There was a single sheet inside, very thin airmail paper, written close on both sides in blue ink. Not three pages. She had been wrong about that, or she had been remembering a draft. It was only one, but it was close-written, and it had been folded so long that the creases had gone translucent.
*Dear Wes from the laundromat,*
*You still owe me a franc. I want you to know that I have not forgotten and I am charging interest.*
*I'm writing this at the little desk in my room with the window open, and it's still raining, and I can see a sliver of the Sacré-Cœur over the roofs if I lean out far enough, which I just did, and got wet. I keep thinking about your song. I'm sorry I said it needed a bridge. It does need a bridge. But I'm sorry I said it, because you looked so stricken, in your swimming trunks, like I'd told you your dog was ugly. Here is what I think, for what it is worth, from a girl who has never written a song in her life: I think the bridge is the part where the person in the song stops being sad about the rain and notices who's sitting across from him. I think that's what's missing. I think he goes straight from the sad part back to the beginning because he never looks up.*
*That is a very forward thing to write to a boy I knew for two hours. I am going to mail it before I lose my nerve.*
*I go home to Toledo on the 14th of June. My parents' address is below. If you ever finish the song, I would like to hear the last verse. If you ever come through Ohio, which nobody does, I will bake you a pie, which I am actually very good at, even though you will not believe that from a girl who reads Colette in a laundromat to look sophisticated.*
*Your friend from the rue des Martyrs, who would like very much to be your friend from somewhere else, too,*
*Delia*
*P.S. My name is Delia. I realized on the way home that I never told you. You kept calling me "the girl with the franc" in your head, I could tell. You have a very readable face.*