as she would ever get, and her walk home became a stroll in Vienna, Budapest, Prague. What helped this illusion was the look of the stores and the immigrant storekeepers, most of whom were Jews.
Vera always shopped on this street out of a sense of adventure, to hear the nervous, dark-suited men serve her in English accented by Polish, Russian, German, Hungarian, and Yiddish. She was secretly disappointed when she was waited on by one of the sombre, responsible children who deftly wrapped parcels and climbed onto stools to ring up sales and make change with decision. It was difficult to preserve the illusion of Vienna or Budapest when the children spoke to her in their ordinary, everyday Canadian voices. Neither the Stars of David, the Yiddish signs in the windows, nor the young boys with their beanie hats stuck on the crowns of their heads could help recapture the dream that language had shattered. No, what was more to Vera’s taste was some shrunken old man bent over his counter late at night, poring over a newspaper, a single light burning in the shop for economy’s sake, and the rest in shadow. That could be Russia.