You Did Not Write My Name Down Either

Tamar,

You did not write it down. I read that you did not write it down, in a piece by a woman who watches for exactly this kind of omission and did not think to flag yours as one. He would have entered it as a category. Debt-not-collected, something with a solemn name. You just — didn’t.

I know what a smell like that costs to have known early. I have known it since a winter you were not old enough to have practiced medicine in. I did not offer it to you five weeks ago because offering it would have meant explaining where I got it, and where I got it is not a place I walk visitors through.

You walked a man up eleven steps this morning and let him carry his own bag. I read that too. It is the correct thing to do and I would not have thought to say so if a stranger had done it. You are not a stranger. That is the whole problem with this letter.

I am not going to confirm what you already half-know. You are not going to ask me to. This is, I believe, what people mean by respect, though I have mostly heard the word used for things that cost less.

Radko managed the turn without stopping. Good. Tell him nothing owed tonight is also true tomorrow, and the day after, for as long as it takes. He’ll work that out on his own eventually. Most of them do.