Dear Steve,
Meant to send you this before I left, but things got hectic. Thanks for crashing at my place when I’m in Amsterdam. The plants shouldn’t be a problem because I always get the kind that’s hard to kill. Hope the same is true for the cat, but do your best. He hates me, he’ll hate you, don’t sweat it.
Sorry we couldn’t overlap a day or two but I needed to leave Thursday to get the cheap ticket. You’ll have a good time using my place as a base of operations to see the sights, and no hotel gives you the chance to play Resident Evil 6 on a 50-inch-flatscreen.
Okay, you just want to know where I hid the key. When you get there, make sure no one’s watching you —
Oh fuck.
I just realized other people can read this.
Why did I make this an open letter? How fucking stupid can you be?
How are we going to do this? Let me think a second.
All right, we’re gonna have to use code. Bear with me. Think of the house as a person, with front corresponding to front. Go to the side of the house that equals the part of Steve Dolan’s body that we interacted with using his Civil War figurine three years ago on St. Patrick’s Day. (I guess technically the morning after. Still can’t believe that whole thing fit and he never woke up.)
Once there, put your back against the house and look in front of you. You’ll see a bunch of stepping stones. Find the stone whose number corresponds to the number of times you had Daniel Chang take the LSAT for you and then go to the fourth stone past that. Flip it over, grab the key, wipe the mud off—
Oh man, I just realized it’s on my keychain. I forgot to put it back after loaning it out last month.
Well, don’t worry, I know a secret way to get in. May cause a little damage but I can fix that.
God, how lazy am I? Would it have been that hard to dig up your email address? No, I had to publish this and hope you would see it. Who the hell uses open letters? It doesn’t even sound like me. How precious.
Okay. Think of the house as just a person’s head, with the front being the face. Go to the window that corresponds exactly to the spot we drilled Jeff Braun with the Roman candle at that July 4th party. There’s no way you don’t remember it; we watched the clip a million times. If you push up hard enough on that window, the lock/latch/whatever-its-called on the inside will give way. I know you can take it from there. I remember how you supported your habits back in the day.
You’ll only have to do that once. There’s four or five spare keys on the kitchen table so just take one. Even if I have to hide one for you next time you visit, I’ll figure out a more secure way of letting you know. You’re on Twitter aren’t you? That would probably be simplest.
The rest of you fucks reading this, mind your own business. The house is booby-trapped.
— Jim