“It’s tough being cooped up in this room by myself,” said Michaelson, weathering another day living like a middle-aged furniture salesman in a classic Hollywood crime flick who has been forced into hiding due to unpaid debts. “But I guess I’ll just have to make do.”

Michaelson has reportedly passed many evenings sitting all alone on his hotel bed, as if his wife has already been killed by the goons of the casino owner he owes five thousand dollars and it’s only a matter of time before they catch up to him too.

“I’ve had a headache for a while,” Michaelson continued, as sick as a guy who knows that this city swallows up average Joes like him all the time, forces them into its darkest crevices like scurrying cockroaches, crushes them under its foot if they ever dare to take more than the miserable lot that life has dealt them. “I might take an aspirin and try to get some sleep.”

At press time, Michaelson was gazing out his window on to the street below, like a man whose only consolation is that his darling Evelyn didn’t have to suffer long.