Eleven, The Spelunker

Eleven, The Spelunker: an epistolary story by Diane Greco.

At any rate, the spelunker’s good, if undeserved, reputation persists, but this shouldn’t surprise you, for you know all too well his ability to charm. Oh well, we all make mistakes, especially in our youth, and yours was glorious: your endless legs; the relentless way you drank with him at the graduate bar every night and then how the two of you would withdraw, hand in hand, making everyone else so melancholy; and not least, your flying hair! And how much of it you had! So thick, so curly—and me with my poor head in a scarf.

When a frantic neighbor complains that the new apartment’s shower is flooding the apartment three stories below, the author observes:

Her firm grasp of the details of this extraordinary theory lent it a surprising credibility and I thought, either this woman is mad or I have made quite a poor real estate investment.