when we got to chicago, he drove straight to the lake, to this pier where he’d rented a boat for us, beautiful red speedboat, and god, it was so exciting for me! he just kept doing things like this, and there’s a picnic basket and it was great, just great…to be out there, in the water, on this boat with him, it was just real lovely… (BEAT) he gave me a bracelet, it was all wrapped up, in wax paper, inside my sandwich! yeah, you believe that, he’d hollowed out my bread and put my present inside there, and i loved that, that was just cute…and i got, ahh, this beautiful, like, picture book of several greek stories, mostly of euripides, ’cause, see, he felt euripides was the most, what, “humanistic”… had, like, the most humanity of the greek writers. he said he was the one most at war with this… (BEAT) shit, still can’t think of that word, but he was the guy who was really angry about the world being all fucked up just because we happened to be mortals…anyhow, it had a bunch ’a nice drawings and he said i’d like it even more as i got older… (BEAT) i still have it.

silence.