The Year of Living Famously by Laura Caldwell

sweat-stained white shirt. And yet when I returned, there was an unmistakable crispness in the air. Women wore camel boots and thin leather jackets; the men were in cable-knit sweaters. Everything felt different, too—the fall always ushers in a sense of purpose to New York—and so everyone bustled by me on that first morning back as I strolled to my coffee shop, debating whether to call the temp agency today or wait until tomorrow. The sudden introduction of fall, like the drop of a heavy red curtain onto a Broadway stage, seemed a betrayal to me. It was as if the city already knew what I didn’t—that I would soon be leaving for the sunny, synthetic shores of la-la land.
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    Emmie used to keep a collection of telegrams in old candy tins. These tins were stacked in the corner of oneof her bedroom closets, and when I had the apartment to myself, which was often, I sometimes liked to extract them from her closet, feeling the swish and rustle of her clothes brush by my face as I dug for them. I would sit on her bed with its purple velvety spread, the apartment large and silent around me. With great anticipation, I took the telegrams out one at a time, making sure not to disturb the order. I was enamored with the precise folds, the thick, yellowing paper, the Western Union banner across the top.
    Emmie. Have reached Paris but the books are not ready for my reading. Can you call Scribner?
    MacKenzie Bresner
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    Dearest Emmie. The QE2 is not all they say. Am bored already with two more weeks until we reach land. Will you send me a telegram? Say anything. I simply need entertainment of your sort.
    Britton Matthews
    MacKenzie Bresner and Britton Matthews were Emmie’s star authors, and those telegrams from Britton were my favorites. He was famous, of course; even at age nine I knew that, even with him being dead for at least five years. But more than being a famous writer, he was Emmie’s true love, the reason she’d never married. They had had an affair that went on for a decade, well before I came along. It was the old story, Emmie told me (although at the age I was at, no story was old). He had refused to leave his wife, and Emmie refused to stop loving him. And so those telegrams from him were illicit and old-fashioned and fascinating.
    I had told Declan about Emmie’s telegrams when I wasin L. A. We were sitting on his balcony in the rickety plastic chairs, reading the Sunday paper.
    â€œI think people should still send telegrams,” I said. I was reading a piece about the telegrams Harry Truman had sent around the world on a regular basis.
    â€œI’m serious,” I said when he made a goofy face at me. “They’re so much more romantic, and they’re more permanent than e-mails. They have substance.” I explained about Emmie’s tin of telegrams then.
    â€œWell, love,” Dec said, “I don’t think it’s possible to send telegrams anymore. They’re extinct.”
    His comment put me in a momentary funk. The death of telegrams. Could it be true? But I quickly forgot about it, because soon Dec was pulling me back into his apartment, into our new bed.
    Back in New York, back in the fall season that had taken me by such surprise, I only remembered that conversation when someone buzzed my apartment one day.
    â€œWho is it?”
    â€œWestern Union,” said a man’s voice through the crackling intercom.
    I stood up straight and looked around my apartment, as if I might find that I’d been transported back in time to the forties.
    I pressed the intercom again. “I’ll be right down.”
    I raced down the three flights of stairs, forgoing the elevator. Outside, I expected to see a man in a pressed Western Union uniform with a jaunty khaki hat, but he was a bike messenger with a large silver nose ring and a blue helmet.
    â€œKyra Felis?” He handed me a large yellow envelope. “Have a good one.” He trotted back