Her footfalls echoing across the George Peabody Library, Trinity glanced at the postcard to ensure she was in the right place at the right time.
I apologize for eluding you for years, it began, Our final meeting will be close to home.
The rest was less mysterious and on par with the three she’d received previously. Meet on 4/25 at 3:00 on the bench in the Referencing Section.
Trinity smoothed her dress and grimaced at the creases that remained. They weren’t ideal, but there were many things in life that weren’t ideal. Dropping out of law school hadn’t been ideal. Finding out that Tony, the boy she’d dropped out to travel across the continent for, was sleeping with her ex-roommate wasn’t ideal. Jumping from Tony to Patrick, only to lose interest because he wanted to get stoned instead of hike, wasn’t ideal. Taking a job as a secretary at the county courthouse instead of being a lawyer wasn’t ideal. So, when she’d gotten a postcard in the mail asking her to travel around the globe to meet a suitor in an ancient library, she jumped at the opportunity.
I’ve watched you from a far, and loved you your whole life. I think it’s time you knew who I was.
Her appetite whet, she planned her time off, and with no way to confirm to the stranger that she was going, boarded a plane, and headed to where the postcard was from: Prague. She took a day to acclimate and then on Sunday, as the postcard had designated, made her way to the Klementinum library. She’d rushed through the atrium, and then found a spot among the globes in the reading room. She waited three hours until it was apparent she was being stood up. More disappointed than angry, she’d walked to the St.Vitus Cathedral and treated herself to dinner along the Vltava river. In a way, it had been nice. As she walked along the streets she’d noted that this was the first date on which she hadn’t had to think about ways to justify why she’d never finished law school. It had felt good to sit alone. It had even given her something TO talk about on her next date.
That night, alone in her hotel room, she opened her laptop to a forgotten law school application. The line marker blinked for five minutes before she closed the computer and went to bed.
There were trysts in the six months between postcards, but nothing came of them. Trinity found herself, sometimes mid-date, wondering WHO had sent them… and if he was going to stand her up, WHY? So when the second postcard arrived, she’d boarded a flight to Portugal.
I waited for you, but you didn’t find me. Slow down, look around, and maybe this time you will.
Again, she found herself alone, so she’d explored the Joanina Library, listening to the chirping of the bats as a rainstorm rolled across the sky. She found the law section and, even though she couldn’t read the words, pulled the text from the shelves and skimmed the pages. The scent of the paper brought back memories of hours spent exploring cases and trials. Later, she walked along the beach, picking up shells before casting even the best of them into the ocean.
She didn’t date anyone between the second and third postcard. Her friends feigned concern. Was she sick? Surely the woman who’d been in a relationship with someone in some way since 14 must have contracted something in a foreign country. She didn’t have a good answer.
The third postcard sent her to Rio de Janeiro. There, at 3:00 on the day after she arrived, she waited in the Royal Portuguese Reading Room with a copy of The Rule of Law which she had brought with her. She stopped reading when a librarian informed her that it was closing time. When she heard the thrum of a guitar rising through the air she fell back to memories of her mother playing and wondered why she’d never taken lessons. When she returned home she was sunburned, carrying a guitar, and humming the scales to herself.
Home in Baltimore, she quit her job. She moved out of her apartment and in with her sister. She practiced arpeggios and checked the mail.
So there she was for a fourth time, walking through a beautiful library, this time in her own city, clutching a new book (Eve Was Framed by Helena Kennedy). After wandering through the law section for half an hour she made her way to the spot he’d specified. Before taking a seat she peered over the balcony, observing the passersby, wondering which enigmatic man had gone through all this trouble to impress her when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Her heart skipped a beat. She turned and found herself face to face with a younger man.
She’d never seen him before.
“Excuse me, you dropped this,” he said, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him. He handed her the bookmark she’d pinned between the pages. She opened her mouth, but before she could ask any questions he was gone. Her heart raced.
It hadn’t been HIM. She checked her watch: 3:05. She glanced over at the bench in the middle of the room and then looked around. People milled about. They opened and closed books, sometimes skimming them, sometimes reading a page. Some of them took the books with them. Others placed them back on the shelf. Trinity glanced back at the bench again and where there should have been a long lost high school acquaintance, a boy from one of her college classes, a colleague from work, there was no one. She knew that there wouldn’t be.
It suddenly didn’t matter to her who had sent the postcards because she knew the why. She sat down on the bench, and took out her laptop.
Fingers trembling with anticipation, her law school application open, she began to work.
Genre: Romance
Object: Postcard
Location: Library
The Word and The Song 