"She turned to me
Blind in the fray
Weight of this world
She will not be tamed"
blind in the fray by the last revel
|| Jeannette Edwards ||
February 3rd 1944
When the doorbell rang at the Grisham Hall for Ladies, it was a house-wide thrill, shivering down the very spine of the building and sending chills into every resident. A doorbell ring, with its chime calling every girl to their feet in a downward flight, could mean one of two things: a visitor or a postman. Visitors, particularly of the sought-after male variety, were scarce since the war had been put on to boil some three years previously. Now, with the residents tending home fires and not the flaming passions of suitors, a postman was more likely. A postman, or rather post-boy, was the only kindling to the fires of romance.
But, on a dim February morning with the sky heavy and ready to bleed, the doorbell had been run and so began the usual stampede of pumps on hardwood floors. There should have been only two possibilities and yet, Jeannette Edwards wasn't a postman or anything that the anxiously awaiting faces expected. She had rung the bell and stepped back in surprise and a tiny bit of fright at the fervor and hunger that met her behind the door wrenched from its frame by a seemingly harmless girl.
She shouldn't have been so ferocious of a predator as she seemed, this little thing with short brown hair and a dickie color edged in red ribbon but Jeannette stepped back all the same. This hadn't been what Jeannette had expected either.
Grisham had come highly recommended, as a good, upstanding place for good, upstanding girls. Jeannette thought she had fit that description rather well and had packed her things in the carpetbag she now clutched tightly in one whitened fist. Could this carpetbag that had first belonged to her mother be used as a weapon to fend off this frightening girl and her hungry eyes?
"You aren't Davis," The girl huffed and moved to shut the door. Jeannette hadn't come all the way from Hughestown to be turned away by someone looking for a Davis but she didn't move fast enough.
A hand, surely one of God's angels come down from heaven, stopped the door before the girl could shut Jeannette out from her new home.
"Sorry about that," The hand's owner said. She might as well have been an angel as she pushed the door open again, giving a full view of her face. Not nearly as intimidating as this little rabid creature before her but there was something in her dark eyes that didn't set Jeannette completely at ease.
"Oh," Jeannette said. "That's quite alright."
"It isn't really. Bess turns into a monster when she hasn't heard from her beau in a few days," The girl said, tossing her long black curls over her shoulder. She wore them loose, a stark contrast to the tight pins in the other girl, Bess's, locks of chestnut brown. "Sorry, you had to be in her path."
"Who's Davis?" Jeannette stammered, gripping her carpetbag tighter and trying not to wobble in her too-big pumps. She had bought them before the war when she had still been hopeful that she'd grow to fit them. But with spending frivolously unpatriotic and her shoe size stubbornly remaining, Jeannette had been left with loose pumps and aching feet.
"THERE HE IS!" Bess leaped past Jeannette, brushing her roughly in her flight off the wooden porch and flying into the dripping rain. She wore no shoes and her bobby socks were soaked on the puddled pavers as she ran towards the approaching youth in a yellow raincoat.
"Davis is the mail carrier." the dark-haired girl explained. "He was running late today. We get antsy when we don't get our letters. I'm sorry I don't think I-"
"Jeannette." She extended her hand. "Jeannette Edwards."
Those dark eyes studied her, flicking over her navy blue hat into which her frizzy tomato red hair was tucked, all the way down her too big pumps before shaking Jeannette's outstretched hand. "Estelle Tran."
Behind those dark eyes lay a studious mind that wrote down every variable and equation the world threw at her, bringing up the final unfair sum and accepting it as fact. Estelle was a woman of facts, something that Jeannette rarely dealt in.
The idea of chasing a mail carrier down flooded steps to retrieve a sought-after letter had never once crossed Jeannette's mind but it seemed these girls found it a daily occurrence. Jeannette's gaze was cast to the left of the doorway where the mailbox was hung, the address and the name of the establishment emblazoned on the wood in cut-out letters.
"I'm sorry, I believe I came to the wrong place," She said, gesturing at the box where the "I" had been replaced by a mystifying "E". "I'm looking for Grisham Hall,"
"Oh you are in the right place," Bess jogged back up the path, her stockings slapping against the stone pavers like webbed feet. "We knocked the 'I' off and had to make do. Grisham, Gresham. It's all the same, really,"
"Jeannette Edwards," The redhead pushed her hand forward, offering it to the creature who had been ready to shut her out in this damp cold. Bess seemed in better spirits now, a wad of letters in her hand.
"Elizabeth Ferguson," Her bobbed brown hair bounced against her cheeks as Elizabeth leaned forward to take Jeannette's hand. "You can call me Bess, Beth, I really don't mind. Crops good this week," Bess turned to Estelle and waved the mail under her companion's nose.
"Stop waving and let me look," Estelle plucked the letters from Bess's hands, holding them out of reach as the brunette leaped for them.
"Hang on," Bess cried, trying in vain to reach the envelopes. "Two of them are for me."
When the correspondence had been returned to their rightful recipient, Bess squealed and darted back into the house, sliding across the foyer in her slick stockings.
"Better wake Connie and Margo," Estelle called over her shoulder as she sorted through the last of the letters. She turned to go inside but paused, as if remembering that Jeannette was there, out in the drizzling rain and the damp air. "You are looking for Grisham Hall, aren't you?"
"Yes," Jeannette said. "I'm-"
"The new tenant," Estelle finished for her. "Mrs. G told us. Come on then,"
Allowing herself to be waved inside, Jeannette cast her gaze around the foyer of cherry-stained wood and bright electric lights, a stark contrast to the gloom and doom of the world outside. The scent of lemon cleaner that hung in the air was the same brand that Jeannette's mother had used in the houses she cleaned. A strange connection between the hills of Pennsylvania and the riverside of Virginia was a comfort as much as a weight. This house was far too clean to be anything from Jeannette's home and it fit the bill for good and upstanding. This house was the picture of American dreams and patriotism with its large staircase and adjoining room for a grand piano and little else.
Jeannette hung back as Estelle pushed her way further into the house as if she wasn't stunned by the cherry-wood and lemon cleaner. Those too big shoes looked foolish and the wish for a pair that fit was unpatriotic in this bright house with its star banner in the window. Shuffling her feet, Jeannette cast her gaze down.
"Mrs. G!" Estelle shouted. Deep from the belly of this house, came a faint response.
"She's in the kitchen," Estelle waited for Jeannette to follow her through the side door into a back hall, past the dining room set for an army and a sunroom that was dark under the storm brewing outside, and into the even brighter kitchen.
"Mrs. G, Ms. Edwards is here," Estelle called and the woman at the counter turned away from the scraps of dough, her hands dusted in flour.
"I was expecting a call from the station," Mrs. Grisham chided, wiping her hands across a spotless apron, sending a wince through Jeannette's frame at the destruction of such clean linen. "We were going to send the car with Constance."
"I took a bus and then a cab. It was no trouble," Jeannette said. "I didn't want to impose,"
Mrs. Grisham blustered and waved a hand, sending flour cascading into the air, assuring Jeannette that it was no trouble at all. She was a matronly, if not clumsy, woman whose nice house and nice clothes set the tone for the good and upstanding boarding house she ran. The girls who had been in her care were loved fiercely and looked after tenderly with a maternal, if not iron, fist. She was no stranger to hard work and saw the running of this hall for ladies as her battlefield. While the muddied stairs and the young women were not German soldiers or Pacific islands, they were a worthy opponent all the same.
"I saw your banner, Mrs. Grisham," Jeannette said, gesturing back the way she had come. "Your son?"
Stars marked windows and hearts, declaring that the ultimate show of patriotism had been brandished in that home. Their home fires were stoked a little more vigorously and their women sat in wait a little more earnestly. Jeannette had seen many on her trip down from Pennsylvania and knew still more in her hometown; there it stung to put names to the stars in windows.
"Yes," Mrs. Grisham said, with a thin smile. "Arthur is in the Pacific. And you?"
"Two brothers in North Africa," Two stars for Jeannette's mother. "A cousin in the Navy, and a friend. Last I heard, he was in England."
Those names were hard to forget. Brothers. Friends. Family. Everyone knew someone who was fighting, everyone had a letter that they could send.
Her friend had taken up space in her mind since he had waved goodbye on that train. She carried those dark eyes and that crooked smile in her carpetbag across state lines and into Norfolk, etched into her memory with the letters and the memories. Jeannette hadn't heard from him in several weeks and she was growing steadily more concerned. They had grown up together and he had always been in her life in some form or fashion, in letters or in days under the trees.
"Mine too!" Bessie cried. "Postmarked Aldbourne."
"Now, you know how Estelle feels about all this talk," Mrs. Grisham said softly. "Did you have your address changed, dear? Letters are a big to-do around here."
Jeannette didn't cling to every letter, every word at first. She hadn't known what a lifeline those pencil-etched papers of military-issued paper, in the storm of the current world. She had begun to see how impervious the lead was to the wiles of the storms.
"My mother will forward any letters from home," Jeannette said.
"Now, enough of all this letter talk," Mrs. Grisham said. "You got a job on base, didn't you?"
Jeannette nodded.
"You are in luck. Most of the girls here work on the base and there is always plenty of room in the car. Dinners and breakfasts are as a home but lunches are up to you. I trust you'll join us tonight? I've been saving my coupons."
"Mrs. G is making her apple pie," Bessie said. "It ranks 4th best."
"I will win first place, mark my words," Mrs. G teased. "You'll find we are very relaxed here, Jeannette. I don't care much what you get up to, just keep your wits about you. These Navy men-" Mrs. Grisham shuddered as if repelled by the thought of that branch of the US military. "Bess and Estelle will show you your room. You'll have to share."
Once Jeannette had assured Mrs. G that she had shared a room her whole life and it didn't matter to her, the landlady smiled and waved them up the back staircase. Following the damp footprints of Bess up the third floor, she let her eyes wander to the photos on the walls. Scenic views of the river that Jeannette knew was only a few miles away shared space with the portraits of a young boy and a much younger Mrs. Grisham. Beside her was the assumed Mr. Grisham, whose dark eyes followed Jeannette up the stairs long after his face had ceased to be represented in the family photographs. It was almost poetic, to see the changes in the family as Jeannette followed Bess and Estelle up the stairs.
Between the days by the river and the picnic blankets on the beach, Arthur grew up and Mrs. Grisham grew grayer. Jeannette had been a girl prone to empathy often to her detriment and felt the pang of nostalgia deeper as they ascended till the final frame on the landing showed the now older and grimmer son who Jeannette had seen as a child not seven steps back, dressed up in his uniform. Bess and Estelle had passed these photos daily and knew the stories behind them, having seen Arthur in the flesh before the Navy had stolen him away. They felt the pang as Jeannette did, but sharper. They knew the shy and quiet boy wasn't in that uniform.
They ignored the second floor, leaving Mrs. Grisham's shrine to how things had been before Arthur untouched, and continued to the third floor, where the photos were scarce and replaced with paintings of long-forgotten relatives and odd landscapes. Bess paused to point out that the oar on the side of the boat depicted wasn't actually an oar but a "sneaky duck. I didn't know until Carrie told me. Looks like an oar, doesn't it?"
"I suppose it does," Jeannette admitted. "Did a Grisham paint it?"
Estelle turned from where she stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the lagging Jeannette and Bess. "The previous owner of this house, a great aunt of Mrs. Grisham's, Beverly Simmons, was an amateur artist."
"Emphasis on the amateur," Bess muttered as she jogged up the last few steps. "Mrs. G doesn't want to see ducks that look like boats on the main floor so we are forced to look at their sorry tails every day."
"I don't think they look that bad," Jeannette said, wanting to defend the ducks. She tilted her head, getting a better look. "Well..."
"They wear on you after a few weeks," Estelle said, beckoning Jeannette up the stairs. "You'll see."
The frightening vision of these misshapen ducks waddling up the stairs after her was enough to quicken Jeannette's pace, securing her safety on the landing where Estelle and Bess had already moved on.
"You'll be on the left," Bess said, poking her head into a doorway and shouting, "Margo! Calm down, it's just me. You've got a letter."
The landing had an overstuffed armchair, a bookcase where all the inhabitants leaned to the left, and a single-window that sent slanting gray light onto the wooden floor that creaked under Jeannette's uncertain feet. It looked like a cozy place to sit and read on a rainy day such as this if there hadn't been a weight in the air. It wound between the branching doorways, under the floorboards, and sank into Jeannette's bones. It was an anticipation that was as intoxicating as it was melancholy.
The American homefront had known only one thing in the two years since they had found themselves in a simmering war and had taken it upon themselves to bring it to an unrelenting boil. In the heat of the flames of passion, love, and patriotism, the country was left with an immense shadow. The waiting. Like dolls abandoned in their beautifully crafted house, dust collected on their painted, smiling faces.
Jeannette had known the numbing of waiting, the thrill of the letter in her hands, the way she held them so tightly. Her mother hadn't understood, quite so deeply. Ada didn't understand, quite so sharply. She had never felt it as strongly as she did in this house. Women in a war but not fighting for it. Women who were aching for those who did fight but putting up their own battles. It was almost poetic, the anticipation.
This anticipation had become the drive behind her movement, the striking match to her move down to Norfolk. This fire needed to be stoked by more than just letters. The ink didn't catch quite like working for the war effort.
Jeannette had been fond of the meter and beat of poetry, finding solace from the cole-tinged air in the yellowed pages of Maffei, and Shakespeare. Her brothers and their friends never understood her obsession, save one. He would sneak books from the library in Pittston and slide them under her window. Jeannette smiled at the memory. She had spent many summer nights poking her head out that window, looking for what literature had been left in the window box of daisies.
"On the left, she said?" Jeannette looked at Estelle and pointed to the first door on the left. She made for the handle, palm grazing the cool metal when Estelle's voice cut through the weight like a sharp knife.
"Not that room!" She snapped.
Jeannette would have stepped back if her shoes weren't prone to wobbling so dangerously. She settled for snatching her hand back from the cold doorknob. Estelle's fire had subsided but there was no apology, no retraction of her word. Jeannette didn't offer an apology. She didn't know what she had done.
"Oh, Jeannette," Bess said, coming to her rescue. "Not that left. That's Carrie and...Oh never mind, I'll show you."
Jeannette was ushered toward the next door and winced as Bess shouted at the inhabitant. "CONNIE! YOU'VE GOT A LETTER!"
There was a long stretch of silence followed by the snuffling sounds of deep sleep. Jeannette's prospective roommate seemed to be undisturbed by Bess's screech while Jeanette's own ears were still ringing.
"Constance works nights with my roommate, Margaret," Bess explained, her voice not at all strained by the scream from a moment before. "They are machinists on the aircraft for the Navy. We don't see them very often."
The carpet bag was suddenly quite heavy in Jeannette's hand and tugged on her already aching shoulders. Bess noticed her wince and took pity on her new housemate. "Constance, I'm sorry but I have to turn on the light."
The dark, peaceful oasis was suddenly illuminated by the light overhead and the lamp on the bedside that Bess mercilessly flicked on. Jeannette glanced around the now visible furniture, that no longer looked like looming creatures from nightmares. An empty bed, a dresser opened to reveal barren drawers and a desk with the stability of a drunken sailor fresh from sea duty.
"Well if it isn't my favorite alarm clock," The lump of blankets that Bess insisted was Constance, said, her voice muffled. "Morning, Beth,"
"Very funny, Constance," Bess said. "Do you want your letter or not?"
A calloused hand, scarred and rough from the late nights among the heavy machinery and scrabbling over metal carcasses of aircraft, withdrew from the quilts. Bess placed the offering in the waiting palm and, like the jaw of a predator, the hand snapped it up eagerly, drawing back to the safety of the quilts.
"Do you need help unpacking?" Bess asked Jeannette brightly. "I'm an ace at moving. I've helped almost everyone on the floor. Except for Estelle, of course, she's been here since before the "I" fell."
Bess was, indeed, an ace at packing and unpacking. This skill had been cultivated long before she had received her first letter before she had been the smiling waitress at that destined cafe when she was just Elizabeth Ferguson.
Jeannette liked Bess. It was impossible not to. There was something about her short brown hair framing her face and the big brown eyes that made her so endearing and begged to be helpful. Jeannette couldn't say no.
"If you don't mind," She started to say.
"I don't!" Bess said, snatching up the carpetbag and throwing open the wardrobe on Jeannette's side of the room.
Jeannette had never known a great abundance of belongings. For most of her life, she had seen this as an embarrassment, to know few and to have few seemed to be a weakness. That was until she had accepted the translator position in Norfolk and packed up what little she had into a carpetbag. The carpetbag that had housed her pieces from home, her few books, and the clothes that had been worn through all in the name of the war effort, was thrown open. Bessie Ferguson no longer stood in that room, but a whirlwind of limbs, flying clothes, and knick-knacks being placed just so.
"Where are you from, again?" Bessie asked, not waiting for a response, before plunging on with the next question. "Your brothers are in North Africa? I have a brother. He's not fit for service, lucky bastard. OH! Don't tell Mrs. G that I swore-"
"Beth," Constance groaned, tossing back the covers. "What time is it?"
"A quarter past four," Jeannette supplied, glancing at her watch.
"I was hoping to get another hour," Constance sat up, the letter still in hand. She smirked at its contents.
"Another poem?" Bess asked, setting Jeannette's Shakespeare and Maffei volumes on the teetering desk. "Connie's beau is something of a poet."
Constance's mussed curls bounced as she shook her head at the younger girl's words. "That's generous of you, Beth,"
Whether or not the gift of prose was possessed by her pen pal, Constance didn't seem to mind. Her sea-green eyes scanned the page, soaking up every thoughtful word and stumbling line. Her fire was stoked by the glint of steel at night and the scrabble of poems written to the "lady by the sea". It mattered not that Norfolk was on a river, not the Atlantic, the letters were addressed like that and she would be lying if she said she didn't like the title.
Constance peeled back the blankets to set free the cat trapped beneath the coverlet, and chuckled at a particularly horrid, if not well-meant, line. Her eyes fixed on Jeannette and extended a calloused hand to the newcomer.
"Constance Ramos. You must be Jeannette,"
The redhead nodded, accepting the rough hand in her own and giving it a shake. "I don't suppose we will be seeing a lot of each other. I'm on the day shift."
Constance shrugged. "We'll be like ships in the night. We keep busy around here."
"Passes the time," Bess agreed.
"Between letters?" Jeannette guessed.
"We sound crazy about those damn letters, don't we?" Constance said, chuckling softly. Her bare feet didn't make a sound on the wooden floor as she stretched out her aching muscles. "They keep us going, more than a war effort ever could. I can keep bolting sheets of metal when I know my soldier is alive and when I don't hear from him, it gets heavier. Do you understand?"
"I do," Jeannette murmured.
Those letters had made a ship to steer among the waves of this new world Jeannette found herself in. Uprooted and unfamiliar, she clung to the letters signed with their scribbled J and the indiscernible followers. The thought of buying that ticket from Pennsylvania to Virginia had been encouraged by the letters in her pocket. If he could be thousands of miles from home for her, she could be transplanted to a new state for the aid of the troops.
Connie glanced over the books on the teetering pile of poetry on the desk as Bess hummed along to some tune. "You like to read?"
"Yes," Jeannette said. "My mother had mostly Italian books but I have some in English now."
The English volumes had been collected over the years, from the window box of daisies to the exchanges on the hill overlooking the breaker. The last book, The Grapes of Wrath, had been the final exchange on that hill. He had been given his orders and was only on leave for a few days. He had brought her a book. He had asked if he could write to her. Jeannette had said yes. Jeannette had cried. There had been no romantic declarations or bouts of infatuation. The words had been plain, just how he liked them and how Jeannette despised them.
Bess shut the wardrobe with a snap and turned, her skirt swishing around her knees and damp socks. "You a translator on base?"
Jeannette paused, not sure how much was allowed to be discussed. This attic seemed as safe as could be but what did those posters promise? Ships sunk by the careless whispers of loose lips. Glancing at the window, as if a German spy would be listening from the third-floor windowsill, Jeannette nodded quickly.
"Oh, you'll likely see Estelle!" Bess cried. "She's working as a computer on base."
Dumbfounded at the disregard for secrecy, Jeannette sputtered. "Shouldn't we-"
"Who's going to hear us?" Connie shook her head. "We all know how to keep a secret."
Bess nodded, setting the now empty carpetbag on the neatly made bed. She hadn't been kidding about her skills in unpacking. Jeannette had barely had time for a single melancholy notion about the blouse she had worn to the movies with her friends or the books with the coal-stained fingerprints. Jeannette hadn't noticed this room becoming her own but in the space of a few moments, it looked like her childhood bedroom. The quilt was the same, the books were present and accounted for. It looked like home.
"Speaking of secrets," Bess said, snatching up the patchy tabby cat set free from Connie's bed and cuddled it tight to her black sweater, not minding the fur shed across the yarn. "Are you going to hide that poem from us, Connie?"
Constance blushed. "Maybe Jeannette can give it an educated read. I'm dying to know if my pen pal has a future in the arts,"
Jeannette flushed. Her hobby of studying beat, meter, and stanza had been an asset to her application for the NIS but she was hardly a professional. Perhaps, more of an avid appreciator. Her love of poetry hadn't been the final mark in her favor for her application. The real seal to her employment had been the native fluency that having an Italian mother and late father provided.
"I'd be delighted to provide an opinion," Jeannette smiled, sitting on the lumpy mattress where she would rest her weary bones for the foreseeable future.
Constance cleared her throat, making a big show of unfolding the letter and straightening her flannel pajamas.
"Someday I'll get back to you/ When the war is finally won/Then you know just what we'll do In the sheets-"
The rest was cut off by Bess's shriek of surprise and a cackling laugh from Constance. Jeannette's cheeks flushed red but couldn't help a bark of laughter escaping her mouth, never mind the good and upstanding standard that Grisham ladies were known to uphold.
"Do you all get such poems?" Jeannette wheezed.
Bess's mouth gaped in shock at such a suggestion, only furthering Constance's giggles.
"I have never gotten such a thing from-" Bessie started to say but was cut off by the appearance of Estelle in the doorway. Drawn by the laughter and shrieks, her brow furrowed at the neatly put-together room but the girls in various states of disarray found there.
"What's all this then?"
"Another poem," Bess said. "And no, Jeannette, I don't get that kind of poetry from Dar-"
"Don't say their names, Bessie," Estelle chided, in the same sharp tone. As if Bess had put her handle onto a door she didn't understand what lay beyond. "You'll get attached."
"I'd say it's too late for that," Constance said, folding up the letter and stowing it under her pillow. It wasn't a disagreement but the statement of a fact.
"You say their name and they can break your heart," Estelle said. It sounded like a warning to Jeannette.
"I don't think names hold much power over love," Jeannette whispered, almost to herself but Estelle heard.
Estelle's calculations were rarely wrong. In mathematics and personal life, her calculations were quite often correct. Estelle was known to be the guardian of the third floor, taking the wandering women under her wing. While Jeannette had seen an angel, Estelle was a self-described tragedy. She sought a way to shield each girl who crossed the wooden floors of Grisham Hall from such flights toward the sun.
"We don't tempt fate here," Estelle said, firmly.
A silence stretched between them. Estelle's dark gaze and small stature didn't lend themselves to the imposing figure she truly was. Jeannette didn't think she was afraid of Estelle. Jeannette didn't know what she thought. There was truth behind her words. The war bubbled and boiled around them and one couldn't make too many plans for the future. Jeannette didn't like to think more than one letter ahead.
"Estelle is ever so jaded," Bess said, chuckling softly, trying to break the tension.
"I'm wise beyond my years," Estelle winked at Bess but her steady gaze sent Jeannette's skin crawling. "We don't say their names so we don't have to say goodbye."
* * *
To the real Horatio,
I don't suppose you can tell me where you are but know that I am safe in Norfolk. Mother will be forwarding any of your letters down to me. The girls I'm living with are quite the characters.
Bess is a little younger than me but such a dear thing. She's the embodiment of springtime. I don't think I've ever met someone as happy as she is. Estelle seems to be the ringleader around here like Adrian was to us in our childhood. I'm still forming an opinion on her. Constance is my roommate and we've got on like a house on fire. She works night shifts at the shipyard but when we do see each other it's always good fun. We went to the cinema last week and saw Citizen Kane on her day off. She's making songs on the piano out of her boyfriend's poems. It's very entertaining and has caused our landlady to faint out of shock more than once. There's also a girl named Margo who lives on our floor. I haven't met her for more than a few minutes but she seems lovely.
I'm glad to know that your CO is gone, the dreadful beast.
I've started to read the book you gave me. I'd like to read it to you some time. Like we did in high school on the breaker hill. If I sent you one of my books would you read it and think of me?
Your letters, as always, brighten my day. I know you fear that you have nothing of any interest to say but I find anything you say of interest. You say your words are not poetic but there is poetry in everything you do. You want to fly through the sky and end the war. While that's admirable, do you know that I don't expect this from you?
I've known you without money. I've known you without fame or excellence. I don't care if you have either.
You are probably bothered by my 'damn flowery words'. We've grown up together. Surely you are fluent in my own language by now.
It's late. I have an early shift tomorrow. Be safe.
Love, Nettie