3.12.2025

V is putting on a play in the courtyard of the Hancock Tower. The show is going on but the Cheesecake Factory is still open so servers and patrons just wander through the production. Chris Farley makes a surprise appearance. Not a guy who looks like him but the actual Chris Farley, who died upstairs in 1997. Everyone gasps and the rest of the play doesn’t matter.

There’s a small aircraft to be piloted. Debate ensues. Guess I’ll do it but navigating the Loop in an aerial vehicle I have no training on doesn’t feel like the best of options. Either way we have to escape, of course. It's a short flight and now we are sneaking through back yards, making friends with guard dogs. A house with a pool in back. We know these people but they’re not home. They don’t live there anymore. We can probably hide out here. V's son is with us now. ‘You don’t change.’ She means when I talk to children. I always liked grownups who spoke to me like I was a normal person, I tell her. Without pretense of wisdom.