(Untitled)

[call_me_ree]

The package that arrives in the mail for Charlie McGee has contains a tasteful and nonspecific holiday card and a second package, wrapped in brown paper.

Written on the inside of the card in a firm feminine script:Ms. McGee

Comments

[ladyfirestarter]

Mail arrives for Irene Tassenbaum a few days later, containing a similar nondenominational holiday card (depicting stars and snowflakes) and a smaller package (wrapped in white tissue paper and sealed with a brightly colored sticker bearing the logo of the Tet Corporation).

The card bears only a few lines, written in an odd but perfectly clear mixture of script and print.

Mrs. Tassenbaum -

Thank you. I hope you will appreciate the enclosed in the same spirit of good faith.

I look forward to speaking with you again.

-Charlie McGee

Inside the white tissue paper is a very old and dog-eared paperback copy of Stephen King's Firestarter. It's extensively marked throughout, with certain passages highlighted and with slightly faded comments scribbled in the margin in that same half-print half-script.

A fresher comment is written on the flyleaf: Fair's fair. -C. R. McG.

[call_me_ree]

Two weeks pass with no response. When the letter comes, it's written not on stationery (all of Ree's stationery has David's name on it) but on plain typing paper. The hand is in some places rushed, and in others very precise, clearly written slowly, with each word chosen carefully.Charlie

[ladyfirestarter]

The return letter comes five days later, computer-printed on the heavy, cream-colored Tet Corporation stationery. Only the signature is handwritten, in the familiar half-script.

Irene,

The five greatest kindnesses I've received in my life were all from acquaintances of (at the time) less than two hours. Please don't worry about presuming.

If you're free a week from today, you may find some use for the enclosed.

-Charlie

Folded in a blank sheet of stationery, separately in the envelope, is a round-trip airline ticket. For a flight from Bangor (with a stopover in Chicago) to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The telephone number on this second sheet of stationery has been circled in blue ink.