Assumed Identity

6

Here’s the postcard I never thought I’d send.

She’d been furious the night she decided that she didn’t want to see him anymore. She’d told him not to bother trying to get in touch with her again, that if she ever needed him, she’d send him a goddamned postcard.

I hope you meant your promise.

He’d told her that no matter how much time and distance was between them, all she had to do was ask, and he’d be there.

The last time and place.

He remembered the date of their breakup well because of what had been happening around them, the costumes, the music-October 31, Halloween. The time had been close to midnight, the place Cafe du Monde in New Orleans.

Counting on you. PLEASE.

In capital letters? She might as well have said that she was begging him.

That wasn’t like her.

She was in trouble.

He continued staring at the glass of bourbon and imagined the tension she must have felt as she wrote the postcard. Maybe she had only seconds to write it, to condense it to its essentials and hope it was clear to him, even though she didn’t sign her name.

She doesn’t want anyone except me to know where she’s going to be and when.

She’s terrified.