He was a short haul truck driver for a company that sold frozen pies to restaurants and coffee houses. In his spare time he watched television and did crossword puzzles, the kind you can buy in little books at the check-out aisle of a grocery store. When they searched his house they found thousands of these books stacked in neat piles in his bedroom closet. He had a long time girlfriend, a blonde cocktail waitress from New Jersey, and there was a small photo of her tacked in the wall facing his bed. His bedside table had been nailed shut, when they pried it open they found a ragged bible and a folded up letter to someone named “Anna.”
He belonged to a ‘book of the month club.’ There was no sign that he had read any of the books, not more than half-way, at least, they were arranged alphabetically in a high shelf in the kitchen, some of them still in cellophane packages. Also in his kitchen shelves were the usual cans of food, dishes, pots and pans and half bottles of assorted vitamins and expired prescriptions for antibiotics and the like. Behind these was a small, rolled up bag of dog food, but no trace of a dog could be found. Underneath the sink was a bottle of disinfectant and a compact trash can which contained a melon husk, some junk mail and a pornographic magazine in a brown paper bag. On the kitchen counter there was a porcelain cookie jar in the shape of a laughing cow that bellowed when the lid was lifted. There was half a box of pizza and a bottle of soy milk in his fridge and an open carton of cigarettes in his freezer.
He spoke fluent French and had planned on eventually seeing Paris. A portrait of Monte San Michelle hung in his entryway above a sign asking visitors to remove their shoes. There was some debate over whether or not he also spoke Portuguese at a conversational level; Many could not differentiate the two languages and assumed that his Portuguese was a mere affectation of his French. He was a convicted liar and suspected fraud. There were those who did not regret his passing.
He had a very amicable and typically unhealthy relationship with his parents. There was a notebook in his living room in which he had collected correspondence from them. A few of the letters had been crumpled, then carefully straightened and replaced. There was a message on his answering machine from his sister. She had been traveling in Europe and had just returned. She was exhausted. Her flight had been delayed and she would not have the chance to see him as she had planned. She hoped that they would see each other soon, in a few months maybe. He had never received the message, the officer who heard it accidentally erased it and told no one about it.
He had been married, briefly. There was a video of his wedding in a shoebox under his dresser. The film was badly framed; many heads were severed, others were split in half. It was agreed that the photographer was a child, although he had none of his own, and that it was a very sweet, if a little foolish, gesture to put such an important responsibility in the hands of a kid. The wife was not an attractive woman; she was too thin, wore unfashionable glasses and had flat, over-styled hair. The child was probably hers or a relative of hers. She occasionally pointed a finger toward the camera and made a strange motion with her mouth, at which point the camera would jerk suddenly and go still. During the cutting of the cake, she announced that this was “too much fucking cake for ten people,” and shook her head fervently, laughing in deep, careless heaves. Occasionally a woman’s voice could be heard in the background directing people on where to stand or sit.
He was a saxophone player in the community band. He was talented, but not great. His playing did not inspire so much as it filled space. They found the instrument under his bed. It needed new key pads, but there was a fresh reed in the ligature and a stack of unorganized sheet music in the case. The neighbors remarked that he would sometimes play for hours on end, but never one continuous melody. He would play something for a few minutes, then something else, and so on, often playing in cycles the same pieces without ever completing them. The music would grow louder the longer he played, culminating in an eventual sudden silence which was replaced after some time by the hum of a television. They did not consider him a nuisance, however, as he commonly apologized for the noise and offered to give up his playing if it bothered them too much, which it did not. If anything it was nice to live next to someone who kept such regular, predictable hours and never parked in their space, and no, he hadn’t a dog, not as far as they knew. After all, it wasn’t the best neighborhood, there were drug dealers in the very building, when would the police look into that?
When they tracked down the girlfriend at work, she attempted to flee. Before the apprehending officer could inform her that she was wanted for questioning in the death of her boyfriend, she confessed to having an ounce of marijuana in her possession
It was a Friday night that he rented that room. He had been to the bar with a fellow trucker, he hadn’t seemed depressed. They played darts, fifty cents a game by the docks, had a few too many, maybe, but not so much as all that. He hadn’t said anything strange, well, he had said something, he had gotten up to leave, and he was just in the doorway, and he said that he once believed in God, and that things had changed since then. Is that what you mean by strange?
fin
more coffee
coffee brothel
return to the last car