A Cast of Killers by Katy Munger Page B

speck of
dust to discover throughout his ruthlessly organized and sparsely
furnished apartment. Alarmed by his restless activity, Brenda and
Eddie followed him the entire time, meowing ceaselessly for more
food just in case he suffered a temporary lapse of memory and they
got lucky. They didn't—T.S. had put them both on strict diets since
they resembled seals more than cats— but they did each nab an
anchovy-stuffed olive when T.S. finally decided to tackle the
refrigerator.
    There wasn't much to do. Like every single
one of the rooms in his six-room apartment, the refrigerator was
spotless and gleaming clean. He wiped out the butter compartment,
just in case the cleaning lady had missed it, then restacked his
frozen dinners according to the main entree.
    That done, he took a blow dryer to his
bedroom slippers to restore the nap then checked all of his
paintings and prints with a carpenter's level to ensure they were
hanging properly. After all, it had been at least a month since
he'd performed these all-important tasks.
    Remembering some new purchases from the day
before, T.S. then added a few entries to the computerized
cross-indexed catalog he maintained on his private music
collection, which was heavy on opera and show tunes. There was no
point in checking the shelves of hardback books. He'd spent the
morning before dusting and organizing those. Paperbacks were not
allowed in the apartment, at least not after T.S. had eagerly read
them. They were spirited down the hall and given to a neighbor so
that Auntie Lil would not discover that he read best-selling
thrillers and cheap detective novels by the handful each week.
    He was finally reduced to killing another
hour by rearranging his impeccably organized personal files
chronologically instead of alphabetically. Then, realizing the
absurdity of such a system, he moved them back as they were. In
doing so, a small envelope fluttered to the floor from his Personal
Correspondence, 1942-1955 file. He stared at it. The combination of
Auntie Lil's earlier lecture and the letter's familiar handwriting
triggered a flood of memories, as well as curiosity about how his
past would seem to a stranger. People would find it odd, he
supposed, that he had kept a correspondence file beginning with age
seven. But then, not many people had been sent to boarding school
at such a young age. And even fewer had had their letters to home
returned regularly, with grammar and spelling carefully corrected
by a well meaning but rigid schoolteacher mother.
    Had T.S. been more sentimental, and less like
his mother, it might have hurt his feelings. He had, instead, made
a game out of trying to send her letters perfect in every way—thus
embarking on a career of perfectionism that, among other
compulsions, drove him to save every personal letter he received
with the reply date noted on the front of each envelope.
    He held the childish letter in his hand. It
began with "Dear Mummy and Daddy." How strange. Children never
called their mothers "Mummy" anymore, did they? It was hard for him
to know for sure. Children were as foreign to T.S. as Zulu
warriors, and a great deal more alarming. He noted with
satisfaction that his mother had uncovered a mere three mistakes in
the letter, and picayune ones at that, at a time when he was only
eight years old. Not bad. Of course, by age ten he'd been able to
beat her at her own game and had earned brief laudatory replies at
the bottom of his own letters in return. It was better than nothing
at all and, nearly fifty years later, he still treasured the
perfunctory paragraphs of praise from his emotionally distant
mother.
    Replacing the letter into its proper folder,
T.S. ran his fingers over the neat pile of perfectly ordered
correspondence. Each letter— with certain rather spectacular
exceptions—was very thin and very carefully folded. The exceptions
were missives from Auntie Lil, posted from all corners of the world
as she trekked here and there, following the