Miles Akers barely glanced at the Army recruiting office on 8th Avenue as he headed towards the boarding house on West 49th Street... a residence which he expected to call home for the foreseeable future. He hardly noticed the small group of picketing protesters shouting anti-LBJ chants who were gathered outside the small storefront that housed the recruiters and had a picture of Uncle Sam in its window. He also paid no attention to the abundance of derelicts scattered along the streets of New York City`s Hell`s Kitchen. He had other concerns crowding his mind at this time."This is where you will find the day`s mail," old Mrs. Bennett informed him as she pointed to a dusty little table next to the staircase. "It doesn`t usually arrive until mid-afternoon because our postman is a lazy good-for-nothing. I wouldn`t be surprised to learn that the bum lost half the letters that he was supposed to deliver."Miles had met Mrs. Bennett for the first time about five minutes ago. He`d spoken to her on the phone the day before yesterday when he`d called the number he`d seen in the Classified section of the Wilmington Gazette. He was not surprised, based on their brief conversation, to find a skinny, dour-faced woman of about sixty-five waiting for him impatiently at the front door. After a brief introduction, she pointed out to the mail table, badmouthed the postman and instructed Miles to follow her up the stairs. She recited the house rules while trudging up the steps, not bothering, even, to turn her head when she spoke. Miles was treated to a view of a bony behind and heavily lacquered, steel-grey hair during the entire trek to the top floor.
"I`ll take it," he told her after making a perfunctory inspection of the unimpressive little room.
"Forty-five dollars a week," she informed him. "Two weeks rent in advance."
Miles counted out the ninety dollars, handed it to the old lady and stuck out his hand to shake on the deal. Without a word, and with no sign of emotion, she accepted the money and, incongruously, placed it down her bodice and into the tiny cup of the brassiere whose only apparent function was as a billfold. She ignored his outstretched hand and exited the room.
"Mrs. Bennett," Miles asked, later that evening, "where is the telephone?"
"There is no phone for the tenants, Mr. Akers," she replied. "My telephone is my own business and I`ll not have my tenants sharing my business and inflating my bill. There is a phone booth on 8th Avenue if you must make a call." Miles merely shrugged his shoulders and hid his annoyance.
He didn`t really know what would be a good time to call Elizabeth, anyway; or even if he should call her. Elizabeth, you see, was the reason that he had left school in his senior year at the University of Delaware and headed for a boarding house in New York City. They had been in love, or so he had thought, for months ... ever since he had met her at a psychology lecture at the college. At first, he was not going to attend, but Dr. Swift, his favourite professor, finally convinced him to go.
"Carl Rogers is lecturing," Dr. Swift explained. "Who better to teach about Humanistic Psychology? Anyway, I, unfortunately, will be out of town and I would be quite grateful if my most promising student would report on Dr. Rogers` presentation."
So, Miles attended the lecture, learned a bit about growth and self-actualization, and met the woman of his dreams.
"I`ve never seen you at school," Miles told her. "What classes are you taking?"
"Oh," she replied, with a chuckle. "I`m no longer a student at the University. I just have an interest in the field."
They went out for coffee after the lecture and one thing led to another. He knew, even before they arrived at his dorm room that they were in love.
The couple spent as much time together as possible, although it seemed to Miles that she was too often unavailable. It was months before Elizabeth revealed, to his astonishment, that she was married to Dr. Swift, his psychology professor.
"But I don`t love him," she swore. "I`m in love with you. He seduced me when I was his student and, young and immature as I was, I mistook infatuation for love."
"Just leave him," Miles advised, "and marry me. He`s much too old for you anyway."
"I can`t," she replied. "He is just so clinging and so jealous. I think that he knows I don`t love him but he feels that he must possess me anyway. He cries and begs anytime he senses rejection. Sometimes he suspects that I am unfaithful and he swears that he will kill both me and my lover."
The two carried on their affair for a few more months before things came to ahead.
"I can`t stand this sneaking around and snatching off random opportunities," Miles declared. "Leave him and marry me, Elizabeth."
"I want to Miles ... I want to, but you don`t understand how difficult it is. It`s pathetic when he begs me to love him and terrifying when he makes his threats. I only thank heaven that he doesn't suspect you and that he is not totally positive that I`m cheating. Sometimes I wish that you and I had never met."
"Don`t say that, honey. Meeting each other was the best thing that ever happened to either one of us." Elizabeth did not reply. She just turned her head and stared off into the distance.
Finally, Miles came to a decision. "I can`t stand this anymore, Elizabeth," he told her the night before the professor was to return from a week-long psychology convention in Chicago. "This week has been like a week in Paradise. It felt as if we were finally married and could spend every minute of every day delighting in each other, but I can`t return to Purgatory and an existence based on waiting for your husband to go on trips or for you to manage to sneak off with me. I want to live a normal life with the woman I love. If you love me you must, once and for all, decide to leave him."
"I do love you, Miles. You must believe that I do. I just need a little bit of time to figure out how to leave him."
"I understand," Miles replied, "really, I do but I can`t stay here while you decide. It`s just too stressful for me. I`m moving to New York and giving you the space you need to make the right decision. If you can`t pull the trigger, then it will have to end between us. I`ll contact you when I know exactly where I am staying."
And that`s how he came to stay at Mrs. Bennett`s boarding house.
"Brrrrngg! Brrrrngg!" Raymond Heatherton rolled over in his bed and swiped violently at the alarm clock that was ringing louder than Hell`s bells. The clock flew across the room and crashed into the wall, shattering into pieces.
"Shit," Heatherton grumbled. "That`s the third clock I've broken this month." He stumbled groggily out of bed and winced as the familiar headache pounded from behind his eyes. "I really need to stop drinking," he thought, knowing that he never would.
Raymond was up at the crack of dawn, as usual, in order to get to work at the Post Office on West 52nd Street. Most mailmen with his length of service were rewarded with jobs much nearer to their homes but Ray was forced to commute to Hell`s Kitchen from the outermost reaches of Brooklyn. Nobody knew for sure if this was because he was so bad-tempered or if he was bad-tempered because of this untoward burden. Regardless, he was forced to endure long, unpleasant trips each morning to a job he despised. He had the worst punctuality record at his branch and had been docked a small fortune over the years for his tardiness.
He was late for work again, today. It wasn't his fault; his train was delayed forty-five minutes while EMS made its way to the aid of a sick passenger. "The poor sucker is probably dead by now," Raymond mused when the technicians finally arrived.
Naturally, his supervisor showed no compassion when he arrived thirty minutes late. "Sorry, Heatherton," he said, too happily for Raymond`s liking. "We will have to dock your pay again."
The weather was unseasonably hot and humid and his load of letters seemed heavier than usual. He trudged along his route, bemoaning his fate. After a time, he decided that he needed a drink. "Just a quick one," he pronounced. He stopped at a bar near the Port Authority bus terminal, sighed with relief as he felt the cool, invigorating kiss of the A/C, and took a load off on the nearest bar stool. One cold Bud led to another and soon the day was half gone.
Finally, he left his seat and staggered out into the sweltering street. "Shit," he shouted as he realized the time and the number of letters that remained to be delivered. "I`ll never be able to finish my rounds," What am I going to do?" After a moment`s thought, as inconspicuously as he could manage to do so, he headed for a deserted street and, as he had done more than once in the past, dumped his load down a sewer.
Miles returned to the mail table at the foot of the stairs for the fourth time in the past hour. "Where is the damn mail," he grumbled. He had managed to contact Elizabeth to give her his address a day or two after he had moved into Mrs. Bennett`s house. He had reiterated his need for her to leave her husband and was now impatiently awaiting her letter.
"Please don`t write to me again," she had begged in her first letter to him. "He saw your letter and became very suspicious when I flushed it before he could actually read it. He threatened a beating from which I would never recover and swore to track down my lover and turn him into a eunuch. Later, he begged me for forgiveness and doted over me like a slave. I`m terrified that I will die from either violence or nausea.
"Again, I beg you not to write to me anymore. I will mail you a letter each Monday morning and have an answer for you within four weeks. I love you and know that I will find a way out of this mess."
This was the fourth week and her letters had always arrived on Wednesday. She had restated in her previous letter that she would have an answer for him in today`s post. He awakened before dawn and thought about nothing but her answer, already making plans for their glorious future.
By nightfall, he realized that there would be no letter. There was no mail for anybody else either but that was not unusual. "That idiot mailman probably forgot to deliver today; the letter will be here tomorrow," he rationalized.
Naturally, the following day brought no letter for him either. There was a telephone bill for Mrs. Bennett and a couple of advertising flyers from local stores but nothing from Elizabeth. He had waited by the front door from the time he arose in the morning until the mail arrived at about 3 PM. "Is there nothing for me," he asked Heatherton when he finally delivered. He thought that the mailman blanched as he stammered, "no, sir. Nothing for you."
Elizabeth was beginning to panic. She had packed a bag and taken a taxi to the University Diner, the coffee shop that she and Miles had gone to the day that they had met. It was a place to which they had returned quite often and had come to call their own. She had told him in her letter that she would meet him there and that if he still loved her, she would leave with him and never return to her husband. She had no thoughts that he would not appear ... she felt confident that he loved her.
That confidence began to wane as she waited in vain for her lover. "Where can he be," she thought, anxiously. "Maybe he has stopped loving me ... I should never have taken so long to decide. He must have met another woman who doesn't carry as much baggage as I and whom he loves more than me."
After waiting for hours, she finally made her way home and headed for her bedroom for a good cry.
Back in New York City, Miles was besides himself. He was thinking the same type of negative thoughts that Elizabeth was, one hundred twenty-five miles away. "She must have decided to remain with her husband," he deduced. "She was too frightened to leave him, or else she never loved me; I was just a fling." Dejected, he headed for his room to stew.
Elizabeth eventually calmed down and tried to think rationally about the situation. He must love me," she thought. "He probably never received my letter. I know how erratic mail delivery can be." She decided to write another letter, repeating her decision to leave her husband and begin a new life with Miles. She reiterated just how much she loved him. She poured her expressions of love into this new letter, in no way embarrassed by the excess of emotion, and set up a new date for their rendezvous.
"I`ll wait until next week," Miles decided. "I`m sure I`ll receive a letter next week." Although he felt convinced of her love and that he would receive her favourable message next week, he spent seven nerve-wracking days on pins and needles.
It wasn't Heatherton`s fault this time. Sure, he stopped at the bar and had a few beers but he wasn't overly drunk. Unfortunately, after he inadvertently kicked a can at a dog on 44th Street, the mutt chased him with murderous intent. He`d run four blocks before escaping into the lobby of the seedy hotel on West 48th Street and 9th Avenue. He actually had some mail for this address. After dropping off the letters and stopping in the men`s room to freshen up, Heatherton went, breezily on his way, relatively happy to continue his rounds on this pleasant afternoon.
Regrettably, and unbeknownst to him, during his desperate flight from the mad dog, a few letters flew from his pouch. Wouldn't you know that one of those letters was the one for which Miles Akers had been impatiently waiting?
Two days later, Elizabeth was on the verge of insanity. Once again, Miles had failed to appear at the coffee shop. After waiting for him for hours, she`d trudged, dejectedly, home and locked herself in her room. She was now weeping like a willow. "He has stopped loving me," she sobbed. "And it`s my own fault. If I`d been able to leave my husband when Miles had asked, we would be together now. He must have met a sophisticated New York City woman and given up on me.
"That`s it," she said aloud as she experienced that erroneous epiphany and allowed the preposterous train of thought to continue along its untenable track. "He`s fucking another woman; that`s why he doesn't love me anymore." Her anguish had suddenly turned to anger and she paced back and forth within the bedroom, stopping only to pick up a pillow and fling it, as hard as she could, towards the wall. En route to its target, the feather-filled missile collided with a table lamp, knocking the lamp to the floor.
"Elizabeth," Dr. Swift called. "Are you all right, dear?"
"Yes, I am," she replied, calmer now, and jolted by her husband`s voice into a more rational state of mind.
He was not really concerned, of course, only a bit annoyed that she had locked herself inside the room and was paying him no mind.
"God, I hate that bastard," she thought, referring to her husband. "It`s all his fault that my life has come to this. If only I had the nerve, I would kill him." She laughed maniacally. "That would solve my problems ... I`d be free of him forever and happy once again."
But she knew that she hadn't the nerve and her next thoughts were of suicide, instead.
Miles was in no better a state. For hours, he had been pacing his own room, his head hurting and his heart aching; his stomach was tied up in knots. He`d lain awake all night just trying to understand why she had stopped loving him. "I know she once loved me. What could have happened? I suppose she was afraid to leave him and take up with me. She would be giving up a comfortable life with a renowned professor just to join me in a boarding house."
Deep inside, he knew that that wasn't really it; that something else must have prevented her from contacting him. He must get in touch with her. "I know that if only she heard my voice, our love would be rekindled." Finally, he came to a decision, albeit one that was not very well thought out. His heart pounding, he grabbed a handful of change from his nightstand and bounded down the stairs. He left the house and ran as fast as he could to the phone booth on 8th Avenue. When he arrived, breathless, at the glass-enclosed receptacle, it was, to his distress, occupied by a sloppily-dressed Latina who periodically halted her conversation in order to have a hit of her reefer. He paced back and forth, sweating profusely and muttering aloud, "this bitch better hang up already. What the hell is taking her so long?" It took all his will to refrain from forcing open the door and dragging her out. Finally, the woman finished her call and left the booth, alarmed by the madman who pushed past her and grabbed the telephone. Without a word, she scurried away.
He hurriedly dialled the number to Elizabeth`s house, a number that he`d memorized, although, at her request, he had never before dialled. "Come on, come on," he muttered at each ring. "Answer the damn phone, Elizabeth." To his distress, a child answered and summoned her mother who irritably informed him that he`d dialled the wrong number.
He deposited another dime and dialled again; this time more carefully. He suffered through four rings before she finally picked up. The mere sound of her voice calmed him down.
"Elizabeth..." he began.
"Oh my god, Miles," she replied. "Miles, where have you been? I`ve written to you and asked you to meet me at the diner and to take me away. I love you so much; I can`t live without you.
Miles, of course, was ecstatic. "You did write to me," he squealed. "You do love me."
"Of course I love you, my darling. How could you think otherwise?"
Suddenly, a click was heard on the line. "Oh, no," she whispered. "My husband has picked up the extension. Miles, I have to hang up.
"No," she screamed. "No!" And then, without another word, she hung up the phone. Miles tried several times, to redial but got no answer. He never saw nor heard from her again.