Dan, if you’re going to tell the company about my embezzling, just do it. I’m not playing another bass note for your stupid band. I’m using the term “band” liberally, since there isn’t a word that accurately describes the abomination you and your two cousins do with instruments. Whoever creates a word for it will undoubtedly be the Antichrist.

The truth is, I’d rather be in jail than lugging an 80-pound bass amp to what you describe as “venues.” A pharmacy’s parking lot isn’t a venue, Dan—it’s a parking lot. The fact that you picked up a prescription after we played also leads me to believe it was more of an errand than a show. And that outdoor concert area we went to last month sure seemed like a cemetery to me. I didn’t speak up, since I believed we were killing the concept of music and that seemed like a fitting place to do it.

Every day of the past week I’ve thought of walking into Mr. Walker’s office and admitting what I did. Anything to get my name off of The Sequel to the Beatles’ Bandcamp page. I keep telling you, that band name is going to get you sued and there isn’t a court in the land that would side against the Beatles.

I really don’t know how severe the punishment for embezzling $15,000 will be, but it can’t be nearly as bad as working out key changes for a song called “Rock Paper Scissors (ROCK!).” How can a song have two bridges and no chorus? I honestly think you found some sort of loophole in music theory. Every time we play a song, I worry the dissonance will cause the universe to collapse in on itself.

We are a horrible band, Dan.

It didn’t take me long to realize why you needed to blackmail someone to join your group. Bands normally choose a genre of music to play before they start writing songs. You, for some reason, chose a genre of literature: mystery. The thing is, people would only want to solve your “mystery music” so they could find out who to blame for making it.

You understand that I don’t like you or this band, right Dan?

I just really needed that $15,000. I’m not proud, but I did what I had to do. Things with my wife are better now. We have granite counters and finally finished our basement. However, having to lie to her that I chose to play bass in a band that storms bar stages on karaoke nights is far worse than admitting I’m a thief.

So this is it. I’m done. I am no longer in the band. I would ask you to wait to alert the authorities until I could explain my transgression to my family, but I know you have absolutely no sense of timing and couldn’t handle that. You’re like a human metronome, if a metronome destroyed rhythm and tortured tempo. which it doesn’t, but would if you designed it.

Goodbye, Dan. I leave my fate in your hands.

Oh, and by the way, the instrument you play is called an accordion, not a windy piano.