You never know
The couple who live across the hall from me have split up. "Split" is putting it mildly. Apparently, the husband took a razor to his wrists unsuccessfully around Thanksgiving. I was out of town when the bloody scene took place. I didn't learn about it until a couple weeks later when I heard unfamiliar voices in the hall and popped my head out to see two policemen waiting for the poor bastard to pack his bags.
I felt bad for the guy. I didn't know either of them very well, only to say "hello" in passing, but when I did see them, they were usually together and seemed happy. The husband, a taxi driver, had given me a ride to the airport when I went to Las Vegas last year. It was the first time I had ever really spoken to him at any length. He seemed nice enough, although he couldn't help expressing some dissatisfaction with living in the United States (he and his wife had moved here from Poland several years ago). He was driving a taxi, he explained, because a co-worker screwed him at his previous job (I don't know what that job was, but I had occasionally seen him on the bus from New York late at night--I also heard him, like clockwork, climbing the stairs to his apartment when he got home from work). Besides this conversation, there were no other signs that trouble was in the works. Unless it only happened when I wasn't at home, I can honestly say I had never heard them fighting in their apartment (it's sad to say, but they've probably heard more noise coming from my apartment).
Well, there was another sign. One morning, a couple months prior to the split up, the husband flipped his lid. A single mother who lives in the apartment below makes quite a racket getting her young daughter off to school each morning. The mother's screaming can be heard throughout the building. I really feel sorry for the kid. She really drew the short straw when she got that lunatic for a mother. Anyway, they were going at it as usual when the husband burst out of his apartment to shout, "Shut up, you stupid bitch!" Not the most polite thing you can say to a neighbor, but things were noticeably quieter for the next several days.
That was probably a sign that things were gradually becoming unraveled. Last night I saw the inevitable letter hanging from the lobby mailbox with the note "Return to sender. M. B. no longer lives at this address" scrawled across it.
The neighbor who filled me in on what had happened on Thanksgiving said alcohol was involved. Ah.
I felt bad for the guy. I didn't know either of them very well, only to say "hello" in passing, but when I did see them, they were usually together and seemed happy. The husband, a taxi driver, had given me a ride to the airport when I went to Las Vegas last year. It was the first time I had ever really spoken to him at any length. He seemed nice enough, although he couldn't help expressing some dissatisfaction with living in the United States (he and his wife had moved here from Poland several years ago). He was driving a taxi, he explained, because a co-worker screwed him at his previous job (I don't know what that job was, but I had occasionally seen him on the bus from New York late at night--I also heard him, like clockwork, climbing the stairs to his apartment when he got home from work). Besides this conversation, there were no other signs that trouble was in the works. Unless it only happened when I wasn't at home, I can honestly say I had never heard them fighting in their apartment (it's sad to say, but they've probably heard more noise coming from my apartment).
Well, there was another sign. One morning, a couple months prior to the split up, the husband flipped his lid. A single mother who lives in the apartment below makes quite a racket getting her young daughter off to school each morning. The mother's screaming can be heard throughout the building. I really feel sorry for the kid. She really drew the short straw when she got that lunatic for a mother. Anyway, they were going at it as usual when the husband burst out of his apartment to shout, "Shut up, you stupid bitch!" Not the most polite thing you can say to a neighbor, but things were noticeably quieter for the next several days.
That was probably a sign that things were gradually becoming unraveled. Last night I saw the inevitable letter hanging from the lobby mailbox with the note "Return to sender. M. B. no longer lives at this address" scrawled across it.
The neighbor who filled me in on what had happened on Thanksgiving said alcohol was involved. Ah.
posted by BayonneMike at 2:40 PM
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