the room was not in a regular sized apartment building, but in a smaller building on a side street a few blocks from the bus station.
iris was told by the rental agent that the building has formerly been a “mansion”, whatever that was.
the rooms were a little bigger, and the ceilings a little higher, than anything iris was used to, and she liked that. but they were cheap because they had no a/c and the agent warned it might get cold in the winter because the windows were not that tight. but iris liked that you actually open the windows!
all the other tenants of the building seemed to be old. in their forties and fifties, snd some maybe even in their sixties.
iris occasionally talked to the other tenants, in the corridors, or entering or leaving the building, and she found some of their ways curious and a little bit interesting.
she had had little experience of really old people previously, as her own mother was only thirteen years older than herself. her teachers in school had been mostly computer programs or cyborgs, with an occasional woman her mother’s age or younger.
one of the odd things about the old people was that some of them received mail. paper mail, delivered every other day by a person on a bicycle. the front door of the building was unlocked during the daytime, and the person on the bicycle would leave the mail on a little table in the hall just inside the door. it was then up to the individual tenants to look at the mail on the table and retrieve their own.
most of the mail was advertisements - what one old woman told iris was called “junk mail”. some were “personal mail” sent by one individual person to another, and a few of those had the addresses and return addresses written on them by hand with an ink pen.
iris never expected to receive any mail. no advertisers would have her new address, and her mother or her friends from school would never write.
iris had looked curiously at the little piles of mail on her first few days in the building, but then forgotten about them.
so she was surprised when she was starting to walk up the stairs to her room one day and an old woman standing at the table said to her,
honey, haven’t you seen this letter for you? it’s been sitting here for three days.
iris went over to the table and saw one hand addressed letter. she picked it up and it was indeed addressed to “iris smith” with the correct street and number of the building. there was no return address.
she looked at it uncertainly.. maybe there is somebody else named iris smith here, she said to the old woman. it is a common name.
no, the old woman replied, i know everybody’s name who lives here, and you are the only iris smith.
maybe there was an iris smith who lived here before.
i suppose. but how likely is that?. honey, it has your name on it and i guarantee if you open it and read it, no one is going to arrest you. go ahead, open it.
iris turned the letter over in her hand. how do you open it , she asked.
here, let me open it for you.
the old woman slit the envelope open with her fingernail, and handed it back to iris.
iris unfolded the letter inside the envelope. the writing was clearly legible and she read it aloud.
dear iris,
you do not know me, but i need your help.
you do not know my know my name, and do not need to know it, but only you can help me.
i am your reverse, or what people in your dimension might call a double or doppelgänger.
everything you do in your dimension, i do the exact reverse in my dimension, and vice versa.
if you look up, i look down. if you are awake, i am asleep. if you are happy, i am sad. if you do something interesting, i do something boring. if you are having sex with somebody, i am meditating. if you smile, i frown. if you go up, i go down.
which brings me to the true subject of this letter. i am in despair, complete despair about something - an affair of the heart - which need not concern you. i want to end my wretched existence. but, alas, i do not have the nerve to do so.
here is what i want you to do for me. go to the top of a tall building, any tall building, at least thirty stories high. that is all you have to do, just go to the top of it. and stay there for a few minutes, or as long as you like, and then come down again.
but because when you are going up the thirty or more stories, i will be falling down them, to my richly desired doom.
i hope you will do me this small favor.
sincerely,
your double
how weird is that, said iris. what do you think, she asked the old woman.
i think someone is having a little fun with you.
iris shrugged. i can’t think of anyone who would.
you know, i bet if you did what the letter said, you will get another letter asking you to do something else. i think it would be interesting to find out. but it is up to you.
i don’t know.
i know just the place to go. the top of the y building, which is about forty stories at least. they have a nice little restaurant up there. they have wonderful salads. i will go with you, what do you say?
all right, iris agreed. the old woman’s name was marvis, and iris did not mind her company and some of the things she talked about were sort of interesting.
so a couple of days later when iris had a day off, she and marvis took the elevator to the top of the y building and went to the little restaurant and marvis had a salad and iris had a cup of tea and a chocolate eclair.
nothing happened so far as they could see, that day or the next day, and there was never another letter, and they forgot about it.
then one day it occurred to iris, suppose somebody wrote me that letter and left a copy of it and then jumped off a building and then the police found the copy of the letter, would they arrest me for murder? or for being an accessory to murder?
but still nothing happened, and eventually iris forgot about the incident for good, and she moved to another, smaller apartment closer to her job.
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