The woman who lived at 207 East 61st in the early to mid 1990s (when I had a letter mailed to my name at that address) today lives at One57, and is married to a mega-billionaire. I guess that should not be a surprise. I wonder if she ever knew that a letter to me was mailed to her address, or if it was intercepted by the post office. What if she opened the letter and found the cassette tape within, listened to it, and wanted to reach out to me, wondering who I really was. Oh yeah.

Getting ready to retire the Getaway Bag. The strap keeps breaking, and my hamhanded fixes aren’t working any more. I’m looking at leather messenger travel bags with zillions of pockets and compartments.  Yay. The Getaway Bag is cheap, as would be expected of anything my dad bought. I was OK with calling it the Getaway Bag but now it’s starting to seem weird. I call it that because of how I found it after my father died. Dad was very tidy, with closets carefully organized and every object stored within easily accessible. So it was weird to find this leather bag sitting on the floor, on a spot with no real purpose. it was on a spot where you just wouldn’t put things. I imagined he left it there so that after he killed himself he could grab that bag and stuff it with everything he’d need for his next life. He’d probably grab cigarettes, whisky, some cash, and stuff it all into his bag and get outta there.

I don’t think he was that imaginative, especially toward the end. The bag might actually have been placed there by George, who did some cleanup at the apartment immediately after dad died. By “cleanup” I refer to the brain matter he swiped off the walls outside on the porch. I mentioned this to a cousin who loudly said “THERE ARE SERVICES FOR THAT.” But it was already done.

George warned me that there was a bloodstain on the porch, located on the floor, on a green piece of what I could could be called astroturf. It was under a potted plant, which George placed there purely to obscure the stain. I moved the pot aside. I looked at the stain. It made me happy. It was him. It was bright, bright red. It is the last I ever saw of my dad. We didn’t have the guts to do open casket, even though the funeral home guaranteed they could make him look like no bullet had gone through his head. It exited through the back, after all. Didn’t matter. We just didn’t need to see it. I never got over the 21 gun salute they performed at the funeral. They had no way of knowing that a gunblast was the last sound he ever heard.

John told me there were two gunshots, briefly lighting up the possibility that he had been murdered. That made no sense. No, the first shot was fired just to be sure the gun worked. It may have been the very first time he had ever fired a gun, unless some sort of training is required to purchase guns in Florida.

…

I had other things on my mind but they disappeared as soon as I sat down here, at the ghetto coffee shop. Maybe I am getting too used to this place. I can’t write well at home because the place fills me with anxiety and dread. I try, though.