You, Me, We Are All Mistakes

4. NO ONE HERE OF THAT NAME

"Yes!" she snapped.

"Hello," said Nelson and then panicked. "Doctor Grimaldi?"

"Who?"

Nelson knew there was not the slightest chance this young woman could be an ageing scientist, yet he had been stunned by her looks and unwisely persisted.

"Doctor Oswald Grimaldi. I have a letter for you."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Do I look... like an Oswald?"

In mild alarm at his own behaviour, Nelson held aloft the NASA letterhead. The woman's expression exhibited clear annoyance followed by a head shake of disinterest.

"There is no one of that name here, never heard of them," she scorned.

Eyes widened, Nelson gaped at the door number and back at the letter, along the balcony, and back at the bath towel.

"But it's not a mistake, it is this address, floor two, number three" he pleaded.

Then, as a male always slower to process a situation, and without really knowing why, he added, "Can I come in to talk anyway?"

"Certainly not! Go away." The door was crashed shut.

"It's not what you think," Nelson pined pathetically, and then more softly, "Do you know where my friend Duke is?"

Footsteps were behind him as plant-pot man approached, eyeing the scene gravely.

"Are you pestering Miss Reagan?"

"No, no. Of course not. I seem to have the wrong place. Well, I seem to have the right place but the wrong person. Not that there is anything wrong with her, no. She's, well she's lovely. She's just completely... wrong."

"Who were you looking for?"

"Doctor Grimaldi."

"Doctor..."

"Doctor Grimaldi. I have a letter here that my friend Duke found, and now he has disappeared. And so, it seems, Doctor Grimaldi has as well. It's this address..." Nelson became aware he was breathing rapidly and beginning to ramble.

"Oh, you know what, it doesn't matter."

The old man watched Nelson a few moments as he trudged to the lift door and waited fruitlessly for its arrival.

"It doesn't come to the second floor. Hasn't done for years, which keeps us all fit, so we don't complain. Anyway... he's no longer with us."

"...Sorry?" questioned Nelson.

"Doctor Grimaldi, he's gone."

"You knew him!"

The old man walked up to his lustrous blue front door.

"Yes, I remember the old git... European definitely, and strangely cagey. I think Corsican, from memory. They love a secret. And you're right, he did live here pre-war, before the homes got bombed, when number 22 was a set of tiny flats in a big house. Flat 8 was his, I seem to remember."

"Two cubed!" exclaimed Nelson.

"What?"

"Two cubed... eight. It's nothing, please go on."

"Well, we all had to move out because the houses just here were mostly destroyed, then he moved back into these flats once they were rebuilt, to the one where Miss Reagan is now... with his wife."