Congratulations on Throwing It All Away!

It will begin with your shoes. First the right, then the left, off your feet and into the Long Island Sound. Your socks won’t feel right on your feet after your shoes are off, something about the texture of the deck on their soles. They’ll catch and drag in a way that makes it clear they were never meant to walk on the sticky, flecked steel beneath your feet.

After that your jacket will come off. It’s a festive event, after all, and it seems inappropriate to be wearing a jacket. The August sun will help, but once your coat hits the water you’ll realize just how cold the wind whipping across this sound is. You’ll wish you’d brought a wind shell or something.

Next will be your briefcase, filled to the brim with documents which readily identify you as the regional manager of a number of King Cullen grocery stores. This will be how you’d like to be remembered, for feeding people, not burning your brother-in-law accidentally with a charcoal starter then murdering him with a shovel when he came at to “get you back” with the hot embers clasped in his red fist.

Next you’ll hurl a pair of blow up dolls filled with corn syrup in to the water. They’ll be dressed like you and your wife. You with the clothes you’ve lost, and everything else you’ve lost in the last year.

And after that, after you hear the first scream echoing from aft of the boat, you’ll know it’s done. The feds will never find you now. You’ll put on your novelty glasses/moustache disguise, put your arm around your wife, who is now wearing a Nixon mask, and move as far forward as you can.

The two of you will watch the mainland approach from your table adjacent to the Street Fighter 2 Turbo stand up console next to the food court. Holding your wife’s hand, you’ll realize that she truly loves you. She’s willing to fake her death and leave the land of your birth rather than sit through assault proceedings that would tear your family apart.

She’ll be holding your hand, smiling as the rest of your lives approach the two of you. She’ll be smiling, thinking of her life outside of New York. She’ll wonder how far New London is from Canada, or if you even really need to go all the way to Toronto. She’ll wonder if it’s possible for “Pedro for President” to actually receive the insurance payout, so that the two of you can access those funds later in a shared account under that name.

Mostly, though, she’ll wonder how she ever got by without you, and how very worth all this you were. You’ll be thinking the same thing, but you’ll be more distracted by the Street Fighter 2 terminal, where a young man is playing Blanka in a fashion you could totally beat. You'll want to challenge him, but you'll think better of it. You don't know if you want to play Street Fighter at all in this new life of yours.

Congratulations on Throwing It All Away!