Workin' Progress: Freighter Cruises

Freighter cruises.  Abner Kinsella wasting months, years, on freighter cruises.  Dillon was livid he hadn't come up with that shit earlier.  He was giddy.  This was genius.  Kinsella would be, was, should be, what, 22 now?  Something.  He'd set him up as a college freshman, so 22 would work.  How long?  10 years?  Why not?  In ten fucking years he could bail on whatever horrible thing he was doing, send Dillon off on vaguely undetermined next new somethings, say goodbye, and pop up as horrible douchebag Abner Kinsella, travel writer or whatever bullshit made a modicum of sense.  Or not.  What would it matter?  He probably wouldn't be ready to kill off Dillon.  He still needed a way to live with Dillon for a long fucking time.  That was going to be a problem.  Kinsella was a necessity, and he had been more than perfect distraction.  Special Agent Tomko was probably still trying to figure that shit out.  But that stupid bastard would swear he met the guy, swear he was sure the guy was involved with something that he couldn't quite articulate.  Kinsella wasn't permanent solution.  Dillon knew that the next long-term answer was probably five years old.  It was ok if he was going to be a well-preserved 40, but there was no way to pull off being 60 or 70 years old and looking like you were 20 or 25.  Dillon wasn't going to live forever, but he had no idea how the fuck he would get around living a long goddamned time.  Too long to be Dillon the whole time.  Somebody would notice.  Kinsella was a distraction, but the freighter cruise scheme was fucking genius.  Abner Kinsella on the high seas, far away from just about everyone and everything.  Brilliant.  He wished he could leave today.  He wished he wasn't wasting time.  Get out, get another decade with that Boulder bullshit for Dillon, leave, and then put Dillon to bed for a while and take off as Abner Kinsella.  Then Dillon could come back and open a practice somewhere new with people who hadn't known him since Illinois or the LAPD and wouldn't ask too too many questions.  How long would that last?  A bit of gray in the hair, glasses he didn't need, work for a time in that new place and then "retire" somewhere.  What would be best for that?  A condo in the city in Perth or Dublin?  He didn't want to stand out as the American and possibly be identified more or less by accident.  A house in some middle-class neighborhood like somewhere in Longmeadow, Mass or some such place?  A small house and a big enough yard that the neighbors weren't on top of you all the time.  He could chill out there for a while, anonymously, before he had to completely abandon Dillon, the people assuming his family from somewhere put him in a home or he died or dried up and blew away.  That would be that, and it would be someone else who carried on.  Shane Fitzpatrick.  Seamus Murphy.  Paddy McGoatfucker.  Didn't fucking matter.  Wouldn't fucking matter.  Everybody would dead finally.  Not just some of them.  They'd all be dead.  Except him.  Even Dillon.  Sort of.  How long would he have to fucking deal with it?  Dillon wasn't sure it would help to know exactly how long.  Really, he knew it would be so much worse to know.  What was he going to do, ask?  That would be a nightmare.  He sincerely wished he could fool himself into believing he had a duty or an obligation or something.  He wished he didn't know for sure that nothing he did was going to matter at all.  There was nothing to know that was going to matter.  No one was going to make any difference at all.  There was nothing he could do to change anything.  He could live for a billion years and he wouldn't be able to redeem any of it.  He had done what he needed to for himself selfishly, for them after a fashion, and that was as much he could do.  All of it.  His life was not a reward, it was a side-effect.  His years were no reason.  They simply were.  No matter what he did or didn't do, nothing would change for anyone, nothing would matter.  But he could fuck around as Abner Kinsella for a while and not have to do anything or see anyone pretty much.  Drink whiskey.  Read books.  Be lost on the water.  That was gonna be great.  The best thing.