The Night Letter

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Vanderpoel decided on the Metro. The slower progress of the Metro seemed a more fitting conveyance for his diminishing will to return home and the potential unpleasantness waiting there. There were five Metro stops between the airport and home. At the Metro stop he was still furious. He formed arguments in his head to justify his anger but they seemed foolish an he quickly dismissed them. If he simply came out and asked her why she had not picked him up, she would take it as a challenge and that would not go well. By Crystal City he had decided on a stoic silence as the best course of action. That way he could not say the wrong thing. But silence had never gotten him far with her before, it only drove her further away, and he realized that all of the scenes that played out in his mind depended on her playing a role he assigned to her which she almost never did. Whatever awaited him at home would likely come as a surprise that he could not prepare for. by Braddock Road where he got off, he abandoned all strategies and just decided to go home and see what would happen. Perhaps she had a good reason for not picking him up.

As he lined up his key with the door lock the dogs started barking, either in welcome or defense. He had been in the house for two months and they always barked when he came home. His assignment to Afghanistan coincided with the expiration of the lease on his apartment so he moved in with Lisa until his departure and, he guessed, he would return to it as well. She said it was silly for them to live together like a couple of students, penniless and indecisive. He couldn't say she was wrong but said it was equally as silly for them to get married because neither of them needed anything the other had; it would just be a formalized friendship. That left the matter of children. Sometimes she said she said it was too late, she didn't want them and other times she was desperate for a baby but the uncertainty made it hard for him to trust any decision and they kept putting it off. She was younger than he was by a few years and showed an impatience that he had already passed through to calm acceptance.

Inside, Lisa was lying on the couch. The dogs sniffed his hands for treats and finding them empty, returned to the couch where Lisa was now under a living blanket of dogs, watching TV and reading a book at the same time. He couldn't see the title but he knew it was some healthy weight book. Their eyes met but they said nothing. Lisa's mother had never let her children watch TV with the unfortunate side effect that Lisa was now fascinated by it. Vanderpoel went to the kitchen to get treats for the dogs and the three of them jumped off their mistress and lined up for their turn. He held each treat between fore and middle fingers. "The body of Christ... the body of Christ... the body of Christ," he said as he dispensed each one.

The dogs were close to feral when she got them and incapable of acting like pets or showing affection. They were still bereft of house manners but were deeply in love with their queen. She had at least taught them that. "Some of them eat rocks because they can't find food. When they do find food they can't eat it because their teeth are broken from eating rocks," Lisa explained to him.

Vanderpoel assumed his station at the sink to wash the few dishes he had left there three days before. Lisa used the dish washer but Vanderpoel preferred to do the job by hand. She washed her own dishes and he washed his own but he always used far more dishes than she did. Next to the sink was a build up of unopened mail, mostly financial statements and account summaries but occasionally something important came in that required action but she would never know about it because she never read her mail. Once he found an old gym membership that she had been paying for years that she never used. When he was done with the dishes he began opening and shredding the mail. He felt awkward about this invasion of her privacy when he first started doing it but he hated to see her waste money. She knew he did it and she let him; all her important accounts were in the care of her financial advisors.