She can’t take her eyes off of the stack of envelopes. She wants to, but she can’t. She watches his fingers slide from them gently and then they’re gone and she looks up and he isn’t there anymore.
He’s leaving on June 8th. That’s all she really remembers right now. From the entire day, that’s the only thing she can remember hearing. That he’s leaving two days before she gets married. That he told her this while she had her save-the-dates stacked up on her desk. She had just finished addressing them earlier that day. But she doesn’t remember much about that right now.
All she can think is that he’s leaving on June 8th for a place that it takes a day to get to and he offered to mail her save-the-dates for her. He’d rested his finger tips on the corners of the envelopes and looked at her and asked if she wanted him to mail them for her. She’d shaken her head, saying that it was okay, she could do it. It was fine.
Anyway, she had to take one out of the stack now, didn’t she?
It’s easy to find his because she was organized and put them in alphabetical order. So she goes almost a third of the way into the pile and finds the H’s. There aren’t many H’s. He’s one of four. She looks at his name printed on the envelope. James Halpert. Not Jim, because this was official business. This was something important that warranted full first names. Mr. James Halpert.
She’d been careful when writing his name. She’d been careful with all of the names, but especially with this one. She’d taken her time and written it slowly and curved the letters just the right way. He’d said once that he loved (or maybe he just said ‘liked’) the way she curved the bottoms of her T’s. So she was sure to do that on the last letter of his name.
She’d known his address without looking it up. Even though she’s only been to his house maybe three times in the three years that they’ve known each other. It was printed somewhere in her mind and she just didn’t even have to think very hard to remember it. And she could remember what his street looked like and that it was a right turn onto the street when she was coming from her house. A left when she was coming from work. She could remember what the houses next to his looked like.
She turned the envelope over and over in her hands. She ran her palm over its smooth surface and thought of herself in June, sitting at this reception desk with her fingertips idly running over a stuffed koala bear as she played solitaire and answered phones. She thought of how her fingernails would sound against the stuffed bear’s plastic eyes and how he’d look up at her like he could hear the sound and smile and she’d bite her lip because now she could really hear what that smile was saying. But that wasn’t reality. Reality was that he was going away two days before her wedding and now she was taking his save-the-date out of the stack.
She tore open the envelope and took out the save-the-date, grabbing the nearest pen and scribbling on the bottom in hurried handwriting that wasn’t so careful, but the T’s still curved up at their ends:
“Just in case Australia suddenly sinks before June 8th.”
