The letter began politely and ended by claiming Ivan did not know what home meant. In his crossword he had described it as the place we always return to. The reader asked what that meant for people forced to leave their homes. Ivan put the letter beside his cup. He had constructed crosswords for a small weekly newspaper for twenty years and was accustomed to complaints about obsolete fish names. This was something new.
The following month the same woman disputed his description of patience. She signed herself Ema, without a surname, but left a complete return address on the envelope. He replied that short clues sometimes had to simplify life. She returned a card saying that life did not become simpler because of it. He liked that stubbornness. He began saving his most troublesome words for her, although he did not admit it.
After six letters he suggested coffee. Ema accepted and added that she would not bring a dictionary. She was fifty-one, sold travel equipment, and spoke much faster than she wrote. Ivan brought a newspaper in case conversation failed. She immediately turned to the final page and found an error in the crossing words within three minutes. They both laughed. His fear of an awkward beginning had acquired a familiar shape.
Then the conversation did stop. Ema looked out the window while Ivan tried to choose a question that would be neither too personal nor boring. She said she liked that he had not hurried to describe his divorce as a completed task. He wondered how she knew he was divorced. She pointed to the lighter circle on his hand. That morning he had first left off the ring he still wore from habit, although he had lived alone for a year.
He wanted to explain everything at once. Ema stopped him only to ask whether he wanted more coffee. They stayed an hour longer than he had planned. He did not have to summarize his former marriage to earn a new conversation. Outside he asked what she would call what had just happened. She thought about it and said she needed more information. For the first time he did not try to extract a more certain answer from an answer.
In the next crossword he described home differently. He did not send Ema a copy as proof that he had listened; she would buy it anyway. Instead he called on Thursday without a sheet of paper on which to arrange his sentence beforehand. He suggested a Sunday walk. "Yes," she said. That short word remained clear enough without a letter count, black squares, or an answer printed somewhere on another page.