Free The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin Page A

bothered me,
though: the sight of a mailman coming off my block at two-thirty in the
afternoon. The mailman was never in my neighbourhood later than ten, and this
meant there could be a logjam in my planned events of the day. Earlier, when I
trotted down with an elaborately planned haphazard flair to check the mail—
jeez, I think I remember whistling—the slot had been empty and I assumed there
was no mail to sort, so I foolishly changed my schedule. Oh well, the day had
already convoluted itself when I sighted Clarissa on the street, and now I was
going to sort mail in the afternoon. Sometimes I just resign myself to
disaster.
    Most favourite
mail: Granny’s scented envelopes from Texas (without a check). Least favourite:
official-looking translucent-windowed envelope with five-digit box number for a
return address. But today, at the godforsaken hour of two-thirty in the
afternoon, an envelope arrived that was set dead even between most favourite
and least favourite. It was plain white and addressed to Lenny Burns. No return
address on the front of the envelope, and I couldn’t turn it over until I analyzed
all my potential responses to whatever address could be on the back. Which I
won’t go into.
    The
name Lenny Burns rattled around in my head like a marble in a tin can. There
was no one in my building named Lenny Burns, and the address specifically noted
my apartment number. The previous tenant hadn’t been anyone named Lenny Burns,
it had been a Miss Rogers, an astrologer with a huge pair of knockers. And
evidently there was some doubt about whether she earned her living exclusively
from astrology. The name Lenny Burns was so familiar that I paused, tapping
the letter on the kitchen table like a playing card, while I tried to come up
with a matching face. Nothing popped. Finally, I flipped over the envelope and
saw the return address, and I wonder if what I saw will send a shiver of horror
through you like it did me.
    Tepperton’s
Pies. Like Mom never made.
    Oops. I
suddenly remembered that Lenny Burns was the pseudonym I had used on my second
essay in the Most Average American contest, written almost automatically while
I ogled Zandy. While I didn’t imagine that the contents of the envelope held
good news, I also didn’t think that it held actual bad news, either. The letter
informed me that not only was Lenny Burns one of five finalists in the Most Average
American contest, but so was Daniel Pecan Cambridge. And both of them are me.
    So the
real me and a false me were competing with each other to win what? Five
thousand dollars, that’s what. And the competition would involve the finalists
reading their essays aloud at a ceremony at Freedom College in Anaheim,
California. This meant that my two distinct and separate identities were to
show up at the same place and time. This is like asking Superman and Clark Kent
to appear at Perry White’s birthday lunch. The other competitors, the letter
informed me, were Kevin Chen, who was, evidently, Asian American, and hence,
not average; Danny Pepelow, redhead-sounding; and Sue Dowd, whom I could not
form a picture of. I wondered what the legal consequences of my deception would
be; I wondered if I would have to blurt out in a packed courtroom that I had
been swooning in a lovesick haze over Zandy the pharmacist and therefore this
was a crime passionel. I calmed down after telling myself that any
action taken against me would probably be civil and not criminal, and if they
did levy a suit against me, it would be very easy to choke on a Tepperton pie,
cough up a mouse, and start negotiating.
    The
next day, I was nervous about the inevitable arrival of the second pie letter,
the one that would be addressed to the real me. This led me to an alternative
fixation. I should capitalize it because Alternative Fixation is a technique I
use to trick myself out of anxiety. It works by changing the subject. I simply
focus on something that produces even greater anxiety. In this