Short Folk #13: Business Traveler.

 Note: Finally.  Note Note: I've been listening to William Hurt read Hemingway's A sun also rises over the last couple of days. Hemingway holds up so well for me, except I can't believe people could ever really drink that much. It's interesting to reread/listen to this book in particular because the last time I read it I was 18 and IN LOVE with Lady Ashley.  My experience now is very different.  Here is my best shot at writing like Hemingway. BTW, there are hilarious contests where people do this, So I guess this is my entry.

 Business Traveler. 

He was the kind of man that had money to travel, and had to often for business.  And he was the kind of romantic that only ever wrote me letters from hotel stationary.  Reams of letters, and the way he numbered the pages and how his writing slanted awkwardly across the unlined sheets was cute, even endearing. The way incredibly drunk people can be endearing in their helplessness.  I imagine he wrote more than a few of those letters drunk.  In fact, I can just picture him, up in the room after a few hours drinking screwdrivers at the hotel bar. He’d think it was old fashioned to drink at the hotel bar, but what it really meant was that he was too afraid to go out among the real citizens of whatever city he might be in. I can imagine the minibar hanging open where he’d raided it in a fit of bad judgment.  And now feeling a rotten whimsy he’d look out at the glittering lights of wherever he was and think of me, my apparent goodness, my warm lap, and he’d pull out the hotel stationary and take advantage of me vicariously.I bet he sealed and sent each letter the very night he wrote it, dropping it off at the front desk, because if he would have waited til morning, with the clean unemotional promise of a day full of meetings or a sleek plane to catch, I don’t he would have ever sent them. Maybe written them off as ramblings or saved them for one of his journal entries. But no, he sent all of them. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he has a journal somewhere where each page is a letter addressed to me.

I didn’t find out til after about 15 letters, with their luxury names as nostalgic headings, that he was married. But that’s ok I guess, because so was I.