Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 13:26:23
Subject: Other Shores
From: skipvskip@hotmail.com
To: susannenbreone@aol.com

Susanne,

I just got hit by an SUV (again). The next time you see me I'll have a large scab on my knee and another one on the side of my head.

Yesterday I got BOOTED by the City of Chicago. They just updated their computer system, so they were able to track tickets on each of the five beaters I've owned since I moved here in 1986.

So I just paid the city $1625, which I didn't have, because I'd just emptied my savings account to pay bail on a crime I shouldn't have been charged with to begin with -- two grand there, and to two grand more to pay a retainer for a lawyer I shouldn't need (but who I need desperately). And another $125 for the right to park on these well-maintained streets. Soon the city will want to tax me for breathing.

And narcs keep leaving messages on the phone, saying "We're watching you Skipper, we're watching you."

I don't hate my job, it's a job and I get to ride my bike.

But I don't love it.

I'm not sure who the hell I am, either.

A set of numbers in a database.

And I owe friends money, I have debts, I have debts.

I'm turning over another credit card to another credit card with a higher limit and lower rates.

Picric (Phyric? Pyric?) victories seem to be all I've got.

Except for you, and I'm not even sure that I've got you.

so . . .

If you're proposing a move from these environs, I say:

TAKE ME WITH YOU!

Wherever you want to go. I know that you don't know me enough maybe to want me to be with you, but should we go?

Yes, we should go.

I don't think you should go it alone.

Skip a step or two, take me with you.

Provided of course, that is, that you'd be willing to wait a week or so.

My lawyer is talking to the DA and they're probably going to drop the charges:

GIVEN MY FULL COOPERATION

--should Benjamin Walters be involved with the murder, or anyone else I know.

Unlikely.

I've loved this town, my friends, and under a different set of circumstances, I would stay.

But I ask myself, stay for WHAT?

WHY STAND STILL?

in my personal inventory, my relationship with you (can we call it that?) is all I really want, desperately want to preserve.

I'll go anywhere.

I'm imagining us in a gondola, only we're not in Venice, we're floating down the Chicago River, out to the lake. The symphony orchestra stands on the banks, playing us a kind of farewell song -- Hadyn? You're pointing the way, neither one of us is quite sure where. I'm standing, poling us along, until finally, the pole no longer touches bottom, and direction no longer matters, and the skyline is dwindling behind us. We could sink and drown, or we could reach another shore, and we're going where the current takes us.

Skip