Rook

said
I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you’re not really the kind of person who wears your heart in your wallet.
    “Very funny,” she said to herself. “It looks like I thought I was quite amusing before I lost my memory.” Sifting through the rest of the pockets produced a packet of tissues, a mobile phone with a dead battery, and a pass card on a clip. She spent some minutes fruitlessly examining this last item, which was as thick as four credit cards and featured only a sulky-looking photo and a bar code. Finally she put aside her jacket and took a long drink of very good coffee. There was no time like the present for reading a letter from herself. She could only hope that this letter was more illuminating than the last. Well, at least this one was typed, rather than handwritten.
    Dear You,
    Have you noticed that I’m not calling you Myfanwy? This is for two reasons. First, I feel that it would be somehow rude to foist my name on you,and second, well, it’s just too strange. Speaking of strange, I suppose you’re wondering how I came to write these letters, how I knew they would be necessary.
    You’re wondering how I know the future.
    Well, I have bad news for you. I’m not psychic. I can’t see what’s coming. I can’t predict the lotto numbers for tonight, which is a real pity because it would be exceptionally useful. But over the past year, I’ve been approached by several people who claimed they could see my future. Random strangers. Some of them knew they occasionally had flashes of precognition, while others couldn’t even explain why they’d come up to me on the street. They’d experienced dreams, visions, hunches. At first I assumed they were nothing but random crazies, but when it kept happening, it became harder to dismiss.
    So I’ve known for some time that you would find yourself standing in the rain without any memory of who you were. I knew that you would come to surrounded by dead people wearing gloves. I knew that they would be lying on the ground having been “taken down hardcore,” in the words of one particularly batty old woman who spoke to me on the street in Liverpool.
    I wonder, are you made up of parts of me? Or are you a completely new person? You don’t know who you are, that much I can be certain of, but what else is gone? I suppose you couldn’t know that
Jane Eyre
is my least favorite book in the world. Or that anything by Georgette Heyer is my favorite. I like oranges. I like pastries.
     
    “Do you like pancakes?” wondered the girl in the hotel room, taking a bite of blueberry-filled deliciousness. “I certainly like them. You should have said.”
    To tell the truth, I find this whole thing alarming. I have a tidy, comfortable life. It’s a trifle unorthodox, but I have managed to make it work. And now all I can do is piece things together from what I’ve been told.
    1. I know that I will lose my memory. I have no idea why, but I will try and be prepared and make this as easy for you as it can be.
     
    2. I know that I or you will be attacked, will fight, and will win. I’m laying odds that the last part is you. I organize very well, but I don’t fight.The black eyes are probably mine, though. That sort of thing seems to happen to me.
     
    3. I know that the men who attack me are all wearing latex gloves, which is very important. I know it sounds like nothing, maybe an incidental perversion. You don’t understand the significance, but I do, and I will explain it to you, if you want. All you need to know immediately is that someone I should be able to trust has decided that I need to be removed. I don’t know exactly who. I don’t know why. It may be for something I haven’t even done yet.
     
     
    I can’t be certain that you’ll read this letter; I can’t even be certain that you’ll read the first letter. I’ve just put copies of them in every coat and jacket I own to make sure they’ll be available to you when you need them. I can only hope that my limited knowledge of the future will be of use to you, and that you will gain some additional insights of your own.
    And that I’ll be wearing a coat when it happens.
    In any case, we must face facts. There is a choice you must make, because I will not make it for you. You can walk away from my life and go create a new one. If that’s what you choose, then you will need to leave the country, but this body comes with a large amount of money—more than enough to buy you a comfortable