It grieves me that you shall never see this, my last letter to
you. Would that you could have survived life's ravages, and the
shivering terrors of heroin. I had written this to you the week before
I found you in Bristol, and I had it in the breast pocket of my horrid
old blue hooded jacket during those terrible days I spent wandering the
unfamiliar streets in search of you. You weren't at the hotel you said
you'd be at. Nobody had heard of you, and I didn't even know what name
you were using. "Save me, V----; the drugs have won!", above the
scribbled name of a hotel, just wasn't enough to go on. I could have
been as dead as you are, you know--I was not yet twenty years old, and
roaming the streets in search of you, one hand clutching a steak-knife
beneath my overcoat.
But that is neither here nor there. I did survive, and you...died
in my arms. You bled on me, and a moment's craven terror seized me...I
could not help but wonder if you had AIDS....
At any rate, I had a letter with me, which I was going to give to
you. I didn't get a chance. You never returned to lucidity after you
called my name from the obscurity of garbage and damp that was your
bedchamber. But I still have it, and I wanted you to read it now....
"Dear K---,
"I know that it's hardly MY place to say this,
since I've hardly made more of my life than you have. But you really
ought to stop using the heroin. Surely a hundred people have said that
to you, though. How can I say it so that you'll listen? I don't know.
I never have any of the answers. I must be cursed.
"Do you remember that game we used to play in the schoolyard at St.
B---'s? The one in which we "gambled" for bits of candy and two pence
bits? That was fun...remember the time you threw my shoe in the river
and I fell in up to my waist trying to retrieve it...and Mr. A-----
bagged on us for it...? Or our awful presentation on Henry Fielding in
English class...? The way Mrs. C------ hated us for talking in her
damnable history class? Mr. C------- used to spit when he
talked...especially when he was angry. Remember that?
"It was all so much fun. Can you really say that heroin gives you
anything like the high laughing at Mr. C. gave you? Well...maybe it
does...I don't know.... But laughing at teachers won't make you die. I
think that the streets will swallow you one day, and it's a chilling
thought. It's no fate for the girl I knew...I still have that
photograph of us falling off a log at W------. That was the day when we
walked up to the Folly, and then went home and ate all the pita bread in
Mother's fridge. My sister is in that photograph, too. I wish I'd
stayed in England long enough to get a copy made for you.
"Please keep writing to me...if only to let me know you're still
alive. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you. Caspian
says I'm crazy for trying to talk to a heroin addict...but you're more
than that, are you not? Caspian wants me to just forget you. Indeed,
he's hanging over my shoulder and laughing at me right now.
"On that irksome note, K---...I leave you, begging you to consider
rehab one more time. Just say the word!
"Yours (reminding you to never, ever forget...
--Rats;
...the
toothy on the tree.)"
And that, I suppose, is it. There's really nothing more to
say...except that...if there's life after death, if hope isn't vain, if
life's anything more than a fading dream...that wherever you've
gone...you haven't forgotten. The toothy on the tree or anything else.
Don't worry about me, K---. I may be far from a model citizen, but
the sludge hasn't risen to claim me yet. Indeed, things are beginning
to look up. I have not yet "squared up", it's true--but I am halfway
through university (again), and I have every intention of finishing this
time around. I've got money saved, and even a retirement fund. And I
still think that it's a world of hope....
Remember me,
Rats
