August 27, 1993

Dear Badge,

I got your last letter, and was sorry to hear of your friend
Sylvester's hospitalization.  I can sympathize with him, too,
because every time I go to the doctor, he wants me to take off my
clothes and wait for him.   Momma goes to the same doctor, though,
and he doesn't ask her to take off her clothes.  

I only got to read your letter one time because I gave it to Momma
to read, and later discovered that she had wadded it up and thrown
it in the trash.  I got most of it out, but there were two pages
that had chicken grease spilled on them and I couldn't make out the
words any more because the ink had run all over the pages.  Momma
said she got so mad when she was reading your story about seeing
Sparkle in the hospital that she just wanted to get that letter out
of her hands before she did something foolish.  I tried to tell her
that you had explained how come you had happened to be with
Sparkle, and that Momma shouldn't think you are dumb.  I told her
that you know exactly how I feel about Sparkle, and that you're
smart enough to know the better deal when curtain number 2 opens
up.  Sparkle's not near good enough for you, and you know it.

Badge, the next time you're over here, I sure would like for you to
take a look at my car.  It was running real rough the other day so
I took it over to Larry's Garage to let them tell me what was wrong
with it.  The guy popped the hood open and listened to the motor
and right away said he knew what the matter was.  He said "One
cylinder is missing", and my first reaction was to call the cops
because somebody had made off with one of my cylinders.  It's
probably the same ones that stole my hubcaps last year, and I was
hoping maybe the cops could get all of my stuff back for me.  That
one cop who came out when my hubcaps were stolen last year sure
acted like he wanted to get personally involved in solving my case. 
He was coming around every day for about a week, but since he never
found my hubcaps, I finally told him to get lost or I would call
Badge and he scooted but quick.  

I hope you don't mind me dropping your name here and there when I
need a little extra persuasion on my side.  I usually do just fine
on my own, but it's nice to know that you will always be able to
help me just by having your name come up in the discussion.  One of
the nice things about living in a town this size is that everybody
that I know knows my friends, and even though you've been gone for
a while, everybody still remembers who you were.  As a matter of
fact, Momma said that most people around here remember you even
more than you were.  I asked her "more what?" and she said "never
mind and I hope you never find out."

Anyway, the guy at the garage tried to explain to me what he meant
by saying my cylinder was missing, but I've never been that
interested in the inside of a car hood, and I didn't understand
what he was talking about for the most part.  They don't teach us
those kinds of things at secretarial school.  He asked me if I had
noticed anything falling off recently, and I thought he was trying
to get fresh with me, but then he said "with the car, ma'am, with
the car", so I told him that the only thing I had noticed falling
off with the car was the gas mileage.

He jiggled with some wires, and cussed a lot when he burned his
hand, and my little car started to sound better.  At least it quit
sputtering like it was, but he said it still sounded like a major
problem in there.  He said that the cylinder wasn't missing any
more, and I wondered where he had found it, but then he said that
he thought the alternator on the engine wasn't working right, and
that made sense to me because the engine hasn't been alternating at
all.  It's been doing the same thing day after day.

He told me that he could fix the alternator but when he told me how
much it was going to cost I about had a conniption.  I told him
that I wouldn't pay that much for a different car, much less for an
engine alternator because it sounded like the engine didn't need to
be altered any more.  It was running real smooth by then.  He said
that he was only worried that I might get stranded some dark night
and that we could work out some sort of payment arrangement.  I
studied the look in his eye when he said that, and I didn't like
what I learned and I told him no thanks, I think I'd be better off
taking my chances with a different rapist on some dark night.  He
started to get insistent about his concern for my safety so I did
it again.  I told him that I thought I'd just drive this old heap
home and ask Badge to take a look at it the next time he was over
to my house.  I know you can fix it, hon, because Momma says there
never was a car you couldn't make run with or without a key. 
Anyway, when I mentioned that I might tell you about my problems
with the car, the guy got real antsy and didn't seem nearly so
eager to help me overcome my financial difficulties.

When I got home I told Momma about what had happened and she said
that if worst comes to worst, she's pretty sure that you can get me
fixed up with a better car for an even swap for my old clunker.  I
don't think I want to do that, though, because whoever ends up with
my car is going to be sorry, and I don't want you to be mad at me. 
I depend on you too much.  Anyway, except for the hubcaps and the
missing cylinder, I think my old jalopy is too nasty looking for a
self-respecting thief to waste his time on.  It gets me to and from
work and secretarial school, though, and I think I'll just hang on
to her for a while.

Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting to tell you about secretarial school. 
This guy came into the diner the other night and sat down at one of
my tables and he just stayed and stayed and stayed.  He kept
pestering me to get him another glass of tea or whatever, and I was
beginning to get pretty annoyed with him and was just about to tell
him to take a hike when he shows me this fancy looking business
card and said that one of his students had made it in class.  It
was real pretty with designs all over it and fancy letters on his
name and different colors and lots of neat stuff.  It really was
about the prettiest business card I've ever seen, and believe me,
I've seen a bunch of them there at the diner.  

I asked him if he taught school at a print shop and he said no,
that he was one of the instructors at the new secretarial school
downtown.  I got to looking at that card and wondering just how
somebody that hadn't even got out of secretarial school yet could
handle such a project and make it turn out so pretty.  Anyway, this
guy kept talking about how he could tell just by the way I dress
and fix my hair and makeup that I would make an outstanding
secretary and I could quit working at the diner just as soon as he
found me a job with a doctor or lawyer or some other rich dude.  He
told me that he was prepared to offer me a scholarship to help pay
for my schooling.  Badge, I never got a scholarship offer before,
even though I only missed the perfect attendance award in high
school by that one day when Momma locked me in my room after the
night I met you.  I was always kind of jealous of those kids who
got to go on to college by spending somebody else's money, so when
this guy tells me he's gonna get the school itself to help me pay
for getting educated, I told him to come back tomorrow because I'd
have to think about it.

When I got home after my shift, I was telling Momma about it, and
she asked me if this guy's name was Professor Harold Hill, and if
it was, there was gonna be big trouble in River City.  I told Momma
to look at the card again and put her glasses on this time because
the name that was printed there was definitely not Hill and the man
had said the school was here in town and not in some place called
River City.  By then we couldn't tell just exactly what the words
on the card were because the ink had smudged considerably, but I
would have remembered if the guy's name had been Harold Hill and it
wasn't.  Anyway, I figured out that if I could work just one extra
shift on the weekends (except when you're here, of course) I could
swing enough boodle to make the payments to the secretarial school
until I get the good job the guy told me he'd get for me.  It's
only gonna take six months, and then I'll be raking in the dough,
so when the guy came back to the diner the next night, I told him
yeah, I'd like to go to his school and I signed his little paper. 

He said we ought to go out to celebrate my wise decision and that
he was so glad he is going to be able to help me, and that if I'd
just stay with him, I wouldn't be sorry.  I was beginning to be
sorry already, because he said all this in about the same tone of
voice as the guy at the garage said he would see what he could do
about helping me.  But I still wanted to get to go to that school,
so I just told him that I thought Badge might be coming over later
and that I didn't want to make any other plans for tonight.

Some times Momma amazes me with her intuition.  She was wrong about
the Professor's name, but she was sure right about him not being
from around here.  He said "Who is this Badge character, and what
does he have that I can't give you?"  Well I told him that if he
doesn't know Badge, he can just get a little more sassy with me and
the two of you will meet soon enough, and then he can answer his
own questions.  I didn't want him to get too mad at me and expel me
from school before I even got started, so I didn't elaborate on the
second part of his question because I think that would have stung
him too deep if I told him the truth.  Anyway, he went to the phone
booth and made a call and I heard him mention your name and he was
just meek as can be when he came back to his table and he told me
he'd see me in class Monday morning.

Well, I showed up at the school the next Monday morning and the
Professor told me to sit at this desk with a computer on it.  I'd
never been that close to one before, and I was more than a little
worried that I might break it if I pushed the wrong button.  In a
little while a lady came over to show me how to work it, and she
made it sound like you needed magic words and potions to make it do
the right thing.  It's called word processing, and it sounded like
it was going to be hard at first, but I watched what she did with
her hands while she was talking to me, and that machine isn't near
as hard to get cranked and running as my old car on a cold morning. 
After she got the thing started, she started re-typing a letter
that was in a book, and I told her I thought I could handle it from
there.

I don't know if you knew that I had been a good typist in high
school, and I won the speed contest nearly every time.  Anyway, the
lady didn't know that and she hovered around me for as long as it
took to type that dinky little letter, which wasn't long.  Then she
pushed some more buttons and the printer outfit on the table
coughed out my letter on a piece of paper.  Then she pushed a few
more buttons and the letter was right back on the screen, and she
told me to change it.  She started talking and I kept right up with
her until she had run out of breath.  She went over to talk to the
Professor and I made the second letter come out of the printer
thing by doing what I had seen her do earlier.

Pretty soon the lady and the Professor came back and told me they
had never seen anything like it, and where did I learn to type like
that.  I told them about high school and told them that I like to
practice my typing by writing letters to my friends.  They gave me
a book that goes with the computer and told me to read it and
practice with the word processor until I could make it work, and I
had the biggest part of the book read by lunch that day.  In the
afternoon I just kind of played around with the machine to see if
it could really do all the things the book said it could, and it
did everything just like I wanted it to.  

The Professor watched me some during the afternoon and I heard him
telling the lady that the advertising man was going to love this. 
Before the end of that first day, the Professor had called in the
head honcho of the school and the honcho told the Professor that he
didn't see why they had to use a graduate in their advertisements. 
The honcho complimented my hair and makeup and my dress, and asked
if I would dress the same way tomorrow because they were going to
make some special class pictures. 

I told Momma about it when I got home from working my shift at the
diner, and she told me that maybe they liked the way I did things
enough to sweeten the pot on the scholarship deal, and why didn't
I tell them that I was thinking about switching over to another
secretarial school if I could get a better deal.  When I mentioned
that to the honcho the next morning, guess what he did...he got out
the paper I had signed for the Professor and wrote "PAID IN FULL"
across the top of it and then reached in his wallet and gave me a
fifty dollar bill and said that I wouldn't beat that deal at the
school across town.  I asked him what the fifty was supposed to be
buying, and he said just a few hours of showing some of his friends
what I had learned about the computer from his school.  He said
that I needed to practice with the machine some more, and that they
couldn't give me my diploma until the whole six months was up, but
I wouldn't have to pay them for the time I spent practicing as long
as I didn't mind a camera or some other folks being around to watch
what I did, and to remember to dress nice like this every day.

He told me that they were going to arrange for a full time job for
me in their school as soon as I finished my six months.  I hope it
pays as much as the job the Professor promised, but I'm not too
sure I'd want a job typing for a doctor anyway...he'd probably want
me to take my clothes off again.

Well, Badge, I'm tired and sleepy, and I have to get up early in
the morning because the honcho is taking me to the beauty shop
before class, so I'll close now.  I hope you can come see me soon.

Love,

Queenie