Sam noticed them from the street. And as they walked into the building the rest of his family saw them and fell immediately silent. Three words written a foot high in black ink: FUCK THIS PLACE.
Everyone but Sam knew exactly who had written them and why, but Sam with his young tender skin, pale like the flesh of a fat white onion, had a young tender mind to match. And he had to ask, “What is that?” And he was embarrassed he had to ask.
Mom stuck her hand over his eyes and just said, “go to bed.”
“But it’s not even dinner yet!”
“Then go read a book.”
Mom gave Sam the key and he walked upstairs to Number 27 and went inside and into his bedroom where his book was sitting open upside down on his nightstand and before he could even reach for it a vague understanding of the words on the wall struck him in the back of the head and he sunk to the foot of his bed.
He’d heard the word “Fuck.” He knew that word. He knew it could make his mom cry if it was said before the right words. And he had heard Mom and Dad and Ben talking about Mr. Trimple in the apartment below them and their voices were always quiet like movie theater voices when they talked about him. Mr. Trimple was an old old old man and most nights Sam would be kept up by the sound of Trimple’s trumpet playing sad sad sad songs with such precision, such prowess, such feeling. Sam didn’t mind being kept up. He hated going to bed and he really liked the sound of it and Mr. Trimple always said he’d like to teach him but he “just didn’t have the damn patience, Samboy.”
And he suddenly understood that if Mr. Trimple were alive, he’d be playing those sad sad sad songs that very moment but there were no sounds at all. To make double sure Sam ran to his window and stuck his nose out and sniffed a hard sniff. At dinner time, as Mr. Trimple ate his steak for one, he’d roast almonds on the range, and the smell would always make Sam want to skip dinner and go straight to dessert. But there was no smell of roasted almonds. There was no trumpet.
Now Sam wondered what his family was doing exactly. Were they calling the police? His mom loved to call the police, did it any time the ninth graders were hanging out in the alley and Ben would get so embarrassed because he had to see those kids in school, but they never beat him up or anything.
Would his mom make him dress for dinner tonight? “Dress for dinner!” She’d always yell ten minutes before dinner was ready. She wouldn’t let him eat in a t-shirt and shorts. He had to wear a button-down and slacks and definitely no baseball cap and if there was company, a tie, and she always hit him when he spilled on his dinner clothes. There was a certain incongruity in it that Sam could never figure out. He spilled on his t-shirts all the time and nobody cared.
He heard the door open and his family talking and he quickly shut the window and ran to his bed and opened his book. Mom poked her head in. “Dress for dinner, okay?” Fuck!
He dressed and came out to the kitchen and there were no places set.
“Sam?” They were in the entry. They were in going out clothes; Mom in her viscose skirt. She took Sam’s hand and led him out the door. “We’re going out tonight.”
Sam loved loved loved going out but this time was different. Sam sat quietly at the Broadway Diner and ate his food as his family talked.
“Consider his poor family!”
“He had no family, I think that was the problem.”
“Life’s ephemeral. Remember that. Seriously remember that.”
“He was 86.”
“Still.”
“The summation of our less tragic failures; that’s all life is. I’m just glad I have you lot. But even then, nothing’s watertight. A little tragedy always seeps in there.”
Verses Versus Verses 