From: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
To: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
Subject: No Subject
dearest toulouse, it has taken many hours to put these thoughts to paper — i have only recently heard of your most terrible tragedy. i have learned everything (please forgive my “abominable” typing — I am sorry but i don’t yet know how to use the spell-check). what a wonderful boy he was! if you do not wish to write back it will be ok. i know you must be suffering so. i’m sorry i didn’t write you during the week but was playing a stupid game, waiting for you to write ME first. i DO know everything now — even that my oldest and dearest friend topsy is your father (!). he is such a good man and saved my live! and the babies too, i think. you are blessed even if it seems that god has done something so unfair by taking dearest edward away. he is with the angels now, and should be a saint if john paul has anything to say about it. PLEASE write soon and again, i am sorry for being “petulant.” love, amaryllis
ps my love to pull-man
From: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
To: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
Subject: No Subject
amaryllis, thank you for your note and i’m sorry it has been so long to get back. i didn’t even check my email for the longest time. since you already know, i will tell you now that i DID know my father was the man who had helped you — i knew but made a vow not to say it and i hope you will forgive me. but it is something i did not know for the longest time either. it took edward, as usual, to put the pieces together. actually, and i don’t think he would mind me telling you this, edward put the pieces together with the help of his MOTHER, who actually TOLD him (!) (did your foster mother tell you?) edward said that you and my father already knowing each another was “karma.” have you ever heard of karma? it seems to be a buddhist concept. lucy and i are still trying to adjust to him not being here — as if that will ever be possible. most of the time it feels like he is away at the hospital (where he used to go periodically). sometimes lucy and i drive around in the buggy — we tied one of his scarves at the end of the antenna so that it flaps like a flag — or just lie around his house. (we have not yet gone thru the ceiling trapdoor into your old room) that way, we feel his presence near. we avoid the workshop too because it is still a bit eerie to see all of his masks. we always keep a seat for him at the majestyk when we screen movies. it is the empty one between us. there are no longer doctors and nurses everywhere and that’s a good thing but joyce (edward’s mother) is having a hard time so there’s usually one nurse here at night who stays in the main residence. lucy has had sleepovers at saint-cloud a lot. (the place you were nearly “arrested” at, remember??!!) sincerely, toulouse
ps. she has been depressed and her parents want her to take a drug for it. that is so insane! (she has assured me she most certainly will not take a single pill because it would make her gain weight.) also, she has not been writing her book.
pps pullman sends his love
From: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
To: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
Subject: No Subject
dearest toulouse. thank you for writing back so promptly. i apologize for spelling your name incorrectly in my previous note. you are SUCH a good speller! lani has shown me how to use the spell-check but i’m worried their are words it does not include. no, my foster mom did not tell me but we have since talked about it and she thinks it is AMAZING. how is everything? i hope you are feeling better. yes, things will never be the same without him but you must cherish the time you had with edward while he was here — which i know you and lucy already do. (I don’t mean I am condescendant.) i looked up karma on the internet. it said that the universe is a wheel and that all its creatures turned upon the wheel and that you couldn’t leave the wheel until you realized you were part of brahma? but what IS brahma. i have done my share of studying of the religions especially the field of those who are in line for sainthood. i have studied the royal kumari, but the lives they lead are so different than this experience of the wheel — they return to their villages after they are done. i guess that is getting off the wheel but in a different way?
i’m sorry but the spel-check does not work today love, amaryllis
From: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
To: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
Subject: No Subject
dear DEAREST toulouse, they have also beatified TWO popes. one of them has met resistance because it was reported that he called the jewish “dogs.” we should all be such wonderful “dogs” as pull-man, so that is a complement?
From: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
To: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
Subject: No Subject
ps — i’m sorry i pressed *send* before i wanted to ask why are you called harliquinboy?
From: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
To: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
Subject: a swami sandwich on rye
pullman is of the harlequin breed of great danes. edward always thought harlequinboy was dumb but i like it because it reminds me of pullie. besides, so many email names are already taken it gets boring trying to be clever.
do you think you will ever get your own account? and do you think that your foster mom ever “E-avesdrops”?
i was very interested in what you wrote. it made me thing of pullman too though it bothered me to read on one of the *karma* websites that people of “evil” were in danger of being reborn as dogs or pigs, both of whom i feel to be often more advanced than animals of the “human” variety. if that is their true belief then I would think twice about becoming a buddhist. one thing i did read i thought pretty interesting. it was called the *law of the last thought* and said the thoughts or ideas that come to a person at the time of his death are responsible for his next life. what if a person who is in the middle of realizing how to make the perfect potato chip suddenly dies?!!? or what if a person forces himself to think “i will live forever” during his last moment. it made me wonder what EDWARD’S last thought was and i can’t help but think it was something really mean & witty. at least i hope it was. your friend, toulouse
p. s. i was also wondering if pullman could have a thought, and what that thought might be. aside from food!
pps i can just see edward as a swami, with a turban of his own design. it’s funny but when i think of him now, i never picture him with his face covered and i never see the brace. i just see him normal, and able to move around. corny, huh.
From: “Toulouse Trotter” <harlequinboy@home.com
To: “Amaryllis” <lanimottCASA@hotmail.com
Subject: internet superhighway fatalities
i forgot to tell you this weird thing that happened while i was searching “*karma*” i suddenly get this bizarre message on my computer: **unexpected trappable error. a fatal error occurred in an external object.** it was like the computer was trying to explain karma! or at least PART of karma, i guess. it was very nearly the computer’s “last thought”!!! i wonder what my computer was before it was a computer. maybe a dishwasher?!! kinda rad, huh. i wonder what they mean by *trappable* tho.
my mom owes me a birthday party. maybe we can see each other?
have you spoken to my father? i see him a lot now but don’t like to ask him about you. (not that i don’t want to) he DID say he saw you, and the motts. he said you told him you were actually looking for him that day you met me and my cousins on boulder’s movie. how weird is THAT? it made me sad to think of you back then so all alone. but you had him and he had you and that’s the main thing, no? and then you met US.