Free The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu Page B

standing in front of my store, pulling the keys out of my pocket. All around me people are walking, rushing, and for the first time since Judith and Naomi left the neighborhood, I am one of them. The morning is bright and mild; it is a picture-perfect May day with low humidity and surges of cool air that dry the sweat on my forehead as quickly as it forms. The day, I tell myself, is nothing to be afraid of. Life ticks on just as it always has. It was only by a trick of the imagination that I had come to believe I could step outside of it. Sunlight is tilting through the space between the leaves, lighting up the edges of the circle nearest my store. The sight is so perfect that I pause for a second, keys in hand, with the deliberate intention of admiring it.
    I lift the lock from its latch, grab hold of the lowest rung on the grate, and with three quick, solid jerks hurl it over my head and send it crashing. That same sound is echoing from stores all across this city; it is we, the small storekeepers and newspaper vendors, who are drawing it back to life.
    The grate crashes and locks into place, and as it does, a thin white envelope, slid into a corner of the door, flutters to the ground. My name is typed neatly on the front, with no postage or address. I pick it up and hold it against the sky. The sun catches it from the back. Through the envelope I can make out one clear line: Dear Mr. Stephanos.
    Dear Mr. Stephanos. My knees give, just a bit, at the sight of the words. Something—call it hope, optimism—drops in my stomach and goes running. Dear Mr. Stephanos. A sign of official business. Never in my life have I done well with official business. Official business is prompt and efficient and demanding. I have a stack of official letters from vendors and utility companies and a credit card that all begin the same way: Dear Mr. Stephanos. In each of them there is a simple, unwavering demand for money, for which I’ve had no response except to close my eyes and wish desperately like a child that it would all go away. I have done the best I can under the circumstances. I write out checks for meager amounts: $10.34 here, $3.29 there. And when I can’t, I have learned not to pick up my phone or read my mail for a week or two at a time.
    I bring the letter with me into the store. I don’t turn on the lights or lift the blinds. With the exception of the lifted grate, there is no sign that I am open for business. No one, I notice, even bothers to slow down or look in.
    I lock the door behind me and place the letter on the counter. I turn it over once, and then twice. Courage, my father used to say, is being able to face the truth, regardless of what it may be, and remembering that, I tear the letter open along the side and take the kind of deep breath that’s supposed to brace you for bad news. I begin at the top of the page.
    From the law firm of Elkin and Govind to Mr. Sepha Stephanos.
    The name of the firm is familiar. I’ve seen it before on bus advertisements and on daytime television commercials. I can’t decide whether receiving a letter from a firm that advertises on plastic place cards to a captive audience makes the situation even worse. I never expected to be on the receiving end of a letter from a law firm that uses people lying in hospital beds as part of their advertising campaign, but life can be cruel and unpredictable, which is precisely what such firms are there to remind us of.
    Beneath the letterhead is a date, May 3. The letter must have been left on my door sometime during the previous night while Joseph, Kenneth, and I were staring shyly at naked women.
Dear Mr. Stephanos:
This letter is to inform you that you have thirty days to vacate the property at 1150 P Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.
    There are no treacherous demands or insinuating threats. The words become simple black characters against a page. Each character forms a word as discrete from the next as two strangers in a room. The letter is