The Wrong Stall

Let me start by explaining the stall situation, because everything that came after it depends on the stall situation, and I refuse to let you think I went creeping around behind vendor booths on purpose like some kind of farmers market raccoon.

It was a Saturday in July, the middle of July, the hot flat part of the month where the pavement in downtown Alder Creek, Oregon smells like sunscreen and kettle corn whether you want it to or not. I had been divorced for fourteen months by then. Twenty-eight years of marriage, ended in a conference room with a mediator named Rico who kept saying the word "equitable" like it was a snack he wanted me to try. I was fifty-four, I was a pharmacist, and my life had settled into a routine so predictable I could have written it out for the next ten years and been right most Saturdays.

So that Saturday I did something different, which for me meant driving the eleven minutes into town and paying two dollars to park in the lot behind the feed store instead of my usual spot at the pharmacy. The farmers market takes over four blocks of downtown every summer, and it is chaos. There is a man who sells honey and yells about bees at anyone who slows down. There are two different pickle vendors who clearly hate each other. Somebody brings a parrot. I have never gotten a straight answer about the parrot.

I bought a cucumber I did not need, because the honey man cornered me, and then I needed to find a bathroom, and this is where my life got interesting for the first time during the Obama administration's first term, which is a joke I made to Hector later and he laughed so hard he had to sit down, so I stand by it.

The public restroom behind the market row is a mystery. There is a women's room, and there is a door that looks like the other half of the women's room, and it is not. It is a storage stall that belongs to the vendor in the end booth, the one who sells cutting boards and spoons and, I now know, other wooden things, and the door does not lock, and the sign saying it is not a bathroom is a piece of paper taped at knee height where no living adult would ever look.

I walked in. There was no toilet. There were shelves of sanded wood, a radio, a folding chair, and a coffee can full of pencils sitting on a little writing desk that somebody had clearly built himself, because who else owns a writing desk made out of what looks like a church pew.

And there was a letter, half written, lying right there in the open like it was waiting for me.

I will be honest about the next part. I read it. I know. I am fifty-four years old and I read a stranger's mail in a shed, and I have decided to forgive myself for it because of what came after, but at the time I just stood there holding my useless cucumber like an idiot.

The letter said, in handwriting so neat it looked printed:

*Dear Marv, You're right that I talk too much about the shop. It's just that a man spends thirty years learning to do one thing well and then everyone asks if he can fix their deck. I'd like to meet someone who asks me about something else. Anything else. Ask your sister if she's still interested, or don't, no pressure either way. I just figured a letter was better than another awkward phone call where we both pretend the reception is bad. Yours, H.*

Well. I put it down. Then I picked it up again. Then I did the thing.

I found a pencil in the coffee can, turned his letter over, and wrote on the back, because apparently I have become a person who vandalizes correspondence in a shed. I wrote:

*Dear H., This is not Marv. This is also not your sister. This is a forty-year-old woman, except by the math that is a lie, this is a fifty-four-year-old woman named Rhonda who walked into your storage stall looking for a toilet and found your letter instead, which raises questions about your signage and also about your sister, who I hope knows she's being pawned off on you via your best friend. For what it's worth, I would never ask you to fix my deck. I don't have a deck. I have a condominium with an HOA that has opinions about my doormat. Your desk is very nice though. Sincerely, The Wrong Stall, Rhonda Slocum, pharmacist, bored beyond measure.*

I signed it, left it where I found it, and walked out feeling like I'd gotten away with something, which is a feeling I had not had since I was in school, and which turned out to be more addictive than any of the controlled substances I count out for a living. That's a joke. Mostly.

* * *

I went back the next Saturday. I told myself it was for the tomatoes. Nobody believed me, including me.

The letter was there, face down. On the back, in that same tidy print:

*Dear Rhonda, Marv has informed me that his sister is "probably still interested but who can say," which is the most honest answer anyone has given me in years, so no harm done there. As for the signage, the sign fell down in April and I keep meaning to fix it, which tells you something about me, though I'm not sure what. You wrote fourteen words about your doormat and I laughed out loud alone in a shed, which the honey man witnessed and will no doubt report to others. I'm Hector Kepler, I'm forty-eight, I build furniture and spoons and the occasional church pew, and I have a question for you: what does a pharmacist do all day that bores her beyond measure? Don't spare the details. I have time. H.*

So I told him. I told him about counting pills and arguing with insurance companies and the woman who comes in every Tuesday to ask if her blood pressure medication is making her feet itch, and it is not, it is her feet. I told him about eating dinner standing at the counter because a table for one seemed like a statement I wasn't ready to make. I told him that my ex-husband Manny and I split up not because of anything dramatic but because we had run out of things to say to each other somewhere around