Dear ______,
I ran into a colleague of yours last week. One A. ______ was at the table next to mine and recognized _______, my old ______ roommate. ______ is looking for a job and really wants to teach at ______, so the initially scorned A. ______ became a subject of some interest. Plus she gave me a cigarette.
Apparently before I showed up, A. _______ had been acting weird and even chucked a pen cap at ______ to get her attention, then feigning obliviousness, à la — I don’t know — Hamburgler? Who does that? It was half an hour before she figured out that she knew ______ from ______, and that _______ had been her frosh leader. That’s all that’s new in the world of small world news.
No __________, naturally.
I am chagrined to say I stared at A. ______ like she was swilling her beer from the holy grail. I stared and stared. I could probably draw a topographical map of A. ______from memory. It would have a Milk Pail Inlet, Glockenspiel Pass and maybe a Discarded Lederhosen Range. If I’d had a black light I would have dragged her under the bar and combed her for your residuals. A handprint from a backslap in the staff room, perhaps? You don’t ______ enough to be useful in a black light situation, though. I settled for glum-but-sustained staring.
A. Merrit was too busy chattering between cigarette drags to notice, maddening me by betraying no awareness of her own good fortune. I fought the urge to throw myself across five girls and two tables and clock her for another hour until ______ she gathered momentum and blew away.
I hate this ______.