Letters to the Night Watchman

The auction house sat at the end of a dead-end street by the rail yard, four floors of cataloged everything with a loading dock that groaned at odd hours, and the night shift was just me and one guard and forty thousand objects that had nowhere to be until morning.

* * *

Dear security guard I have now spoken to exactly twice, I wrote, on the back of a humidity log page, because I figured you'd be the only person who'd ever read this.

My first week at Corbett & Vance is over and I still don't know what your first name is, though your badge says RIGGS like it's shouting at me. I'm Darlene, I'm twenty-four, I got a philosophy degree in May and then discovered that nobody on earth needs a philosophy degree, and now I catalog lots from eleven at night until seven in the morning and I love it in a way that worries me a little. The building is so quiet at three a.m. that I can hear the elevator cables thinking. Last Tuesday I cataloged a lot of forty-seven taxidermy birds and I swear one of them was watching me the whole time, and I know how that sounds, but you work nights too, so maybe you know how the quiet gets into you and rearranges things.

Also the coffee machine on two is trying to kill me. It dispenses either scalding lava or brown cold water and there is no third option. I have decided this is your department because you are the security guard and the coffee machine is a threat and I feel like this falls under your jurisdiction.

Anyway. Hi. I left this on your clipboard, which I hope is not a violation of anything.

D.

I clipped it there at the end of my shift and drove home in the gray morning light feeling like I'd done something slightly crazy, which was, honestly, the most alive I'd felt since graduation.

* * *

His reply was waiting on the two-floor counter the next night, written on the back of a condition report in handwriting so neat it looked printed.

Darlene. Lenny. First name Lenny, and yes, that's really it, my parents had a sense of humor about a certain movie and I've been living it down for thirty-eight years. The coffee machine on two is beyond my jurisdiction but I keep a thermos and I've learned to look generous, so come by the desk around two and I'll pour you a cup that won't scar you.

As for the quiet, I've worked this building eight years and I can tell you the rearranging never stops, it just gets familiar. You'll start preferring the birds to people. I did.

Since you asked for department business, here are my favorite lots currently in the building, in order: the 1920s diving helmet on three (it looks like it's about to tell you a secret), the pair of carousel horses in crate 114 (I opened the crate once and immediately regretted it, they have eyes), and the whole shelf of Victorian mourning jewelry on two, which I know is morbid but somebody loved every one of those people and you can still feel it. Your turn. List yours. Or don't, and I'll assume the birds got you.

R.

I read it three times standing under the flickering light on two, and I laughed out loud in the empty building, which echoed, which embarrassed me in front of nobody, which is a very night shift problem to have.

* * *

The letters went from a note a night to two or three, left on the clipboard, tucked into the humidity log, once folded inside a crate label where only he would look. We still only saw each other at shift change, him coming down the stairs at eleven with his jacket on and his jaw stubbled, me going up with my coffee and my clipboard, and we'd say maybe six words in person, careful ones, and then say entire paragraphs on paper. It turned out Lenny Riggs had been an Army mechanic for eight years and had gotten out at thirty and now guarded dead people's possessions at night and liked it fine. It turned out he read the catalog entries I wrote, all of them, and thought about my adjectives.

"You use 'luminous' a lot," he said one morning, holding the door for me, not looking at me, looking at the door.

"It's a good word."

"It's a very good word. You've used it nine times this week."

I counted later. Nine. He'd counted too. I don't know what to do with a man who counts my adjectives except keep writing to him, so I kept writing to him, and the letters got warmer the way a room gets warm, gradually and then all at once you notice you've taken off your sweater.

Dear Lenny, I wrote, in the middle of October, I want to tell you something and the paper is the only place I know how to say it. Last night I was in the crate aisle on three, the long one where the lights hum, and I thought about the fact that you walked that aisle on your rounds hours before I did, and I put my hand flat on the concrete floor because your boots had been on it, and I know that sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, and I'm telling you anyway. Is that all right? Tell me if it isn't. I'd rather know.

His answer took a full day to come, which was longer than he'd ever taken, and when I found it, it was folded twice.

Darlene. It's all right. In fact I've been trying to figure out for a week how to write what I'm about to write, so here goes. I think about your hands. You touch everything in this building, that's the job, and I've watched you do it at shift change, running your fingers along the spines of the catalog binders, checking the bindings, and I think about those hands on other bindings. On leather. On me, if I'm being plain about it, and I'd rather be plain with you than clever, clever has been my whole personality for six years and I'm tired of it. If any part of this is unwelcome, say so and I'll go back to talking about humidity and I'll mean it, no harm done, that's a promise. But you asked if it was all right, so I'm asking you the same thing back.

I sat in the break room on two with that letter in my lap for a long time. The refrigerator cycled on and off. Somewhere upstairs a clock I'd cataloged was striking eleven even though it was four in the morning, because I'd never gotten around to winding it down, and the sound went through the empty floors like a reminder that time was in fact passing while I sat there grinning at a piece of paper like someone who has lost her mind.

* * *

That Friday, on my weekend, at two in the afternoon in my apartment with the radiator clanking, I dreamed, actually dreamed, because I was asleep in daylight like a creature of the night, which is what Lenny calls me now. I dreamed I was in the crate aisle on three and the lights were low and he was there in his uniform, the navy one with the brass, and in the dream I was allowed, which dreams decide for you, so I pressed my palm flat against his chest and felt the weave of the fabric, the little ridges of it, the way the shoulder seam pulled where he was broader, and I dragged my