Sweet Misfortune: A Novel (12 page)

Part III

The End

Chapter 19

Accept something that you cannot change.
The way you look, for instance.

October 2009

T
HE POST OFFICE THAT HOUSED SOPHIE’S
PO
BOX WAS
located just five blocks away from Chocolat’ de Soph
—
close enough that she could walk there whenever she needed, but up a steep enough hill that she didn’t bother going more than once per week. Any more than that would have been overkill anyway, since the only items that ever came were the occasional bills for her business, mixed here and there with catalogs or advertising from culinary and confectionary wholesalers. It had been a full three weeks since Garrett placed the want ad in the
Seattle Times
, and just as expected, she’d received no responses on her two previous trips to the post office.

As she finished her ascent up the hill on her weekly mail run, Sophie caught sight of a homeless man waving his arm on the opposite corner of the street. She gave a quick wave back, caught her breath while waiting for the signal to change, and then paced across the intersection to where he stood.

“Hello Sophie! How’s my favorite customer?” The man cackled lightly. His greasy, graying hair hung in thick clusters, dangling past his forehead and ears, and curling up in the back above the collar of his red flannel shirt. Smudges of dirt covered the weathered skin directly below his eyes, while the rest of his face was covered with a thick beard that was tied beneath his chin with a rubber band. He held a cardboard sign that read: Vietnam changed me. You can change me too. GOT SPARE CHANGE?

“Is that what I’ve become to you, Jim? A customer? You make this sound like nothing more than a business transaction.”

Jim had met Sophie nearly a year earlier, not long after Garrett dropped out of her life. She’d been on her way to send a small package of Misfortune Cookies to a man who owned a novelty shop in Portland and who was looking for potential new products, when Jim stopped her on the street to ask for food or money. Without any cash on her at the time, she told him he could have a Misfortune Cookie, but that he probably wouldn’t like it. He took her up on it anyway, thanking her over and over for the kindness.

As it happened, Jim’s taste buds didn’t work so well, making him the only person Sophie had ever met who ate a Misfortune Cookie and loved it. He also loved the messages inside, and he swore up and down that he kept every one of them, and that one day they would all come true. After that initial encounter he kept a close eye out for Sophie, and eventually figured out that Monday was mail day, and so he planted himself there each week and waited for her to show up.

“Well I ain’t out here for my health,” he said wryly, his voice cracking as he spoke. “What do you call this, if it ain’t my business? I’m luring customers with my uncommonly good looks and charm, just like you drive ’em into your store with the taste of your delicious cookies.”

Sophie chuckled. “Most people think they taste awful.”

“Exactly! Just like I’m no beauty queen, but somehow I still got people giving me cash.”

She shook her head. “You’re something else.”

Jim scratched at his head and let out a hoot. “Ha! Precisely what my wife said before she walked out on me.” He paused, moving his hand from the top of his head to the back of his neck, where something else apparently itched as well. “Well, enough small talk. You got another little something for me today?”

Sophie reached into her purse, retrieved a Misfortune Cookie wrapped in a napkin, and handed it to him. “It’s all yours. Made fresh this morning.”

Jim licked his cracked lips as he accepted it from her, then he lifted it to his mouth and took a small bite, savoring it. After a couple more small nibbles he retrieved the paper inside. “Hell yeah!” he hollered after silently reading it. “Another good one. Says me and the tires on my car will both be bald very soon.”

Sophie shook her head again. “And why is that a good thing?”

He stopped and stared at her. “Why do I always gotta explain this to you? One day these fortunes are gonna come true. What a blessing that’ll be. Bald tires or not, I don’t got a car now, so sounds like things’ll be turning around for me any day now.”

“Always the optimist. Well, I’ve really got to run so I can get back to the store. Randy will be wondering what took me so long.”

“You coming back next week, Miss Sophie?”

“I imagine so. If I don’t get the mail, no one will.”

He smiled, showing the purple-tinted gums where teeth should have been. “I’ll be waiting.”

A
S USUAL, THERE
were only a handful of items in the PO box when Sophie opened it. But to her surprise, three of the letters had handwriting on the front, which wasn’t normally the case for standard junk mail. She opened up one of the three and was floored to find that it was a response to the Happiness want ad. She quickly tore into the other two letters to discover that they, too, were happiness letters.

As she walked slowly down the hill toward Chocolat’ de Soph, Sophie read the brief notes over and over again, still surprised that someone—
anyone
—would respond to the want ad. Once she was back at the store she tucked the letters in the top drawer of her desk, and then took over for Randy at the register so he could do some much-needed cleaning in the back.

Not long after that, the phone near the register rang. “Chocolat’ de Soph,” Sophie said, as she lifted the receiver. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, may I speak with Miss de Soph, please?”

“Very funny, Garrett. What do you want?”

“Hi, Sophie. How are you?”

“I was fine until a few seconds ago,” she said, her voice sounding strained.

“Oh c’mon, lighten up. Is it really so bad to talk to me? I’m just checking in to see how my ad is doing. Any takers yet?”

“Lousy,” she said almost immediately. “Just like I knew it would.”

“So I’ve paid for three straight weeks of that thing in the
Times
, and not a single response? Ouch.”

“Well… it might have drummed up a response or two, but nothing really to speak of.”

“Whoa. Really?” Garrett sounded suddenly very excited. “So there actually are happy people hiding out there. And apparently they read the classifieds.”

“Apparently,” she quipped.

“So was it just one response, or two?”

Sophie cleared her throat. “Three, actually. They just came today.”

“Three! That’s great. On average, that’s one per week—not bad. At that rate, it’ll only be, like, two years before I get my date with you.”

“Hooray,” she said with mock enthusiasm. “But keep in mind that just because three letters showed up doesn’t necessarily mean that all three will count toward the hundred. They have to be legitimate, thoughtful, lasting examples of happiness. And since I’m the judge of that, they probably aren’t.”

The phone was silent for several moments. “You’re really going to dig in your heels on this, aren’t you?”

“I think it’s only fair that I do whatever it takes to avoid you as much as possible.”

More silence ensued, before Garrett eventually said, “So even if I get a hundred or more worthy responses, you’re going to nix them all.”

She laughed. “Not
all
of them. That wouldn’t be fair. But enough to keep putting you off, yes.”

“Well, in that case,” he responded, “I think it’s only reasonable that I get to read the responses, too, just so I’m in the loop. If I’m going to put out the money for this, I at least need to know that you’re giving these things a fair shake.”

Now it was Sophie who was silent. “You’re seriously going to keep running the ad?” she finally asked. “It’s going to get expensive, week after week.”

“Hey, you made the rules, Soph. I’m just playing along. But one way or another I need to sit down with you and explain why I did what I did, and if this is what it takes, then so be it.”

Sophie sighed.
Would one date hurt anything
, she wondered,
just to be done with it and move on
? She knew she was being stubborn and that the civil thing would be to just give in and let Garrett say whatever it was he wanted to say. But didn’t the pain he’d caused her justify putting him off for as long as possible?

“It’s your nickel,” she said at length.

“Precisely.”

“Huh?”

“It’s my nickel, and I want to make sure I’m getting my money’s worth. I’ll be over in a little bit to read the first three letters. See you, Soph!” He clicked off before she could object.

True to his word, ten minutes later Garrett showed up at Chocolat’ de Soph, wearing blue medical scrubs and a great big smile. Sophie was in the back gathering her things, hoping to get out the door before he arrived. Closing the front door behind him, Garrett waved cheerfully at Randy, then strolled around the counter and made his way back to Sophie’s office.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked, as he poked his head in the room.

“Yes,” she replied, picking up her umbrella, “but apparently not soon enough.”

Garrett just kept smiling. “Well, don’t rush off just yet. I want to see the letters you got today.”

Sophie set the umbrella back down and opened the top drawer of her desk. “Fine. Here, have at it.” She handed him the three topmost envelopes from the stack of mail.

Taking a seat on the front edge of Sophie’s desk, Garrett began reading each of the letters. After he’d read all three he went back and studied each of them more carefully. One of them included a hand-drawn picture, another had a four-by-six photo, and the third was simply a letter. None of the correspondences were very long, but it was several minutes before he was through.

“Well,” he started, as he stood up and turned to Sophie, “two out of three’s not bad, right? Granted, it slows my weekly average a bit, but it’s better than nothing.”

Sophie let out a derisive laugh. “Two? I wasn’t going to count any of them toward the hundred.”

Chuckling, Garrett tossed one of the letters on the desk in front of her. “I knew right off you wouldn’t count that one. And even though I can see how some people might enjoy the thrill of the hunt, I just don’t think killing other living things for sport qualifies as lasting happiness.”

“No,” she agreed. “And I nearly gagged when I first looked at the picture of him standing next to that dead moose. Did you see how its tongue was hanging out of its mouth?” She shook like she had a sudden case of the shivers.

“So we’re agreed on that one,” he said with a laugh, then held out the other two envelopes. “But how come you’re tossing out these?”

She crossed her arms and stood up, separated from him by the desk. “The letter from the woman is simply too generic. She wrote more than the others, but all she really said is that happiness is watching your kids grow up, which isn’t true.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Why not?”

“Well, first, what about the people who don’t have kids—who
can’t
have kids. That sort of happiness would exclude them. And kids are, potentially, fleeting, sad as that sounds. If your kids don’t make it to adulthood, then you haven’t watched them grow up. You’ve watched them die. Is that happiness? And—”

“There’s more?”

“Hush,” she said. “You wanted my reasoning, and I’m giving it to you. Just look at my parents. By this woman’s definition, they weren’t happy because they didn’t see me grow up—they didn’t make it that far.”

“You’re tough,” he said softly. “How about the other one? From the kid?”

“Oh geez,” she said, sounding almost offended. “A crayon drawing of a cat? Really?”

“Well to a little girl, a pet can be something that brings happiness, can’t it?”

“It’s a
cat
, Garrett. As in shedding all over the furniture, and coughing up hair, most of which they’ve licked from their own body. Does that sound like happiness to you? And the drawing? If it weren’t labeled as a cat, I’d have guessed it was a hippo.”

Garrett smirked. “So that’s a definite no?”

Sophie nodded. “Now then, is there anything else I can do for you? I really want to catch the next bus back to Gig Harbor.”

“No,” he said, smiling as he turned to leave. “Go catch your bus.” He paused momentarily, then asked, “When are you checking the PO box again?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Next Monday. Why?”

Grinning playfully, Garrett turned on his heels and whispered, “Perfect. I’ll see you then.” He quickly darted out through the office door before she could put up a fuss.