Chapter 3

On their return from the deli, Marvin pointed Tommy to the door marked 2-F in nickel-finished characters toward the end of the carpeted hallway. “This is it. It’s a small building. Only six condominiums on each floor. The F stands for Front — you pay extra for the street view.” He hesitated and began to dig through his pockets.

“Are we waiting for something?”

“I’m trying to find my keys. I don’t know what I did with them; I had them when —”

“Marvin, you ain’t gonna find ‘em, bud. They’re in your pocket — at the morgue. But, you don’t need ‘em anymore,” Tommy said and walked through the closed door.

“Oh. Right. Hey, does it hurt, walking through stuff?”

Tommy answered from inside the apartment, “Nah, you’ll just get a little buzz, a tingle really. Like, did you ever stick one of those nine-volt batteries to your tongue?”

“Yeah, when I was a kid.”

“It’ll feel like that. You get used to it.”

Marvin pushed a hand through, waited for the sensation to register, then smiled and walked in. The dead quiet of the place surprised him. He thought Jen would’ve been home, on the phone to notify friends and family, looking like hell and feeling much too distraught to even think about funeral arrangements. It disappointed him that she wasn’t there.

“Nice pad, dude,” Tommy said from the bedroom.

“Mmm, yeah. Thanks.” With a job secured, he’d purchased the two-bedroom, two bath condo right out of college. The graduation gift from his folks covered the small down payment. In the heart of the up-and-coming urban area, the pseudo-brownstone appealed to him and reminded him a little bit of the row houses where he grew up in upstate New York.

“My place isn’t nearly as nice. And the old lady that moved in after I died snores like a gorilla.”

“So, what you’re saying, if I understand, is I can still stay here?”

“Of course. Most of us find it, um… comforting, I guess, to stay where we lived. ‘Specially younger ones, like us, when we — how did you put it earlier — we ‘bought the farm’? so early. Some just wander around until they decide to 'go into the light' as the living world likes to think of it. But, I'll tell you it's nothing like you see in the movies. Older folks tend to gravitate to the parks and coffee shops; wherever they spent lots of time. Unless they left a spouse behind, then they tend to want to mess with them as much as possible,” Tommy snorted a laugh, spreading his arms out to indicate the apartment. “Hey, I’m kinda hungry. Got anything to eat?”

“We usually did take-out, but there might be something. Look around,” Marv said from the balcony in the exact spot Jen had witnessed his death. He could see the pool of his blood still on the pavement. “Jesus, don’t they clean that stuff up? It’s kind of creepy.”

Back in the kitchen, Tommy rattled pans. Marvin went in to sit at the table to watch and the smells made him aware of the hunger pangs that stabbed at his stomach. Tommy wrestled up a mean brunch: bacon and eggs, toasted bagels with a schmear as Marvin’s mother used to call the plain cream cheese, big glasses of orange juice (which Marvin didn’t realize Jen had stashed in the fridge, or he would’ve grabbed some that morning along with his coffee), and small bowls of fruit cocktail mixed in plain yogurt.

“Quite a spread, Tommy. Thanks for doing the cooking.”

Tommy shrugged. “I was one of the short order cooks. At Epstein’s.”

“Really? How come I never saw you in there?”

Tommy laughed. “Dude, it was years ago.”

Marvin contemplated asking how many years, but nodded instead and dug into the plate of crispy bacon.

“Bacon? I thought you said you were Jewish.”

“You’ve heard of Jack Mormons?”

Tommy nodded.

“Well, just think of me as a Jack Jew!”

They ate in silence and when they finished, Marv got up, washed everything, put it away and even emptied the trash per Tommy’s instructions: “If you leave things in disarray it’ll spoil the fun later on.”

After Marvin inspected the kitchen to make sure it was spotless as always, they went into the living room.

“Daytime T.V.,” Marv said picking up the remote. “What’s that all about? Is it still all soap opera crap?”

“Not if you have cable. You do have cable, right?”

Marv looked at him as though Tommy had just asked if he wanted a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese, which as far as Marv was concerned is akin to sacrilege. He’d stick to plain or onion bagels, thank-you-very-much, and don’t even get him started on flavored cream cheese. He tossed the remote to Tommy. “Whatever you want. I’m new to the scene.”

Marv noticed Tommy flipped through the channels much slower than Jenna had ever done. For some reason, when Jenna got control of a remote, her inner man reared his head as if her testosterone levels had suddenly surged and she blazed through channels; it always aggravated him. Somewhere around the thirtieth click, Tommy landed on a baseball game and turned to wait for Marv’s reaction. Marv shrugged indifference. Two more clicks and there was Bruce Willis in a wife-beater, all dirty and grimy, with his Beretta at the ready.

“Ah! Die Hard. I love this film. Have you ever seen it?”

“Can’t say as I have. But ask me about any musical and I can give you a blow by blow.” Tommy smiled at Marv’s reaction. “What can I say, man, I’m a sucker for musicals.”

“Hey, turn it up. It may not be as awesome as something like Twister, but the explosions will rattle your cage with the surround sound.”

At precisely two-thirty in the afternoon Mrs. McClaskey stepped out of her condo across the hall to check her mail as she did every day. She heard music and a man’s voice say very loudly, ‘Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!’ from inside Jenna and Marvin’s unit. The sound was up awfully high. ‘Don’t damage your ears and they’ll serve you for a lifetime’ was a motto she lived by. She tried to spread the wisdom, though the kids of today often laughed and ignored her advice. She knew one day they would finally understand, though it would be too late. She tapped her knuckles on the door, “Jenna? Jenna, dear, are you home?”

She waited several seconds and, when she got no response, went down the stairs to get her mail. On the way back up, she heard music and gunshots, but thankfully no cusswords — not that swearing bothered her, as a retired librarian, words were just words to her — drifted through the hallway. She’d heard them and read them all before, but still, she believed young people overused such things, perhaps to a point the words almost lost all effect. She tapped on the door again and waited.

Tommy thought he heard noise coming from the hallway and cocked an ear. When he didn’t hear anything again he turned his attention back to the screen.

Mrs. McClaskey went back into her place.