Flavian was not an especially good writer to begin with and he was completely blocked when it came time to respond to Astrid by writing on the exquisite card he’d selected at the Paper Heron.
Clearly the time had come. But his brain was like a stone. He didn’t even like the sound of “Dear Astrid.” It sounded too presumptuous. Yet, if he dropped the “dear” part of the salutation, this would be conspicuous by its absence and, thus, he would risking offending her without at all intending to offend her. It was hopeless. So he tried to move past it. He would try to begin with the body of the message and leave the salutation for later, for a consult with Chellis.
He was not ready to actually touch the card. What was at hand was a brand new legal-sized, yellow pad which gave him the sense that he had elbow room to sketch out his message, whatever that was going to be.
The problem with the whole exercise is that it was far too direct. As a presence, Flavian much preferred to arrive in somebody’s luggage and angle his interjections in the same way that he was trying to bounce the crumpled up sheets of yellow paper off at least two walls on their way to the trash can by the door. That’s not something you can do in a greeting card. It’s one on one basketball. You and the paper.
The paper was winning.
“Do I have write this thing for you?” Chellis called to him from outside the room.
“Could you?” he yelled back.
“No. You’ve got to write it yourself,” she hollered back. “It’ll be good for you.”
Finally, after an hour and 23 minutes he thought he had something he could write on the card.
“I appreciate your kind consideration of me and your touching card. Perhaps we can share the cowboy hat. I often think of your smile when it rains.”
It was three sentences. And it had all but exhausted him.
Gardner blinked several times and laughed when Chellis read it to him.
“Could be worse,” she said. “Sometimes less is more. Maybe this is one of those times.”
