A Letter To...

Hello Daryl,

It’s been a while, nearly seven years, since our paths touched. I thought I’d catch you up on the happenings in this multiverse. Do you care to hear about the goings on? I don’t know. Let’s see.

You left the summer of 2008, right, while I stayed in LA with family? I kept looking out for you but didn’t find out you had gone until way into the Fall, if I remember correctly.

Well, your hangout, quasi work place, has disappeared. The stationery/candy/lottery ticket place where you “worked” has become an opulent, aspiring mysterious soft drink sort of business. For a while your old place moved a few doors down on the same street but just a few weeks ago they closed also. Really, visible signs of your presence have gone missing.

I still don’t know your family name of course. When I heard from your “bosses,” the owner of the store and his wife, you had left, I asked them your family name and how to contact you. They didn’t know. They had never known your last name, they said.

Actually, they didn’t need to know any of that, I guess. You just cleaned the entranceway outside their store, hung out nearby to make sure no armed thief came in and threatened them or tried to rob them. You straightened magazine and other shelves sometimes, I think. What else did you do there? I don’t know. You came and left. They didn’t need to know anything else of you, I guess.

When I came in to the store and found you there, we had many brief, amiable conversations, some of them even epiphany like. Why can’t I remember any of the ideas or words? I just can’t. Do you understand? Forgive.

I do know, and want you to know, when I found out you had gone, I tried to find you. You left few hints. At least your survivor employers didn’t know any of them. No last name. No working phone number anymore. No address. No bank account for sure (I guess they paid you in cash). They didn’t even know exactly where you had gone. They knew only you became ill and left. Where are you?

No way to send your family a note to ask about you. No way to know if you even have family.

I promised to tell you the goings on around here. Mostly closings are going on. The local coffee shop, Mantuas, disappeared a few years back; you never went there, I suppose, but did you know I used to congregate with others there?

The two Chinese restaurants, Sung Chu Mei and Hunan Spring, also said goodbye. Hunan Spring has become a bank; money is served and received daily, of course. Sung Chu Mei’s withering sign still resides above the shuttered entrance.

Some signs of you remain visible to me alone on the corner where you worked.

The post office still remains despite someone crashing a car into its entrance in the middle of one night.

The sole extant La Parisienne convenience store has departed.

Remember the M-8 bus, the one always caught at the red light on the corner of your workplace. Remember one warmish day when I waved to you as you stood there? You came over and through the open window our hands met for a moment. Remember? Remember!

Each workday morning as I ride past the corner on the bus I say “Hello Daryl.”

Do you hear me? I guess it doesn’t matter.

I think of you and remember you even if I don’t know your whereabouts.