Dear Person I Don’t Know,

Please believe me when I say that you and I are one. We eat the same food, drink the same wine, hum the same tunes under our breath. Remember when the window came down suddenly and crushed your finger the other day? We both say Mother Fucker when that happens. Listen to me: I happen to know that you experience, as I do, transcendent happiness watching someone run for a bus. When it’s time to say goodbye you try to pretend that you’re going to see the other person in a little while. Then you’re able to leave without saying goodbye, or kissing. For some reason we prefer things this way. Wide streets are vertiginous for me. And for you! Neither of us feels any guilt about stealing books from friends.

Nothing is as soothing as spaghetti, for us. We expect to take short showers, but never can. We like it when we’re somewhere we can’t understand what anyone else is saying. We are jealous of the people who work in shipping stores, and as baseball scouts. It’s difficult to keep driving past motels.

I could go on, but I know you're busy, and easily bored. And I know you believe me. How could it be otherwise? Yes, you are me and I am you. Love me. Do what I want you to do.

Yours, etc.

Today we had a mystery. “Carey, I have bad news,” said the exterminator. He is a wonderful man and an excellent exterminator, and I have been fascinated for some time by his vivid turn of phrase and ability to build suspense through foreshadowing and other devices. In fact, I sometimes think of making him the hero of a knock-off Murakami story. Or if not the hero, then someone the hero is really, really glad to see.

On this visit we had already discussed the bats that live in the tippy-top of our house, how the flies I was seeing in my office could be there because of something rotting in the walls, and how you would think mice would be outside during the summer but all he is seeing is mice in houses. These weren’t pieces of bad news, they were just regular news, if you’re our exterminator. The first time he had given me bad news I had had to go down to the basement and stand with my head bent (we have a very shallow cellar) next to a pile of rat droppings while he talked to me about the rats in my house.

He had my attention. But then it turned out that the bad news was that someone or something had stolen our outdoor rat bait station, which had been driven into the ground with a stake and further held there by heavy stones. He said raccoons could do this, which was something else I didn't want to hear about. He was doubtful, though. I said we had an opossum around us somewhere. He didn’t think an opossum was up to it. Which leaves us with humans. So I’m wondering, which one of you stole my rat bait station? I want it back.