Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (32 page)

Dave sat on the steps for a good half an hour after he had finished reading the letter. He didn’t exactly cry but he must have looked messed up. Three different neighbors walked by during the half-hour he was sitting there—they all waved but none of them came up the walk to talk. Not even Jim Scoffield, who hesitated and then kept walking. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

Dave didn’t show the letter to Morley right away. He handed it to her that night when they were in bed, reading. Morley said, “What’s this?”

When she finished it and handed it back to him, she had tears in her eyes. Dave was ready for that. He smiled, and took the letter and put it in the drawer of his bedside table. Then he pulled something out of the drawer.

“Here,” he said. “I thought you might be hungry.”

He was holding a chocolate bar. Cadbury Fruit & Nut.

Master storyteller and humorist STUART McLEAN writes and hosts the popular CBC Radio show
The Vinyl Cafe
, heard on Public Radio in the United States and on Sirius Satellite across North America. He is the author of the bestselling books
Vinyl Cafe Diaries,
which won the short fiction award from the Canadian Authors Association;
Home from the Vinyl Cafe,
which won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humor; and
Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada,
which was awarded the CAA’s prize for nonfiction.