of scrambling thuds ricocheted down the staircase from the second floor. Roxy, Joe’s black Labrador, scratched at the front door.
“Ho-la! Ho-la!” sang out. Rosa, the Henderson’s long employed Puerto Rican cleaning lady, had let herself in. Roxy danced in circles as Rosa gave her a squeeze around her ample neck. “Joe, you home?”
“In the kitchen,” he moaned, realizing it was Friday.
Rosa, petite and owning skin the color of virgin olive oil, walked into the kitchen. Her white T-shirt and pink floral shorts were wet with perspiration. “It so hot.” She wiped her face with a tissue. “Fifteen days of ninety plus.”
Joe was unfazed: the central air was humming and the fridge was stocked with Budweiser. He hadn’t ventured outdoors for two days.
Roxy rambled to the kitchen’s threshold and gave Joe a look of disgust. The ninety-pound canine was lucky—Joe, in a burst of genius, installed a doggy door in the laundry room that opened to a fenced yard and purchased an automatic feed dispenser programmed for three times a day. She wagged her tail at Rosa, then scampered out of the room.
“A dog needs to be loved.” With her hands on her hips, she looked at the man who had employed her for eighteen years following the birth of Emily. Her role as full-time housekeeper/nanny evolved as Emily grew. She still came twice a week—Mondays and Fridays—but didn’t see the reason why. For over a year, Joe had lived in the house alone.
Joe’s orange golf shirt and blue jeans were stained with coffee. With a three-day growth of stubble, the one time fashion plate passed as one of the homeless that hung out at the train station. “Bad nights?” she asked.
“You don’t have to be polite,” Joe said without opening his eyes. “I’ve got a hangover the size of San Juan.”
Rosa didn’t require any explanation. A dozen twenty-ounce empty beer cans and a half bottle of Johnny Walker Black sat on the table. The bottle of Johnny Walker was unopened on her last visit. “Elaine call?” Rosa asked, knowing how her phone calls pushed Joe into that “dark place.”
“I had the pleasure of hearing her voice Monday night. She found a job, an apartment, and a new life,” he said with a wry smile.
When Elaine announced at the end of June of the previous year she was taking a sabbatical from her teaching job to work with mentally challenged kids on an Arizona Indian reservation, Joe was unashamedly relieved. Their marriage was in shambles. Maybe it was his never-ending funk. Maybe it was the beer and brown goods chasers. The Marlboro man and the overflowing ashtrays didn’t help. Besides, Emily was entering the University of Arizona as a freshman and needed to get her things out west. Elaine said she’d be away for ten months and hoped that he would use the time to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
“I’m sorry for you,” Rosa said.
Joe removed a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros on the table, lighting it with a Zippo bought in a PX before shipping out to Vietnam. A wisp of smoke floated from a nostril. “It’s alright. Elaine is being Elaine.”
Rosa scooped up the beer cans and disappeared into the laundry room. The crash of the cans into the recycling container pierced Joe’s ears. She returned pushing a vacuum cleaner. “Forgot to tell you, something is happening at Mr. Swedge.”
Joe wrinkled his forehead, picked up his cane fashioned out of a five-iron golf club he was no longer able to swing, and forced the pack of cigarettes into the right front pocket of his Levi’s. He hobbled to the picture window in living room at the front of the house.
In the circular driveway of the Tudor across the street were an ambulance, a Westfield black and white police cruiser, and a dark blue Crown Victoria. A banana yellow Dodge Durango SUV completed the quartet.
Joe didn’t need to rush. The Durango belonged to Dr. Christian Murphy of the Union county medical examiner’s office. Barefoot, he put on a pair of sneakers that were wedged under the base of a wood coat rack beside the door and ventured out.
Rosa was wrong. It wasn’t so hot; it was as if he stepped into a blast furnace. Joe felt the heat rising from the concrete walk.
“Hey Joe!” Ed Stoval yelled from the front yard two doors to the left of the action. The octogenarian rested against the handle of a bamboo rake he