The letter had sat, unopened and neglected, under a dusty pile of outdated window catalogs on his desk for exactly eleven days. While it had certainly been out of sight, it had not once been out of mind for Eddie. As if with the wind, it had arrived in the work mail on his very first day back to Best Friend Windows after "The Shining," as his buddies had christened the royal ass-kicking he'd received at the hands (and steel-toed feet) of Lausch and his minions. Eddie was more than thankful that he, not Nick, had received the mail that first day. At least no one else knew of the letter's existence. Well, no one besides its author. It was best that way, so no one would give him a hard time about not opening it. About trying to forget about the space it took on the earth. About what prompted it. About how he could ever hope to respond.
He just couldn't bring himself to open it; when he'd first received it, it had pissed him off in a big way. A letter? Couldn't she talk to him? She hadn't even tried. She hadn't called or stopped by. He knew he'd pretty much let her have it at the hospital, but he half expected her to try to make some kind of contact with him. Not that he even wanted to hear from her. The thought of her sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, all contrite as she confessed her transgression, still created a bitter wave of nausea, like a spicy whiff of Bloody Mary after a hard night of drinking. Revolting. He tried to banish her image, and the image of that creep on top of her every time it assaulted his consciousness, which was about twenty-six thousand times a day. It was futile.
He'd tried his best to carry on, life as usual, put on a happy face and all that crap. He'd actually convinced himself he felt something akin to good that first day he'd returned to work. The bruises were yellowing nicely, a marked improvement from the welts resembling burst plums that had covered his face, his sides, his back, and even his knees the past few weeks. Nick was staying; he'd even snagged some new projects during Eddie's brief convalescence. Ikey was tenuously but undeniably tiptoeing back into the fold. Pizza Girl had confessed her love for Phil and he floated somewhere on cloud nine, ten, or eleven depending on the day. Owen and Allison were taking tandem baby steps toward a functional marriage. Life was good.
Except it wasn't. In spite of all of this, Eddie still found it next to impossible to climb out of bed each morning, to face every day. The morning sun through his window was like a slap to his still-sore face, salt on the gaping wound that was his newly broken heart. Instead of taking pains to maintain the constant five o'clock shadow that Janet always loved, he just let it grow now. He'd get really scruffy, shave it off when he couldn't stand the itch any more, then get scruffy all over again. His jeans were loose because few things whet his appetite any more; not pizza, not meatball subs, not burgers, not even beer for goodness sake. Fact was, just about everything that crossed his mind to eat, he'd eaten with her. Sandwiches from Murph's, the entire bar menu from Sully's, popcorn, pancakes (particularly painful to remember the happy morning-after breakfasts with Phil and Pizza Girl). Even Cheerios conjured her image. And peanut butter cookies. He'd shared all his favorites with her and now they were all tainted.
Getting through each day was simply an assault on his senses. He felt like he should carry a shield to fend off the painful memories; they were everywhere. Even though beer turned his stomach, he found that after he choked down three or four, often five or six he was numb enough to forget. And that's how he tended to fall into a restless, fitful sleep each night.
He'd only set foot in Sully's when he was certain she wasn't working. He'd send Nick or Ikey or Owen to do his recon and when he knew the coast was clear, he'd briefly belly up to the bar to drown his sorrows, as it were. But as that place housed so many memories – it was a veritable Eddie and Janet hall of fame - he didn't frequent it often at all. At Sully's, over a number of years, Eddie Latekka and Janet Meadows had become friends. When he let himself, the memories would come rushing back like a whirling, hard-driving fastball. Eddie thought back to the day he'd surprised both himself and Janet and asked her out, the day she'd verbally flipped him off after he stood her up for Allison's birthday barbecue, the day he'd confessed his feelings about her and kissed her for the first time. He smiled in spite of himself as he remembered the mortified look and blush that enflamed her cheeks when he caught her twirlin'. The homecoming kiss, their first fight over seeing her grandparents. It had all happened at Sully's.
But thankfully, Eddie could temper the piercing pain these memories stirred by calling up times at Sully's that didn't involve Janet. This was the only way he could actually set foot in the place that had fed him, body and soul, for the course of his adult life in the Ridge. He had to concentrate really intently, erect a mental roadblock to keep the pain at bay, but when he tried hard enough he could come up with dozens of Sully's memories that had nothing to do with Janet Meadows. It was his place before it was their place, and he clung tightly, white-knuckled, to that realization.
It was getting to be lunchtime. Eddie had come into the shop early; he liked getting there first so he'd have some time to pump himself up before he had to don a happy face for Nick and the customers that inevitably happened through the doorway each day. For some reason, the shop had been uncharacteristically quiet this morning, and for that Eddie was thankful. Nick wouldn't be in all day; it was the Commander's chemo day and Nick and Ronnie wouldn't leave his side on these days. Apart from a few deliveries, no one else had come in. He'd brought a PB&J from home and though he really had no gumption to eat it, it occurred to him that if he dug it out, at least he could justify hanging up the "Gone to lunch, back in 30 minutes" sign to ensure some silence for a while.
He shoved aside the stack of window catalogs, and stared for a while at the letter beneath them. The look of the envelope was imprinted on his brain, he'd stared at is so often and so long when he'd first gotten it. He'd finally buried it under the catalogs to douse its power and because he didn't know what else to do with it. It was a pale, celery green envelope graced with a gigantic Yoda stamp on the upper right corner. This had made him laugh in spite of himself when he'd received it. In fact, it was the one thing that saved that letter from being summarily chucked in the wastebasket. She must've really wanted to send it when she did because he'd seen that stamp sitting by her phone for weeks. They'd laughed about it. She'd gone to buy stamps and all they had were these obnoxious Star Wars commemorative ones, but she was desperate so she'd taken them. She'd used them on her bills: the Millennium Falcon, Princess Leia, a couple of storm troopers. But the Yoda one had sat and sat and sat. She'd since bought more normal stamps, but she held onto Yoda. He was guessing she must've gone through all the newer flag stamps and had only Yoda left when she'd finally finished writing her letter. Or maybe it was more intentional, an attempt to break the ice with a unified memory.
It was addressed to him at Best Friend Windows in her neat, large writing. He loved her writing. It was so legible, and so her. She wrote in this combination of printing and cursive that was both quirky and endearing. He was amazed how many places he'd found that writing in the past few days…on post-it notes attached to his bathroom mirror, his fridge, his desk at work. On a grocery list lying on the kitchen counter. On a paper towel tacked to the corkboard in the back room here at work. Notes that said everything from, "Morning, hot stuff! Had to run to work. Can't wait to see you tonight," to "Eddie Latekka is a huge dork!" (this in atypical huge, black, block letters in reference to some derogatory comment he'd made about her musical tastes as they'd fallen asleep one night. He'd awoken to find the offending music playing from the living room, Janet gone, the post-it stuck to her pillow). How could that woman have infiltrated every single aspect of his life in such a brief amount of time? Evidence of her was everywhere.
He stared at the writing now, at the lopsided postmark. He turned the envelope over and on the back flap was a lone, smudged "J." He couldn't recall a time the J wasn't smudged, and he knew what had smudged it. He could make out the dried remnant of a sole, splattered droplet at the edge of the J that spilled over the point of the back flap. What he didn't know was whether it was her tear or his that had left the stain.
He picked the envelope up and walked to the back room, grabbing the brown paper bag that held his sandwich from his desk drawer on the way. He plucked a Coke out of the fridge and sat down on the floor, in between the broom and the doorjamb. He propped his forearms on his thighs, gently holding the green envelope in both hands.