Sammy Two Shoes, page 22
‘My apartment is on the beach,’ I argued, ‘I know a two-hundred-year-old Seminole shaman, and a girl named Bibi likes me.’
‘On the other hand.’ She held up a hand and started counting things off. ‘Broadway, Radio City, Ray’s pizza, Delmonico’s, the Waldorf Astoria, Birdland, the Village, the Met, MOMA, The Village Vanguard, Moondog on 42nd street dressed like a Viking, for God’s sake!’
She went on like that for another five minutes before I stopped her.
‘It’s not a fair choice,’ I told her softly. ‘Because Fry’s Bay, Florida, exists in a different reality than this city. This isn’t a decision between two different cities at all, in fact. It’s not two roads diverging in a yellow wood, like the poet says. This is about who I am. Or, really, who I’m going to be. It’s not a choice at all, really. It’s an existential crossroad.’
She nodded and finished her glass.
‘Sounds like a pretty big decision, Foggy,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do?’
Tell Foggy what to do at www.phillipdepoy.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For some of the people and events of this novel, acknowledgment must be made:
To the anthology Ellen Hart Presents Malice Domestic 15: Mystery Most Theatrical in which a short story of a small portion of this novel appears.
Also to Dean Ford in whose New York apartment I lived for a short while in the early 1970s when I encountered many of the places and versions of the people in this book.
Also to Bob Dorough, whom I met at Reno Sweeney’s in the 1970s and whose music continues to influence me.
Also to Hal Peller who showed me around Brooklyn, where some of this novel takes place, in the late 1970s and introduced me to my first egg cream.
Also to every stage manager with whom I have worked over the course of fifty years in the theatre world. Any one of them could plan an excellent heist and get away with it.
And finally to the ghost of Benetta McKinnon in whose duplex I lived on Dickson Place in Atlanta in the early 1970s. She had just died when I moved in, and I saw evidence of her several times. Once she left me a bouquet of dried flowers. Also there were junkies living downstairs. It was an odd time.
Phillip DePoy, Sammy Two Shoes
