No. You people are just people, the same as me, screwed up and trying to work out your lives and full of your own problems. You’ll process me like a green bean at Bird’s Eye, and who I am or what my disasters might have been won’t matter to you in the slightest.
I think you’re going to have to catch me.
Sincerely,
Edwin Topliss
Dear Samuel,
Enclosed please find the final chapter of the November book, in on schedule after all. The seven chapters preceding this one are currently in the hands of the cops, having been confiscated I’m sure in their raid on my lair in the YMCA last night. I suppose I have you to thank for tipping them to Dirk Smuff.
Anyway, that makes eight chapters. There were four more, but they’ve been destroyed. However, I believe you can find them engraved in my wife’s brain. Perhaps hypnosis would bring them out intact. If so, you’ll have a book two chapters longer than usual. If not, two chapters shorter. You win a few, you lose a few.
The manager of this movie theater gave me permission to use the typewriter in his office, but now he tells me the sound is waking his customers — it’s four in the morning, and there’s nobody in the building but the manager, a dozen winos, and me — so I’ve got to cut this short. Besides, it’s my fifteenth page.
Personal considerations make it necessary, Mr. President, for me to tender my resignation at this time. I want you to know I have been proud and pleased to be a member of the team and will forever treasure the memory of our association. Your warmth and understanding have been a constant help to me in moments of stress.
Adios, motherfucker,
Ed Topliss