"Seventeen years this month."
I did the math without meaning to. Two hundred and some envelopes. Ten thousand dollars, more, a dollar sixty-five at a time in fees, out of a wallet held together with a rubber band. "That's a long time to pay something off."
"It's not paid off," he said. "It doesn't get paid off. That's not what it's for."
"Who's it to? If you don't mind me asking. Kids?"
"No." He stopped at the brass slots, which were labeled LOCAL and OUT OF TOWN and STAMPS ONLY — NO PACKAGES. He held the envelope in front of the LOCAL slot without putting it in. His hand shook, and the envelope shook with it, and the edge of it tapped against the brass, tap, tap, tap, like Mack's envelopes. "Somebody I owe," he said. "That's all. It's to somebody I owe."
"Sounds like a loan shark," I said, trying to make him smile.
He did not smile, exactly. But something at the corner of his mouth moved. "Something like that," he said. "But kinder. A lot kinder than a loan shark."
Then he put the envelope through the slot, and I heard it drop on the pile inside, and he stood with his hand still lifted to the brass flap for a moment as if he were listening for something more. Then he let the flap go, and it swung shut with a small clank, and he let out a long breath that seemed to go all the way down through the oversized coat to his shoes.
"That's the last one," he said, very quietly. I don't think he was talking to me.
"The last one? So it is paid off."
"No," he said. "I'm moving Monday. Into a home. Bayfront Manor, out on the Peninsula road. They take your Social Security and give you back forty-five dollars a month for what they call personal needs. Haircuts. Soap." He made a small dry sound that might have been a laugh in some other decade. "I've been putting a little aside. Coins. I wanted to make this one. It was important to me to make this one. And then the fee went up." He shook his head. "Seventeen years, and I almost didn't make it because of sixty cents."