|
Advice Columnist |
|
|
Cynthia Ransom was the Dear Abby of the twenty-first century. Newspapers across the country carried her column, and millions of people read her advice on a daily basis. Her name was one of the most recognized in the newspaper industry, and her face was frequently seen on television and even in cameo roles in motion pictures. One reason for Cynthia’s success was the diverse nature of the questions published in her column. She gave advice not only on matters of the heart but also on social customs, fashion, career matters, childrearing and vacation plans. Another reason the columnist was so popular was her rapier-sharp wit. Readers enjoyed her use of humor and sometimes sarcastic replies, which bordered on insult. In short, Cynthia was to newspapers what Jay Leno and David Letterman were to television. One particularly hot August Cynthia packed a few bags and went to Nantucket to avoid the heat of the city. It was a trip that combined work with play. She brought along her laptop to write her column, but she also planned on getting some much-needed rest and relaxation. After landing at Nantucket Airport, she hired a car to take her to the two-story home she’d rented for the summer. Its silver-gray Shaker shingles, white picket fence and front-yard garden were typical of New England coastal charm. When Cynthia unlocked the front door and put her bags in the foyer, she noticed the interior of the home was as charming and welcoming as the exterior. Tired from the flight from Boston, she went upstairs to soak in the garden tub. After a long, relaxing bath and a trip into town for dinner at 21 Federal, Cynthia returned to the rental house and relaxed in front of the wide-screen television. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would get busy writing. Little did she dream that it would be the last relaxing evening she was ever to enjoy. * * * The following morning Cynthia rose with the dawn, and after a quick cup of coffee and bowl of cereal, she sat in the living room with her laptop, in front of the bay window, where she had an excellent view of the ocean. She opened Outlook and began reading her email. Four full-time employees were responsible for reading the letters sent to Dear Cynthia. After screening all incoming mail, these women would then send copies of the more interesting letters to Cynthia to consider answering in her column. There were a total of seventy-four such letters in her inbox, the first of which was from a journalism student at UMass who wanted to know how to discourage an amorous married professor without jeopardizing her grade. Cynthia dragged the email to a folder named ANSWER. She would most likely include it in her column—if not today, then some other time when she was in need of material. She then read through more than twenty emails, none of which she considered interesting enough to print. These she deleted after reading. After going to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee, Cynthia returned to her computer and continued reading. Nancy Ivers, a thirty-three-year-old stay-at-home mom from Puritan Falls, had forwarded a letter from a man who, in his own words, “…is desperately in love with a woman who doesn’t know I’m alive.” The columnist’s first instinct was to delete the email since she thought it too adolescent for her readers, but then she reconsidered. She might reply in a more humorous vein, one her readers loved so much. Once she had cleared out her inbox, Cynthia opened the ANSWER folder and selected five letters for her column. She passed on the UMass student but selected the desperate Romeo. After writing replies to four letters, she stopped for lunch. She wanted time to think of a good answer for the lovesick man. More than an hour later, Cynthia went back to her computer. She opened up her Word file and cut and pasted the contents of the letter into the column. Dear Desperate, she began and then proceeded to tell him, with as much wit as she could muster, to get off his lazy ass and tell the woman in question how he felt. Make your feelings known, she concluded, in a more serious tone. How can you expect the woman to ever return your affections if she doesn’t know you exist? If you’re too afraid to tell her in person, then call her up. That’s what phones are for. If phoning doesn’t work, go out on a limb. Go to her house, knock on the door and tell her how you feel. The worst that can happen is that the woman will reject you. And if she does, don’t take it too badly. You’ll get over it eventually. After finishing her reply to the letter, Cynthia read through her entire column several times, changing a few sentences and adding or deleting a phrase here and there. When she was satisfied with her work, she saved the file, exited Word and emailed the whole column to her editor. Then she closed the lid on her laptop. She wanted to enjoy the Nantucket weather for a few hours before beginning the process all over again for another column. * * * After returning from her walk to Brant Point Lighthouse, Cynthia entered the house, took her sandy flip-flops off and headed toward the kitchen for a glass of ice cold pink lemonade. She made it as far as the kitchen doorway when she heard her BlackBerry’s ring tone signal an incoming call. “What part of ‘I’m on vacation’ don’t they understand?” she said, assuming it was someone calling about work since her family and close friends always called the personal number on her iPhone. “This better be important,” she said, without wasting time on a polite greeting. “Cynthia Ransom? Is that you?” It was a man’s voice, one the columnist was not familiar with. “Who is this?” “It’s me, Paul Redford. You told me to call you.” “Why would I do that? I don’t even know you.” “You said I should tell you how I feel. So I phoned you to tell you I love you.” Cynthia immediately ended the call. Moments later the ring tone sounded again. The caller ID registered UNIDENTIFIED. “Hello,” she said. “Please don’t hang up on me,” the same voice pleaded. “Who are you and what do you want?” “I’m Dear Desperate. I realize we’ve never been formally introduced, but ever since I saw you, I’ve been in love with you. I just never had the nerve to speak to you until now.” “How did you get my number?” “It’s not important. What matters is how I feel, and how you feel.” “I feel like hanging up,” Cynthia said and turned off the power to her phone. No sooner did she turn off the BlackBerry than her iPhone began to ring, which was uncommon since there were fewer than a dozen people who knew that number. “Hello?” she answered. “My darling, why did you hang up on me? You, yourself, told me I should call you. I’m following your advice.” “Leave me alone!” she screamed and turned off the second phone. It did little good because the land line in the rental then started to ring. Cynthia disconnected the phone without bothering to answer. She knew who it was. Somehow Dear Desperate had found learned the number, of that she was certain. She went into the dining room and turned on her laptop. When she opened Outlook, her inbox contained more than a hundred emails from Paul Redford. Cynthia deleted them all and then turned off her computer. Then she turned on her BlackBerry and quickly ran through her contact list for Nancy Ivers’ number before the phone could ring. “I need you to do me a favor,” Cynthia said when the young mother answered. “I need you to find the original of the letter you forwarded to me this morning, the one from the man who signed his letter Desperate.” “Desperate? That doesn’t sound familiar,” Nancy replied. “Are you sure I sent the letter to you?” “I’m positive. Please look in your files. I need his return address from the envelope.” Nancy retrieved the accordion folder from her drawer and rifled through all the letters twice, going back several days. “Sorry, Cynthia. I’ve got no letter from anyone named Desperate.” “Can you check your sent email? You might have thrown the actual letter away or misplaced it.” Nancy had sent her employer five emails. She opened each one, but none of them was from the man who had called himself Desperate. Cynthia thanked Nancy and then ended the call. The phone rang a moment later. “Who the hell are you?” she snapped. “I told you. My name is Paul Redford. I wrote to you and….” “My employee can’t find your letter.” “I wrote directly to you.” “No, you didn’t. Your letter was attached to an email….” “What difference does it make how my letter got to you?” Without answering, Cynthia turned off her phone. Dear Desperate was right about one thing: what did it matter how she had received his letter? The key to the mystery was the fact that he had read her reply. That meant he had to have seen the email she’d sent to her editor. * * * The following morning Cynthia took the earliest flight from Nantucket to Logan Airport, where she got a taxi to Burgess Communications’ Boston office. Harrison Wynn, her editor at Burgess, took care of all matters relating to the syndication of her column and was the writer’s only real contact person with the publishing world. “Cynthia, what are you doing here?” Harrison asked with surprise when the columnist entered his office at nine in the morning. “I’m sorry I didn’t phone first, but I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.” “Sit down. Would you like some coffee?” The writer shook her head. “Someone in this office is invading my privacy.” “What do you mean?” Cynthia quickly relayed the events of the previous day. “He had to have read the email I sent you,” she concluded. “How else could he have known what I replied to the letter?” “When did you send me the email?” Harrison asked. “Yesterday afternoon.” “I wasn’t in the office yesterday, and I haven’t had the chance to turn on my computer yet. I got here only minutes before you did.” The editor leaned over and pressed the power button on his computer. When Windows was up and running, he opened his mail program. Cynthia’s email arrived unopened. “Here it is with today’s mail. No one here could have seen it,” Harrison insisted. “I don’t understand any of this. How could he have known what I wrote? Is it possible for someone at…?” The columnist was interrupted when her editor’s administrative assistant knocked on the door. “Excuse me, Miss Ransom. There’s a phone call for you.” “For me? But no one knows I’m here.” “He says his name is Paul Redford, and that you know who he is.” “It’s him,” she cried, her face turning pale. Harrison Wynn picked up his phone and called the police. * * * Rather than fly back to Nantucket, Cynthia returned to her Beacon Hill brownstone where she felt relatively safe. The police promised to look into the matter and get back to her as soon as they learned anything. She doubted the case would be given a high priority, though, since, to her knowledge, no crime had been committed. Did a few phone calls constitute a true stalking? When her front door closed behind her, the columnist breathed a sigh of relief. Home, with its state-of-the-art security features. No one was going to get inside unless she let him in, least of all Dear Desperate. Exhausted, she kicked off her Ferragamo sandals and stretched out on her Italian leather sofa. Cynthia promptly closed her eyes and slept. It was dark outside when she woke and heard the phone in her kitchen ring. Her heart raced as it rang once, twice, three more times. After the fourth ring, the answering machine clicked on: “This is Cynthia Ransom. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll try to get back to you.” The columnist felt every muscle in her body tense as she waited for the sound of the beep. “It’s me, Paul Redford. Please pick up. I know you’re there.” “Leave me alone!” she cried, yanking the phone cord out of the wall. What has happened to me? she thought as she stood in her kitchen with the dead phone in her hand. In just twenty-four hours, she had been reduced from a confident, competent career woman to a sobbing, helpless female, forced to hide behind locked doors, afraid to return to Nantucket and enjoy her much-needed vacation. “No!” she shouted angrily. “I won’t be bullied like this. I won’t allow some crackpot with a phone to destroy my life. This is going to end NOW.” She plugged the kitchen phone back into the wall and then reached into her purse, took out both her cell phones and turned them on. It was nearly five, nerve-wracking minutes before her kitchen phone rang. “Listen, you,” she shouted into the receiver. “Miss Ransom,” a man’s voice interrupted. “This is Officer Jacoby with the Boston P.D. I’m calling you about the man who’s been harassing you.” “Thank God! Have you found him?” “The phone company was able to trace the calls to a phone number belonging to a man named Paul Redford.” “That’s him! That’s the name he gave me when he phoned.” “Miss Ransom.” The officer hesitated a moment. “Mr. Redford has been dead for more than six months.” “Then who is…?” Suddenly, the power in her home went out, and Cynthia was thrust into darkness. Even the kitchen phone, which should have continued working during a power outage, went dead. “Hello … hello, Officer Jacoby? Are you there?” The loud sound of the knock on her door terrified Cynthia. “Wh-who’s there?” she stammered. “It’s me, darling, Paul. I’ve decided to take your advice and go out on a limb. Since you won’t answer my calls, I had no choice but to come see you in person.” The brownstone’s state-of-the-art security system might work very well on burglars and vandals, but it did nothing to deter the dead man from entering the columnist’s Beacon Hill home. As the front door opened and Dear Desperate stepped inside, Cynthia Ransom was grateful that the lights had gone out, since she would not have to see the decomposed face of the corpse who, following her advice, had come to declare his love for her.
Goody Hale, an old friend from the early 1600s, once gave me some good advice: get rid of that damned cat!
|
