As of Yet

introductions

A couple of days (maybe three, I’m not quite certain) after getting my dear cat Vincent, I found myself wandering down the street in search of a store equipped with cat food. Vincent had gone through all of the canned tuna I’d had in the pantry. The rain felt now like a thick grey blanket draped over the city, resting on the skyscrapers and drooping over low-slung record shops and consignment stores. It snuck a tinge of imagination into the air, like the tinge of detergent scent that fills the blanket-and-pillow castles of childhood. A few more souls had gotten tired of staring at their own four walls and decided to brave the outdoors. I passed a tiny girl wearing a blue princess dress, the tulle laced with shiny droplets of rain like diamonds. Her mother scurried behind her, attempting to keep an oversized black umbrella over the girl’s head. I bowed extravagantly as the little girl passed, wishing Her Highness the best of days.

A few unwelcoming businessmen strode past me, some scoffing at my lack of an umbrella in the rain. My grey skinny jeans, brown Doc Martens, and chunky off-white sweater felt rain-appropriate enough for me. I certainly looked less out of place with rain matting my bangs to my forehead than these angry men in suits looked in their ridiculous clear ponchos.

Between a small market plastered in Spanish advertisements and a coin laundromat, I noticed a strangely familiar drooping birch tree. The potential village of a tree that I’d mourned for a week ago now looked less like a dried up skeleton and more like al dente spaghetti. The rain had weighed down its thin branches, sending it drooping toward the concrete around its roots. Bells jingled as I opened the door to the tiny diner. The same barista slouched at the counter, aimlessly doodling on a napkin with red pen. A few solitary souls were scattered around the café, each in their own universe of coffee and worries and oily hash browns. I approached the counter.

“Hi, I gave you a letter a few days ago.”

“Oh! Yeah, for John,” the barista said, jolting upright.

“Yes. Did he receive it?”

“Someone did.”

“Was his name John?”

“Sure was, honey.”

“Then he received it. Thanks!” And with that, I left the restaurant, bought something at the Spanish market that appeared to be cat food, and wandered home.

I never really could understand why sleep came so much more easily in the rain. The soft, lilting melody of “Lego House” by Ed Sheeran floated through the vanilla-scented air in the apartment. I couldn’t have been asleep for long, I supposed, since the CD was still playing. The cat clock with the swinging tail over my fireplace said 3:42, which actually meant 1:29. The clock was 2 hours and 13 minutes fast. A cup of lukewarm tea sat, still steeping, on the vintage TV dinner tray I used as a side table. I took a sip of the tea and kicked the crocheted NYU blanket off my legs, nearly knocking over my tabletop Zen garden. The three-rap knock that had woken me from my afternoon nap sounded again. I hoped it was Jai, and we would have one of our lo mien dinners while he told me about the troubles of living with his Korean mother in a one bedroom apartment and waiting tables at a Chinese buffet where the customers assumed he couldn’t speak English and told him their drink orders very slowly.

I opened the door to a curly-haired young man who looked rather frazzled, wearing a grey sweater and black TOMS shoes caked in mud.

“Are you Lilly?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Are you stalking me?”

“Alas, kind sir, I am not. Might I ask who you are?” I replied, trying on an English accent for size.

“Then what is this about?” The man pulled one of my nice brown envelopes out of his pocket, ignoring my question.

“Ah, you must be John.”

“Yes, and I want to know what this letter is about!”

“Dear, you’re standing out in the rain and I simply can’t take you seriously. You look like the emotional end scene in every romantic comedy. Come in.” He stomped dutifully into the house, nearly colliding with a pile of poetry books. “Watch out! The rain makes me want to read, and that can always be a bit hazardous.”

 

 

Standing in the home of the mysterious Lilly, John felt overwhelmed by the teetering stacks of books and limitless eclectic trinkets. He stood awkwardly in front of the fireplace, facing the couch where the slouchy-sweater-wearing girl he assumed was Lilly had curled up. In an effort to protect himself from her doe-eyed stare, he crossed his arms across his chest.

“So… um… the letter?” he prompted.

“You see, John, I was strolling back home from a day at the MoMA when suddenly a deluge began. I’d heard on my clock radio that morning that it was supposed to rain, or at least I think I had. I couldn’t quite hear it over the music I was playing in the kitchen. But either way, I’d nearly brought an old Victoria’s Secret umbrella, one of those they gave away free years ago… I got it from my older sister when she was moving into her college dorm, so I was a sophomore in high school at the time. It was a pretty old umbrella, but the thing could do the job. I wouldn’t want to use it every day though, because the handle’s broken off…”

Here, John cut her off, saying, “I really want to know about the letter.”

 She shook her head a bit and continued, “Of course! The letter. Anyways, I’d ended up running through torrents of cold rain, so I had to find shelter. I slipped into the first open shop I could find, which happened to be the diner that you must have visited later in the day, or possibly the next day, or I suppose any time between then and yesterday. Since I know you’ve been there, you can testify when I say that the diner is not the busiest place. I didn’t have much else to do. So I pulled out my notebook and I wrote a letter, and then the heavens decided that letter was meant for you.”

“But all the things you wrote in it, how did you know all of that?”

“Well, I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I have a feeling it was either from reading or personal opinion.”

“You knew things about me that no book could possibly tell you!” It seemed strange saying something like that aloud, but John couldn’t stop himself from wanting the answers from this Lilly woman.

Lilly laughed and flicked her hand, like she was waving away the idea. “I’m simply a very relatable writer, I guess. Anyone can find meaning in my words.” John couldn’t decide if this was sarcastic or not, but he agreed. “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m being a terrible hostess. Would you like some coffee? Tea? I think I might have some Diet Dr. Pepper?” she jumped up from the corner of the sofa and pirouetted into the kitchen around the clutter and furniture. John didn’t know to follow or stay, so he accepted a coffee and sat down in a cushioned armchair near the fireplace. A mismatched collection of candles huddled on the mantle above his head. The leather on the couch opposite him looked like a perfectly worn-in motorcycle jacket, and John wondered if it was made that way or had earned its wear like the scuffed hardwood floor had. A TV dinner tray acting as an end table held several white mugs, and a collage of photos, drawings, and paintings in eclectic frames hung on the wall. He noticed a basket full of unfolded laundry on the floor next to the couch, and jumped when a grey cat popped out of it.

“Oh, you’ve met Vincent!” Lilly said cheerfully as she reentered the room, carrying two mugs. By now the cat was rubbing its head, which seemed to be missing one ear, on the leg of John’s only pair of jeans. After receiving the letter, John had found himself wearing items from his closet he hadn’t worn in years. The black TOMS shoes he’d chosen today, for example, had last been worn in his sophomore year of college, before he’d started his internship at Dodson & Feiffer. The businessmen had not taken a liking to his relaxed shoe choice, and so the TOMS were stowed away in the back of John’s closet. “I just got him,” Lilly continued of Vincent while handing John his mug, “a few days ago. He finally ate up all the tuna today, so I had to break down and buy him real cat food. You see his ear? That’s where he got his name. Vincent. As in Van Gogh.”

“Because he cut off his ear?” John assumed, taking a sip of the black roast.

“Exactly!” exclaimed Lilly, folding back up into her spot on the couch. She opened her mouth to say something else just as her iPhone rang. Lilly glanced over at the caller I.D. “I’m really sorry, I have to take this.”