Phase two was a complete success. Marianne had put up a brave face, but he’d seen the way the sparkle faded from her eyes as he went on and on about the “hippie” he’d seen in the pastry shop.
He wondered what she’d say in her next email to the Duck-Man. She was too kind to ignore him, and too polite to openly ask about the things she now “knew” about him.
In coming up with the plan, there was one possibility he hadn’t considered. What if Marianne didn’t care what the Duck-Man looked, or smelled, like? That would be, on the one hand, a demonstration of a wonderful, nonjudgmental, open heart. But on the other hand, it would show a lack of good sense - and good taste - that would call into question everything he thought about her.
No, there was another possibility, too, that he hadn’t counted on. Having been “taken in” by her pen-pal, she might question her instincts to the point that she wouldn’t want to date any man for a good long while. Granted, maybe he deserved to lose his chance with her for all the lies he’d told, but they had all been in a good cause, hadn’t they? Shouldn’t that count for something?
There was nothing he could do to impact her thinking, so Jack decided to focus on the one thing he could control – writing the report, making the strongest case he could for the Esmerelda Theater being named a historical landmark.
He spent all of Thursday doing just that. The final report ran to twenty pages, and included dozens of quotes from Romance residents, from the teenaged employees of the theater on up to the mayor. It had references to over two hundred newspaper articles he’d found in the town yearbooks, and he couldn’t help but feel sorry for whichever intern or junior staffer would have to pull the microfilm for each and every one of them.
And then there was the personal message to his boss:
Amanda,
Here it is, ahead of schedule. My findings concerning the Esmerelda Theater in Romance, and my opinion on its application to be declared a State Historical Landmark.
I’m sure you will read it cover to cover, but I’ll give you the spoiler version right up front:
The application should be approved.
I’ll go further. The Esmerelda is the epitome of what a State Historical Landmark should be. It meets and exceeds every criteria in the book with flying colors.
I’ll go even further than that. If the application isn’t approved, I can’t continue to work for the department. That’s how strongly I feel about it.
No, let me go all the way out onto the ledge and put it this way: I am ready to move to Romance permanently. I don’t know whether the Esmerelda helps to make this town so special, or whether the town makes the theater that way, and I frankly don’t care. What I do care about is that this theater is the heart of this town, and it needs to be recognized as such.
All that said, I’d like to request one favor: please keep my name out of the report. I don’t care about getting credit, and I don’t care how it will look on my yearly review when my name does not appear on a project I spent several weeks working on. I hope you will do this for me, and I hope you will take everything I’ve written to heart.
Thank you,
Jack Nelson
He’d done all he could do, and there was nothing left except to hit send. So he did.