Dead Letters Anthology Read Free Page B

couldn’t remember the exact terms. Plus you wouldn’t actually send someone a piece, would you, even if you’d taken it? You both needed to retain full sets in order to keep playing the game.
    Whatever. I could imagine it’d be annoying for the move to have gone astray, but if the guy was no longer at that address, and had left no forwarding information, there wasn’t a lot that could be done about it.
    At that moment I heard the sound of a car turning in off the street, and swore, and rapidly stubbed out my cigarette, and scurried inside.
    * * *
    ‘What’s this?’
    I was sitting at my desk, Scott standing beside me. He was bored, and had come in to say hi, hang out, and generally avoid doing the book report that was supposed to be his mission for the afternoon/week/summer.
    ‘Chess piece,’ I said. I’d put it and the other bits on my desk when I hurried back in. He picked it up.
    ‘Why’s it here?’
    ‘I found it,’ I said, to avoid explaining at length. I was in the middle of working, he wasn’t supposed to come in while I was busy, and though it made me feel a heel to be distant toward him, Karen would be pissed at me if I wasn’t, as it made her job of keeping him out of my hair during the summer days even harder.
    ‘What kind?’
    ‘A bishop.’
    ‘Is that the type that…’
    ‘Diagonally,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, okay. What’s the smell?’
    I stiffened, thinking he’d caught a hint of cigarette smoke on me from earlier. He raised the chess piece to his face, however, and sniffed. ‘It’s on this.’
    I took it from him. The odour was faint, but Scott has a keen nose. ‘Don’t know,’ I said.
    ‘Smells like disinfectant. The kind they use in big buildings.’
    ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Could be something like that.’
    ‘Why’s it wet?’
    ‘It’s not.’
    ‘Yes it is. The base.’
    I turned it upside down and gently touched the felt. It was a little damp. ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t earlier. I mean, before.’
    I looked at the part of the desk where the piece had been, but Scott was ahead of me, wiping his finger across it. ‘It’s not wet here.’
    At that moment his mother hollered from the kitchen, expressing a hope that Scott wasn’t bugging his father and how was he doing with that book report, hey? Scott made a face like a frightened frog.
    ‘You’re fine,’ I said, winking. ‘But go.’
    He smiled, and slipped out of the room.
    * * *
    Just before bedtime I wandered down the path toward the road. Our neighborhood is on the edge of town, in fact a little past it, and the houses are widely spread on heavily wooded lots. It’s kind of like being out in the country, except you’re not, which is my preferred combination.
    ‘Still on the old cancer sticks, huh.’
    Our neighbor, Gerry, was standing at the head of his own path. He’s in his mid-sixties and the previous year, in the aftermath of his wife leaving him for some guy, had laboriously curtailed his own two-pack-a-day habit, on the grounds life couldn’t feel any worse.
    ‘Yeah,’ I said, annoyed at having been caught, especially as Scott was asleep and so I’d believed myself safe from censure. ‘Cutting down, though.’
    ‘Don’t work,’ Gerry said. ‘You’ll still be cutting down when those things cut
you
down. Clean break. Only way to get that job done.’
    ‘Worked for you, I guess.’
    ‘Sure did. Hurt like crap for a couple months, but I stuck with it. And you should, too. You’ve got a son. And that kid loves you.’
    ‘I know.’ Gerry and his wife never had children, a fact he has spoken of with regret several times.
    ‘Just saying.’
    He nodded goodnight, and ambled back toward his own house, where he now lived alone, and drank.
    * * *
    I went for a run the following morning, but cut it short after 5k. Our area is home to just about every variety of tree known to man, which makes it very attractive but something of an allergy motherlode. There are few months of the year when