Letters To

Serena Grant

Anne Johnson is a thirty-one-year-old book seller and poet. She considers herself older than she actually is, uses brown box dye on her hair, and writes unnecessary commentary in all the books she reads. She leant her copy of Pride and Prejudice to Cathy, her younger sister and a regular at her store, Books Galore. It was returned before Cathy had finished it, along with a sticky note asking Anne to refrain from booing Jane as she took Darcy back. Anne uses the note as a bookmark now.

Her poetry isn’t special, she concludes, with every ripped page out of her stacks of notebooks and journals. She’s told that it’s unique, eclectic, amusing, or any combination of not so patronizing phrases from her published colleagues. She’s made her peace with this. The only person she genuinely believes understands her writing is Cathy. The ones Cathy likes are the only ones Anne can consider close to special. Those get folded up and go into a blue, butter cookie tin underneath the checkout desk of Books Galore. The tin gathers dust in between a stack of ledgers and the mini chalkboard she displays on the desk when there’s a sale.

        Of all the reception she gets for her poetry, eclectic is her favorite. Anne’s whole life, built up in the special edition lined shelves and rows of yellowing paperbacks in her bookshop, is eclectic. She’s designed it that way, the same way she’s designed herself. Anne is vintage in her eighties coats, seventies blouses, and sixties patterned tights. She also considers herself modern, therefore chic, in posting an open mic night schedule on a web page accessible by the QR code in Books Galore’s front window. She can’t decide whether it’s the poet in her or some deep-rooted desperation for “uniqueness” that romanticizes every detail she notices about herself in the mirror. When she thinks of the slight crookedness of her front tooth, the way her eyes crinkle if she laughs hard enough, or the way her wire frame glasses droop when she leans over to read something, Anne decides not to care if caring would be conceited. The nineties rom coms she has on VHS, courtesy of a helplessly romantic mother, has her convinced that a bumbling but well-meaning English type would find her irresistible. The love Anne feels for herself when she puts her curlers in and listens to books on tape, contained to the canopy draped bed, serves as a reminder that she’s happy as is.

Admiration isn’t unwelcome, though. Nothing should be expected of it, but flattery does help Anne’s day plug along if the shop is slow or she’s in need of a free drink at the bar down the street. In those instances, she’s no longer Anne Johnson. She’s Sylvia Ruffino.

Sylvia is a name Anne thinks is especially pretty, and Ruffino just sounds fancy to her. A therapist might call the name change depersonalizing, but the boundaries that it sets feel right. Some nights, the ones with loose hair and the canopy curtains pulled back, the truth of herself eludes her. She questions who Anne is beneath jewel tone makeup and the tasteful tramp stamp she got in college.

Her poems are all signed, “Till Next Time, Sylvia Ruffino.” Why couldn’t “Anne Johnson” have the same ring?

This is a path she gets lost on regularly without a gentle hand to guide her out of it. After the fact, the indignation of needing to be guided sets in by morning. Now, however, it is twelve-thirty, and she is in that dimly lit bar down the street. A man with a non-accent and soft sweater sits down beside her. His soft hands look good for guidance.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” Anne smiles, taking a nervous sip of her cosmopolitan. The stranger who smells like a fireplace in a bottle is drinking whiskey, neat.

“Can I buy you another drink?”

“No,” Anne shakes her head, “I’ve had enough for tonight.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“Oh?”

“Well, the drink was an excuse to keep you longer, and if I kept you longer, I could’ve found out your name and anything else about yourself you felt like divulging.” He grins to himself as he is the target audience for his own so called “wit.”

“Right, and then you could’ve done a little divulging yourself, and we would’ve gotten a conversation going,” she replies. Anne nods her head every other syllable on purpose, in iambic pentameter. How eclectic she thinks to herself. The word clicks on Anne’s teeth when she silently words it.

“You’ve got the idea,” he laughs. They both take a quick drink.

“So?” he asks.

“So what?” Anne smiles in a way she knows says, I’m playing dumb, dumb enough that you’re interested but not too dumb that you’re frustrated with me.

“So, what’s your name?” he presses.

“Sylvia,” she says after a moment, face red. “My name is Sylvia Ruffino.”

“Bernard James,” he replies, holding out a hand. She takes it firmly and shakes.

“I’m a bookseller,” she goes on.

“Currently working on my philosophy doctorate,” is a fragment picked from Bernard’s long and varied work history. Their back and forth is nice, it’s measured, like tennis. They’re tied until Bernard gains a leg up by mentioning his love for Romantic British literature. Anne regains her lead by excitedly offering him an after-hours tour of the bookshop that, excitedly, she not only works at, but owns. It is almost a quarter after two in the morning. They settle their respective tabs and exit the bar into that secret fifth season that occupies the space between winter and spring. Outside it is pleasantly chilled with a slight fog softening the glow of the orange streetlights. Bernard, evidently deciding to be romantic, tangles his arm with Anne’s. Reveling once again in being Sylvia, she leans her head into the shoulder of his oh so soft sweater and takes deep breaths of night air. It’s only a block till Books Galore.

“This looks like something from a movie set, something indie,” Bernard remarks when they step in.

“Thank you,” Anne replies, beaming. The lights take a moment to flicker on after she flips the switch.

“You own all of this?”

“Yes indeedy. I’m very proud of it.” It’s one of the few completely genuine things she says that night.

“You said you liked the Romantics, right?” she questions.

“Yes, indeedy,” Bernard winks.

“Wait right here,” Anne giggles, disappearing behind overstuffed shelves and into the back.

While Anne is fetching a special edition she thinks Bernard would like, he sneaks a peak behind the counter. The blue, shiny finish of the butter cookies is a siren call in his tipsy, bordering drunk stupor. He reaches down and pries the lid off, momentarily disappointed when there aren’t any cookies. Still alone in the front of the store, he starts to unfold and read the papers. His disappointment quickly abandons him. Bernard would never forgo the superiority of his precious Romantics, Byron especially, but good Lord does Sylvia come close. Each page he reads is a completely different genre of poem taking on a different aspect of life, but it’s all universal and it’s all well done. It’s all her, completely and utterly, and she is enticing. He has trouble putting down the hidden work, even when Anne comes back into the room.

“Please put those away,” she says immediately and gravely. She’s holding a well-kept canvas cover copy of Mary Shelley’s The Modern Prometheus. It’s the original 1818 version, rather than the well-circulated and augmented 1831 revision. Anne is no longer excited to show off her own knowledge of the Romantics.

“Sylvia, are these yours?” Bernard asks, despite pointing to her signature while he says this.

“Put those away,” she repeats. They’re not special, they’re not good, they’re not lying back in bed with rollers in and the canopies drawn. Anne could dye her hair, thrift clothes a size too small, and paint over the crow’s feet inching from the corners of her eyes, but she could never lie in her writing. She tries, and it comes out shit. Anne decides in every smudged line that she wants to be unremarkable, not shit.

“But these are really good,” Bernard protests.

“They aren’t,” she says, her voice wavering. Anne slams down her book and stomps behind the counter beside Bernard. She yanks the poems out of his hand, only the bottom corner of one tearing off, and stuffs them back into the tin without refolding them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, shocked. Anne doesn’t reply, she just points to the door. Bernard isn’t quite convinced he’s earned this treatment, but he fears another outburst and leaves. Anne is left alone, missing a fragment of one of her Sylvia pieces, feeling naked. She sobs heavily two times over the counter before gathering herself and trudging upstairs, where her apartment is. The outburst confuses even her.

Tonight, unfortunately, is not a rollers and canopy curtains night. Anne’s head is pounding and all she wants is sleep. The crying and drinking combined have left her sniveling on her side, trying to clear an airway in either nostril. She begrudgingly closes her eyes and breathes softly through an open mouth, still in her clothes, still in her makeup. If she was alive at six o’ three in the morning, when she passes, Anne would’ve realized that without a stuffed nose, the smell of the gas leak would’ve been more apparent. Alas, at six o’ four, any sort of humor in the situation is lost on her.

It is nine in the morning when Bernard returns to the store. He didn’t sleep, keeping the opening time of Books Galore alive in his mind. He can’t stop thinking about Sylvia’s poems. He can’t remember what color her eyes were.

The lights are off and the front door is locked, but not all the way. With some force, he’s able to enter the store.

“Sylvia,” he calls out once, not particularly loud, not particularly wanting. He, of course, receives no answer. Rather than investigate, Bernard returns to his unwelcome place behind the counter, sweaty fingers prying at the lid of the tin. He matches the piece of signature he tore off the night before with its original poem. He smiles, thinking that his imprint on the physical work improves the content.

Sylvia had said they weren’t good. She had demanded that they be put away, Bernard thinks bitterly. The paper has creases from folding but is otherwise unmarred. Bernard sits behind the counter, criss-cross applesauce, and reads through each one meticulously. The lights are still off.

“She said they weren’t good,” he mumbles to himself. “She’s wrong.”

Somebody has to read these. There’s a whole person, a whole Sylvia Ruffino that people would pay to meet and annotate, to own! She’s fresh, she’s free, and she’s marketable. Bernard briefly considers shouting for Sylvia again. Then, in a way that he considers romantic, decides he doesn’t need to fetch Sylvia if he already has her in his hands. He takes the blue butter cookie tin and leaves the shop with it tucked into his coat, fastened by his elbow against his side. The only thing Bernard leaves behind is his number, written on the back of the scrap of paper with Sylvia’s signature.

Twenty-five hours and thirty-four minutes later, Bernard happens upon an obituary that’s been highlighted on the front page. He’s reading the paper while eating a toast and runny eggs breakfast, sitting beside the phone for Sylvia’s call, and staining the articles he thumbs through with yolk. A young woman, Anne Johnson, is found roughly twelve hours earlier in her apartment during a welfare check phoned in by her mother. It is considered a tragic accident and nothing more. The picture beside her memorial blurb is one of Sylvia Ruffino.

Bernard has to set down the story, overwhelmed by the ideas overtaking him. The worth of her poems must be tenfold now. Anne Johnson’s death is tragic, yes, but not special. It isn’t remarkable, and Sylvia Ruffino would have been remarkable. All he can think of when he remembers that character is a red-lipped smile and attentive eyes. Bernard envisions her as a lover of most and loved by all. He doesn’t just imagine this physically either, but emotionally, spiritually. With mind, body, and soul, that’s how Sylvia loves him and so many others. He thinks of their conversation, the intimacy of her bookstore, and the number he left behind with her name on the back. The events of the previous night are not worthy of public release. Bernard realizes that he only has a sliver of Anne Johnson. Sylvia Ruffino though, he thinks while he reaches for the phone, is immortal in her love and personage. He dials the number for his paper’s editorial writer, a colleague of a colleague from the university. Publicity before publishing, he smiles to himself as the other ends rings.

Four thousand three hundred and eighty-three hours later, Bernard is at a press conference for his book tour. Praised in each location and rising in popularity on the bestseller list, “Letters to Bernard” is a comet as constant as Sylvia herself. The first royalty paycheck is enough hush money to keep Anne’s mother quiet, and anybody else who keeps their mouth shut is rewarded the same way. It’s hard to protest to anything when the bills are paid.

“Mr. James, do you think you could recount your relationship with Sylvia again for our readers?” a journalist asks over a loudly subdued crowd.

“Of course,” Bernard smiles, picking at the edge of his copy of Letters to Bernard.

“Sylvia and I had met a week prior to her unfortunate suicide. We met every night at the bar down the street from her shop, and we talked endlessly. She was the kind of person who loved fast and loved hard. As much as it pains me to say, I felt at the time that it was just too much, that I was undeserving. The last night we talked, the night before her death, she gifted me these poems. She had told me they were only a week’s worth, but I was amazed to be holding every aspect of this woman in my hands.”

Bernard lowers his head in his hands and takes a deep breath. At the last location, some fangirls insist on comforting him after a similar display at the last tour stop, and like a dog learns a trick with the promise of a treat, Bernard now repeats the motion at other conferences. It elicits the same response.

“I realize now, after the fact, that she was giving her most prized possession away; she was giving away herself. I feel I should have suspected her suicide, and for the crime of ignorance, I make her art known to the world as my retribution,” he says, purposefully wavering his voice.

“Thank you,” is his last remark to the cheering crowd forty-nine minutes later. Each press conference has a different makeup with the same base skeleton. Everybody always comes to the same conclusion in the analysis of Letters to Bernard. Sylvia, a name unfitting to the woman in these words, seems cautious and unassuming. In retrospect, a name like “Anne” is more fitting. Bernard’s description, in contrast, portrays a new age manic-pixie-dream girl for the modern rom-com. The dissonance does raise questions in some readers. Bernard, however, was gifted the poetry. He must be telling the truth in his retelling of their story.

Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty-four hours later, along with roughly thirty million dollars, Bernard is wracking his brain while he sunbathes on the patio of his new McMansion. Letters to Bernard has run its course in the industry, and for the sake of staying relevant, he needs something new. Never mind the sound future of his investments or the still trickling income from Sylvia, he wants his own writing and his own authorship to be recognized. Maybe he can flesh out the love story he’s already concocted between himself and the post-mortem poet.

Bernard’s cell phone buzzes on the tempered glass table beside him. He frowns when he reads the caller ID, “BOOKS GALORE CUS. SER.”

“Hello?”

“Is this Bernard James?” a shrill voice asks.

“Who is this? How did you get this number?”

“This is Cathy Johnson. Anne’s sister,” she replies. Bernard’s face drains white.

“How did you get this number?” he repeats.

“Paper slip leftover where the tin should be. I’m just calling to see if you got the papers yet?”

“Papers?” There’s a polite knock at his fence’s gate. A man, old but not elderly, dressed in business casual and carrying a briefcase, is waiting for permission to enter. Bernard motions for him to come up.

“They’re coming. See you soon,” Cathy says before hanging up.

“Bernard James?” the man asks, his tall figure casting a shadow over Bernard.

“Yes?”

The man opens his briefcase and takes out a stack of papers.

“According to Ms. Johnson’s will, Books Galore and all of its holdings and property are inherited by her younger sister, Ms. Cathy Johnson. Multiple associates of the late Ms. Johnson corroborate that a tin containing her writings was kept at Books Galore exclusively, thus making it intellectual property of the store and property of the inheritor,” he reads off.

“Wait, I- “

“You’ve been served, Mr. James,” he says, handing him the papers. Bernard takes them, stunned, and sits in silence as the lawyer walks away.

Two minutes and forty-eight seconds later, as the initial shock subsides, Bernard dares to read what he’s been given. There’s a sticky note attached to the first page. In smudged pencil, it reads,

“You think you’re special, you’re not. All you did was rob a dead woman who was. See you in court.

                                                                         -Till next time, Cathy Johnson.”

–

Serena Grant is a Creative Writing student at George Mason University, and is set to graduate in spring of 2025. In her free time, she enjoys crafts, reading, and anything that takes place outdoors. You can find her @serenagrrant