Free The Interloper by Antoine Wilson Page B

around the building to the back, where the shrubs pressed against the wall. I made my way to the corner below the men’s room and pulled at the shrubs. Nothing up top. And, after I got on my hands and knees in the damp dirt,nothing under the shrubbery but old candy wrappers and a wax cup. The panties were gone.
    At that time, I did not see those lost panties as harbingers of everything irretrievable. I was too wrapped up in the question of the moment: How would I explain to Patty what had happened? Walking home through thinning fog, I decided to play dumb about all of it. Patty might not even notice they were missing. And if she did, why would she suspect me of taking them? She wouldn’t. This resolve gave rise to a secondary set of questions: Had someone taken the panties away? The custodians? Someone else? The Cartoon GI? And what if it was the Cartoon GI? Would he try to return them?
    I was being haunted not only by the loss of the panties, but by the potential for that loss to reverse itself, like those dreams Patty and I had talked about, in which the dead come back to you as alive as they had ever been. The only thing I could do to distract myself from all of this was to write a completely new letter to Henry Raven. In that letter, I saw nascent glimmers of a woman on the page. As I recreate the letter now I find it hard to believe that these words—her words!—came into being as my fingers moved across the typewriter.
    Dear Mr. Raven,
    Thank you for the new picture—aren’t you handsome in front of that red truck! As I mentioned, I had seen your picture before, on the D.O.C. website, so I knew you were handsome, in that noble warrior wayof yours. But even though I had mentally “cleaned you up” dozens of times—you do look sleepy in that mug shot—I still had to take a second to catch my breath when I saw you in front of your truck, all newly-shaven and fresh-looking, and I knew I had made the right decision about following my intuition and writing to you in the first place.
    I believe—and don’t think I’m trying to convert you, because I am not a religious woman—that the universe communicates with us via signs and that we have to remain open to them at all times, or ignore them at our own peril. Fate, with a sign or two along the way, has led me to this moment, to me writing this letter, to YOU. I believe that, and I wonder what else fate has in store …
    The other day, while I was still awaiting your letter, I sat drinking coffee on the landing of my apartment building. (It’s more like a walkway for all the second story units, but there’s enough room for a chair, and on a very clear day you can see a sliver of shimmering ocean on the horizon.) Some things had not been going my way at the school where I work—I’m a teacher’s aide—and some people I thought I could trust turned out to be talking behind my back to the administration. People don’t realize how political teachers can be. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but I was in a miserable mood, and I thought some fresh air and coffee might help to boost my spirits. It didn’t work. I sat out there and began thinking of all the bad thingsthat could happen. It was like I couldn’t stop my imagination from “going there.” And one of the things I thought of was you. I confess I had begun to give up hope that you would write.
    I tried to clear my mind and think about what I was going to cook myself for dinner (pork chops with applesauce, it turned out), and I found myself absent-mindedly staring at the big maple tree beside my building. The wind was rippling the leaves and it was kind of pretty, so I kept my eyes on it for a second or two. Nothing I hadn’t seen before, really, but it was like something said to me: “Stop, wait. Appreciate the moment.” And so I watched the tree longer than I would have and you know what happened? A single leaf dropped. Just one. No leaves on the ground, mind you, and no others falling. I