Even Lizards Get Lonely

He had not been expecting a letter. Indeed he had not expected nor received any sort of thing for the last seventy years. Every day at precisely two o'clock Henry the mail carrier would be turning the corner at the end of the hallway, carrying his bag of crinkling parcels. Oh how the men and women of the block lusted after these paper slivers and cardboard boxes, these tantalizing items that arrived every day and disappeared down the hallway with Henry, singing their bustling song to whoever had the heart to listen. Many stuffed cotton in their ears so as to never hear the lighthearted footsteps or the rhythmic brushing of the bag across Henry's hip. Brush, fall, brush, fall, all the way from the bend, only to be joined and then abruptly cut off by the horrendous screeching of the door at the opposite end.

*

All Henry needed was one bag for the entire building. Management was the principle recipient of most of his luggage, but he enjoyed walking the full route every day. The views from various spots could be quite spectacular, and it was such an easy job that he preferred to linger before returning to his other duties. He mostly kept his face toward the windows; it could be so pleasant in comparison to the dismal, functional interior of his workplace. His only other joy was the guessing game of the abnormal addresses. Who would be the winner today? Whose hope would flash like a spark at the unexpected appearance of a four by nine inch piece of evidence that they actually still existed?

*

He never expected a single thing from Henry, though he set his watch and listened every day to the silence penetrated only by the size twelve boots on the tile floor. There was never a more fabulous symphony of anger, acceptance, self-righteousness and regret than what played in his head every day at two o'clock. When he heard the smooth rustle of paper sliding under his door that day, a new chord danced into his reverie, one of fear.

"I wasn't expecting anything," he mumbled to himself, acutely aware of the irregular dimensions and color of his foreboding intruder. Appropriately wary for someone so estranged from the world, he inspected his letter without touching. Roughly square with an envelope textured that exquisite way only as they used in executive offices, the silent missive sat engulfed in a putrid offshoot of the color yellow. As he hesitantly picked it up, he closed his eyes, relying on senses less foolhardy than sight. He slowly felt along the edges, his talons creeping toward the center, assured by the absence of any peculiar ridges or protrusions.

But the smell! This artifact was a living imprint of everything it had touched. The sun, gasoline, perfume lingering from contact with other letters, the inside of Henry's bag, and finally Henry himself was all written, however accidentally, on the outside of this suddenly fabulous letter. His own letter! Seventy years in the making, with another seventy to appreciate and linger over the subject matter, whatever it may be! Whether it was ridicule, inquiry, kindness or plot, he could not have been more excited to start this new chapter of his unfortunate, scaly life. Whatever awaited him, it had waited long enough.

He opened his eyes, finally prepared to see the return address and solve a delightfully small part of the mystery.

Mother & Father

1523 Kingsbridge Rd.

Kellyquack, Montana

As the envelope dropped to the wood-chip covered floor, he simply could not believe his own naiveté. After all he had endured, he had jumped at the prospect of outside communication with the ardor and trust of a five-year-old.

This was not his letter. It did not matter to whom it was addressed, he knew it was to someone else. Henry, the mail carrier who smelled like grass and floor cleaner, had made a mistake. He knew this because he quite literally had no parents, and no one still alive who could in some allegorical way claim to be so. He was "born" in vitro, the genetic fallout of an accidentally human fertilized lizard egg. He was solitarily confined to be forgotten, to live out his extraordinary life span to neither be used nor to educate the human race of the possibilities his existence offered.

It was not his letter, as none would ever be.