“Yo, Hoffman, come here!”
Lloyd Hoffman,
decent-looking, thirty-six, liked to ride his bike around
the neighborhood with his seven-year-old daughter, Isabella,
Izzy for short. They traveled at night, during the gentle
summer twilight, when lightning bugs flashed and glowed.
Izzy rode a pink bike; Lloyd rode an old mountain bike, something
from his pre-married days.
“Yo, Hoffman!
Over here!” It was Scott Allari and Steve Ferguson. They
stood at the foot of Steve’s driveway, each drinking a can
of beer. Steve lived in the two-story colonial at the end
of the cul-de-sac; Scott lived a few houses over, in his
own colonial. The neighborhood development was fairly new,
about eight years old, and each house looked exactly the
same except for the aluminum siding colors and front yard
décor—an ornate water fountain bloomed on Steve’s lawn;
concrete lions guarded the end of Scott’s driveway.
Lloyd and Izzy
stopped in front of the two men. “What’s up, Hoffman?” Steve
asked. “How’s the wrestling team looking this year?”
“It’s too early
to know,” Lloyd answered, a bit annoyed. “We don’t start
until December.”
Steve nodded
like he’d never realized the wrestling team didn’t start
for another few months, but of course he did. He wore an
orange polo shirt, khaki shorts, and old man slippers. Scott
was dressed in a similar outfit, but he wore Yankees flip-flops.
They both had a buzz on. Izzy took off on her bike, circling
the cul-de-sac.
Steve and Scott
eyed each other and then smirked, silently sharing some mean
secret, an opening to one of their things. When these two got together, they turned into fraternity
brothers, ridiculing anyone who was in their immediate vicinity
and all was fair game: jobs, wives, kids, houses.
“So, your wife,
Lloyd,” Steve said, shaking his head and shrugging. Scott
clucked his tongue and bent down to wipe something off the
left Yankees flip-flop.
Lloyd glared
at them.
Steve let out
a deep, exaggerated breath. “You know what I’m gonna say.”
Lloyd’s heart
raced with fury yet he said nothing.
Steve rocked
back and forth on his heels. “Don’t worry, Hoffman. We’ll
keep it quiet.”
Lloyd turned
away, watching Izzy circle the cul-de-sac. Finally, he looked
back at them. “How do you know?”
Steve and Scott
eyed each other, and then stared at Lloyd. “We’re cops, dude,” Steve
explained. “We know all.”
After Lloyd
put the bikes in the garage, he told Izzy to go inside the
house. It was her bath time and his wife, Corrine, was supposed
to help her. Corrine, at the moment, was probably reclined
on their bed, watching television, her smooth tanned legs
stretched over the bedspread, her toes perfectly manicured
and painted red. Lately, Izzy took her baths in Lloyd and
Corrine’s bathroom because she refused to enter the hall
bathroom after she’d seen a thick brown spider crawl from
behind the toilet a few weeks earlier.
Lloyd stood
in front of his house, watching for the bathroom light to
go on, and after it did, he closed the garage door, walked
into the backyard, and lit his nightly cigarette. “Fucking
police,” he muttered, thinking about Steve and Scott. There
were five cops in his neighborhood: two were state troopers;
one worked in Linden; and the last two, Steve and Scott,
worked for the township. Lloyd wasn’t a cop; he was a high
school math teacher and wrestling coach. He assisted in coaching
other sports during the year—cross country in the fall,
baseball in the spring—but wrestling was his crown
jewel. Lloyd had brought the team to the state championship
six years out of eight, winning twice. He had a Masters in
education and his ambition was to be head sports director
of the entire school district. Charlie Faber was due for
retirement in a year and, according to the superintendent,
Lloyd was a top candidate for the position.
As for his
wife, Lloyd knew the guy’s name. He had known since the spring.
When he had confronted Corrine, she had sobbed and promised
never to see him again.
But now, it
appeared, she had lied.
For all of
July and half of August, Lloyd taught summer school. The
hours weren’t bad: nine in the morning until about one in
the afternoon. The money was decent, too. The kids who attended
were the typical summer-school stereotypes—the spacers,
the delinquents, the lazy—most of them not yet sixteen,
which was New Jersey’s legal age to drop out. Lloyd’s most
interesting student was Alex Santillanas, a freshman who
had failed English, Algebra I, and PE. “I did pass my electives,
Computers and Spanish I,” he had explained the first day.
Alex was almost
fifteen and pretty good-looking, although he had no girlfriends
that he spoke of. Prior to summer school, Lloyd had never
met the kid because, during the school year, he taught the
upper grades, and honors at that, so he never came in contact
with a boy like Alex. Alex was originally from Perth Amboy,
but a year earlier, he and his mother had moved down to Ocean
County so they could share a house with her sister and her
husband. Alex also had a brother who had recently joined
them. He never referred to his brother by name, just “my
brother.”
“My brother
likes cars. You should see his ride.”
“My brother
goes into New York a lot. He got friends up there.”
“My brother
has pit bulls. He had five, now he has four.”
The township
in which Lloyd lived and taught was a mostly middle to upper
class area—a good place to bring up kids. The only
bad spot was on the south end of Keystone Road where low-income
families resided in red brick apartments, broken-down townhomes,
or old 1970s ranch-style homes—Alex lived in a house
there. The entire section was called Pine Meadows, which
the cops and teachers privately referred to as Crime
Meadows.
“Pit bulls,
huh?” Lloyd asked. Alex had taken a liking to Lloyd immediately.
That first day, after spending the entire morning together
in class, Alex ate lunch with Lloyd in the cafeteria. (The
faculty room was closed for summer cleaning.) They didn’t
sit together at first, but after chatting with some friends,
Alex wandered over to Lloyd in a slow, lazy stroll—the
teenager’s long jeans shorts hanging past his knees, his
oversized white t-shirt clean and bright—and slid into
the seat across from his teacher. Lloyd had the sports section
of the New York Post open before him, and he was eating a ham and cheese
sandwich bought from the local convenience store.
“Your wife
don’t make you lunch?” Alex had asked.
“No.”
“My brother’s
girlfriend makes him lunch before he goes to work.”
“Yeah?”
The second
day they talked sports. “My brother likes the Mets. He’s
gonna take me to Shea this summer.”
“Cool. Take
pictures.”
The third day
he brought up his brother’s pit bulls and pulled out a photo
of two of them. “That’s Rosa—he breeds her. The other
one is Elvira. She was a great fighter, but someone stole
her.”
This got Lloyd’s
attention. “He fights them?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah,
but someone took Elvira. We’ll find her, though. My brother’s
not worried.”
A shudder went
through Lloyd. He was an experienced educator who knew that
sometimes it was best to play stupid when certain information
came before him. Yet curiosity got the best of Lloyd so he
pressed on: “Where does he fight them?”
Alex shrugged. “Everywhere.
Philly, New York. Asbury Park. Long Branch. Newark.”
Lloyd was taken
aback. “Huh,” was all that he managed to say.
That same afternoon,
no one came to pick Alex up from school.
“Where’s your
ride?” Lloyd asked as he headed to his car.
Alex shrugged. “My
aunt is supposed to come, but she probably forgot.”
“Did you call
her?”
Alex lifted
up his cell phone and nodded. “Voicemail.”
The parking
lot was deserted except for a couple of secretaries’ cars.
Lloyd was used to driving students home because, during every
sports season, there were usually one or two kids whose parents
never bothered to pick them up after practice or a game.
Teachers were under strict rules to never drive a student
home, but when it came to coaches, when it was after six
or seven or sometimes eight at night, when there was no principal
to bring the problem to, when the student’s parents had been
phoned and there was no answer, when the evening was cold
and the coaches wanted to call it a night, their last resort
was to drive the kid home. “Are you sure no one is coming
to pick you up?” Lloyd would ask the wrestlers before he
offered the ride. And they usually shrugged dumbly and mumbled, “I
don’t know.”
Once, Kelly
Blunt, a brand new gym teacher and tennis coach, ran into
this problem with her star tennis player, a quiet junior
who lived in Crime Meadows with
her alcoholic mom—a woman who spent her evenings at
Shore Lanes. “Just take her home,” Coach Peters, the boys’ tennis
coach, advised. “Her mother’s probably at the bowling alley,
drinking beer and throwing gutter balls.”
“I can’t drive
her home,” Kelly insisted. “It’s against the law.”
Coach Peters,
a man with no patience for pious rule-following teachers
like Kelly Blunt, said, “Whatever,” and left. Feeling bad,
Lloyd stood with her for a while, shivering in front of the
school doors, watching the empty parking lot. The tennis
star sat off the side, staring out into the night.
Although he
never liked to give rides to females, Lloyd offered to drive
the girl home, but Kelly Blunt declined. “I got this,” she
said. Finally, Kelly announced she was calling the police.
Lloyd tried to talk her out of it but Kelly was adamant.
When the police car showed up, the cop was completely irritated. “Are
you fucking kidding?” he muttered to Lloyd. In the end, the
tennis star was so embarrassed, she quit the next day, mid-season.
So now that
Lloyd was standing in the July heat, his button-down shirt
sticking tightly to his chest, the black tar of the parking
lot glistening in the sun, he offered Alex a ride home. In
the car, Alex spoke about heading into the city that upcoming
weekend, despite the predicted heat wave.
“It’s going
to be murderous up there. I hate the city when it’s this
hot,” Lloyd said. “What are you going to do?”
Alex agreed
but declared it wouldn’t be that bad. “The heat don’t bother
my brother or me. We’re going to the Bronx. My brother has
some business to take care of.”
“I see,” said
Lloyd, happy to reach Alex’s house in Crime Meadows.
Alex lived in an old blue ranch with a front yard covered
in mostly dusty dirt. Four cars sat in the driveway. Alex
thanked his teacher for the ride.
In the evening,
as Lloyd smoked his nightly cigarette, he pondered what to
do about the pit bull information. He was vaguely aware of
the training practices of dog fighters and knew it was not
only illegal but also animal abuse. He had once read that
the dogs were starved before a fight so they would fight
ferociously when let into the pit. The dogs were beaten and
tortured to toughen them up; bait animals were used to train
them to kill; when a dog had its jaw on something or someone,
the only way to undo its clasp was to stick a pipe or stick
up its anal passage.
Lloyd contemplated
this as he smoked his cigarette in his backyard, standing
on his green grass, a wooden jungle gym behind him, surrounded
by colorful impatiens and petunias his wife had planted (in
flower beds he had built with bricks.) He knew the men who
fought and bet on pit bulls were dangerous men, men who followed
codes.
Lloyd wanted
another cigarette, but he would not allow himself one. He
sat on the deck chair and finally concluded the worst thing
he could do was turn Alex Santillanas’ brother in. Because
one night then, when the time was right, a shiny low rider
with glistening hub caps and darkened windows would roll
down his street, and a fire bomb would sail into the air,
landing on his front lawn or his car or perhaps even his
house. Perhaps this image was fed by TV, an exaggerated vision,
but it still seemed possible. Lloyd decided the last thing
he would do was turn in Alex Santillanas’ brother.
Still, now
that Corrine was seeing her lover again, Lloyd was infuriated
and thought of nothing but Alex Santillanas’ brother. He
walked over to the flower beds and kicked the bricks—pain
shot through his foot as he watched three of them topple
over.
How would Alex’s
brother handle a situation like this? Would he jump his wife’s
lover and beat the shit out of him? Would he slap his wife
around? Would he change the locks, toss her stuff out the
windows, and leave her on the front lawn screaming for forgiveness?
Would he even bother to forgive her?
After a while,
Lloyd calmed down and placed the bricks back into their spot.
“Yo, Mr. H!” Alex
said the next day in the cafeteria. “Your wife still ain’t
fixing you lunch?”
Lloyd was eating
an egg salad sandwich from the convenience store. Alex had
nothing to eat and no money, so Lloyd gave him half of his
sandwich.
“Could you
drive me home today?” Alex asked.
Lloyd nodded
but said, “I just have to make a stop, okay?”
“Sure, no problem,
Mr. H.”
The man Corrine
was screwing lived in a high-end condominium complex, not
far from the high school, but in the next county. The condos
were fairly new, the lawns manicured to perfection, the tenants
white and wealthy. Corrine’s metallic tan-colored SUV sat
parked in front of the man’s condo. Lloyd’s car, a bland
gray sedan, so generic-looking he could never find it when
he came out of the supermarket, sat nearby, between two other
sedans. It was a hot afternoon, eighty-eight degrees, but
Lloyd turned off the engine, and Alex and he rolled down
the windows. A bumble bee buzzed clumsily for a moment and
then flew off.
“What’s going
on, Mr. H?” Alex asked. Originally, Lloyd planned to drive
Alex home first, but there would be no time to visit his
wife and pick up his daughter from day camp. After a long
moment, Lloyd answered his student. “I’m thinking of buying
a condo, Alex.” He pointed to the man’s condo. “That one.”
Alex stared
at it and then observed there was no For Sale sign present. “How do you know it’s for sale, Mr.
H?”
Lloyd kept
his eye on the front door and the long window next to it,
half-expecting Corrine to appear, although he knew it was
too early. She worked for an allergist and her lunch hour
ran from one to two. It was one-thirty.
“You okay,
Mr. H?”
Anger rolled
up and down Lloyd’s body, but he kept himself composed. He
thought of how his wife had sat on their bed four months
ago, crying, begging Lloyd for forgiveness. He thought of
how she had promised never to see him again.
Now Lloyd’s
heart hurt. Why would she do this a second time?
“Mr. H?”
Lloyd sighed
and started the car. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
That evening,
while Corrine was supposedly at her Zumba class, Lloyd made
hotdogs for dinner and then went riding with Izzy, avoiding
the cul-du-sac. When they returned to the house, Corrine
was still not home, so he sat on the bed in his bedroom while
Izzy took a bath. After the bath, teeth and hair brushing,
and a story, there was still no sign of Corrine, even though
her class only ran an hour. When his daughter fell asleep,
he stepped into the backyard for his nightly cigarette, his
stomach sick and his anger flaring, causing him to light
up another after the first was finished. He kicked the bricks
again—this time two fell into a batch of impatiens
and broke their stems. Then he heard Corrine’s car pull into
the driveway. He waited a few minutes before going inside
and upstairs, only to find she was in the shower. He went
downstairs, taking a seat on the family room couch. He turned
on the Mets’ game and listened to Corrine move about above.
Anxiety gripped his insides. He waited for her to come down
to apologize for her lateness and begin her excuse. Oh,
some of the girls and I stood around talking. You know how
we get.
But she never
came downstairs. She just went to bed.
The next afternoon,
with Alex in the car, Lloyd parked in front of the condo
again.
“So how do
you know it’s for sale, Mr. H?”
“I just know
things. It will be for sale soon.”
Lloyd knew
it was wrong to bring Alex to this spot again, but somewhere
in his core, he liked the idea of having a kid like Alex,
a kid from Perth Amboy, a kid with a brother who had friends
in the Bronx, in his car.
Wednesdays
were Corrine’s day off from work, so Lloyd and Alex didn’t
drive by the condo—he just took the kid home. Lloyd
expected his wife to be in the house, but she wasn’t. There
was a message from her on the machine: Michelle, a friend
from work, had an emergency. Could he pick Izzy up from camp?
Bye, I love you.
Lloyd drove
to the local park to fetch his daughter, rage swirling round
and round, boiling his blood, causing a dull headache.
Friday, when
he dropped Alex in front of his house, Lloyd told him to
have a nice time in New York.
Alex grinned. “I
love when we kick it in New York!”
Corrine did
not return from work that evening. Again, she left a message:
her boss needed her to pick up supplies, and then she was
off to Zumba class. Please give Izzy dinner, but please don’t
make it hotdogs.
Lloyd made
hotdogs. Later, Scott and Steve stood outside in their polo
shirts and shorts drinking beer. Lloyd tried to avoid riding
near them, but Izzy liked riding in circles in the cul-de-sac. “What’s
up, Hoffman?” Steve said. “How’s the wife?”
Scott asked, “Who’s
the kid you drive home every day to Crime Meadows?”
“Just a kid
without a ride,” Lloyd said.
Scott laughed
and mimicked him. “Just a kid without a ride.”
Lloyd ordered
his daughter to follow him out of the cul-de-sac.
On Monday,
while they sat in front of the condo, Alex told Lloyd about
his trip to the Bronx. At lunch, he had been excited because
his brother had gotten Elvira back. Now, in the car, Alex
explained how the dog had been returned, or, as he put it, rescued. “We
hung out all day at my brother’s friend’s apartment in the
Bronx. He lives near a basketball court and we played ball.
Then we cooked out—because my brother’s friend lives
near a city park—and we had burgers and chicken and
one of the girls made some Spanish rice. It was cool. And
then, while we were up in the apartment watching TV, my brother
says it’s time to go, so we go. But first, we drove a few
blocks and parked outside this guy’s house. I waited in the
car with some other dude while my brother and his friend
went around back. A little while later, they had Elvira.
She sat with her head on my lap the entire ride home. She
missed me.”
Lloyd stared
at the front door of the condo and the long window next to
it—he thought he’d seen his wife’s figure move past
it. Sweat dripped from his temples. His head banged with
a vicious headache. It was ninety-one degrees.
After a moment,
Lloyd looked at Alex. “How’d he get the dog back so easily?”
Alex shrugged. “You
know.”
Lloyd was suddenly
interested. “No, I don’t. Tell me.”
Alex shrugged
in that lazy way of his and nodded. “My brother had to tape
the guy up, that’s all. He was sleeping and they snuck in
and taped him with duck tape. Don’t worry, Mr. H. My brother
didn’t kill him. The guy’s got a girlfriend and his own dudes.
Somebody probably found him an hour later.”
Lloyd stared
at the kid. “Didn’t the guy call the police?”
Alex chuckled. “That
dude won’t never call the police. That’s just dumb.”
Lloyd turned
his gaze to the condo. “How’s Elvira now?”
“She’s real
good, Mr. H. She hangs with me all the time. My brother lets
me take her out for walks. He knows me and Elvira got a good
relationship. She listens to me the best, you know.”
For dinner,
Lloyd and Izzy ate hotdogs and salad, alone. Corrine’s lover
was a young, single doctor who worked nights at the local
emergency room, which is why she probably saw him during
the day on her lunch hour or on Zumba night, which must be
his evening off.
Afterwards,
while Lloyd pulled the bikes out of the garage, Steve Ferguson
and Scott Allari strolled by with beers in hand. “Hey, Hoffman!” Scott
called out. Both men approached Lloyd. “Everything okay?” Steve
asked. “I saw you over in Crime Meadows today.”
Lloyd bent
down to check the chain on his bike. “Oh, yeah?”
Izzy hopped
on her bike.
Steve chuckled. “You
know, Hoffman, that kid you’re driving around has an interesting
family.”
“La Familia
Santillanas,” Scott said.
Lloyd glared
at both men. These were guys who had begun their police careers
out of high school. They weren’t liked by the new police
chief—Lloyd had heard this inside information somewhere—but
both had too many years in to be fired.
Lloyd said, “Adios,
gentlemen,” got on his bike and rode off with his daughter.
So why didn’t
he just leave his wife? Lloyd turned this question round
and round in his head as he smoked his nightly cigarette.
People left their wives and husbands all the time, and for
lesser reasons. What was stopping him? He thought of Corrine
having sex with her doctor lover and anger spiked in him
like nails—he lit another cigarette with the first
one. So why didn’t he leave her? He thought about those jerk
cops and how they knew about his wife’s indiscretions and
Lloyd’s anger bubbled into a gruesome rage.
Suddenly, in
the last bit of light, a small shadow moved in the grass—a
rabbit. Lloyd watched it, annoyed at it, what the hell was
it doing? He stood up, picked up one of the heavy bricks
that lined his wife’s flower beds, and hurled it at the animal.
He missed.
The rabbit, shocked, hopped into the dark shadows of the
backyard.
Guilt overcame
him. Why was he trying to hurt a rabbit?
Shit. Why didn’t
he just leave her?
The first time
Corrine cheated with her doctor lover, Lloyd had consulted
a lawyer and he learned New Jersey had a funny law about
divorce: it didn’t matter who was unfaithful. It didn’t matter
if she was sneaking around, telling lies, acting like a slut—all
of this was dismissible. At the end of the day, she was still
a decent mother; no court would take Izzy away from her mom.
Lloyd would have to move out of the house. Lloyd would have
to live in some shit apartment and still pay half the mortgage
on a house he didn’t live in anymore. Lloyd would get alternate
weekends with his daughter.
Still, these
weren’t the real reasons Lloyd didn’t leave Corrine. Marriage
was a funny thing—it wasn’t like a high school romance
or even a college relationship. Its grip was iron tight:
the history, the emotions, the intertwining of one’s own
soul. And to Lloyd, right now, his marriage was like watching
someone fight cancer: sad, painful, exhausting, but with
glimmers of hope—if he could just get through this
bad spot, then remission would begin, wouldn’t it?
Lloyd finished
his second cigarette. He was still angry. Piss fucking angry.
Who was this asshole doctor lover? What kind of guy screws
around with a woman who has a husband and daughter? A piece
of shit man.
Visions of
Alex’s brother and the taped up Bronx guy bounced in his
head.
It was then,
after the third cigarette, Lloyd calmed himself down, focusing
on the problem at hand—there needed to be a solution.
Finally, he decided to try another tactic and see where it
went. He would tell Alex about the information he had learned—that
the cops were on to his brother. Hell, a man like Alex’s
brother might be grateful for the warning and perhaps might
be willing to reciprocate.
The next afternoon,
one week left of summer school, Lloyd said, “I think the
cops might be watching your brother, Alex.” A tinge of guilt
went through him, but by now, it didn’t matter.
They were sitting
in the car, looking at the condo. The temperature was ninety-five
and the oppressive clammy heat hung unmercifully in the air.
“Yeah, Mr.
H? How do you know?”
Lloyd sipped
from a water bottle and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I
know like I know this condo is going to be for sale.”
On Wednesday,
with the temperature climbing to ninety-nine, Lloyd and Alex
watched the condo again, drinking water and patting their
faces with napkins. Suddenly the doctor emerged from the
condo alone. He wore workout clothes as if he were heading
to the gym. His silver BMW sat in front of Lloyd’s gray sedan.
The doctor noticed Lloyd and Alex sitting in the car and
smiled. “How’s it going, guys!” he called. He got into his
BMW and drove away. Lloyd stared at Corrine’s metallic tan-colored
SUV parked to the side. She was probably lying in his bed,
the sheets twisted around her legs, her perfectly manicured
toes gleaming red. He remembered how she used to lay in bed
that way after they’d had sex.
Before letting
Alex out in front of his house, the kid asked if that man
in the BMW was a friend of Lloyd’s.
“No, Alex,
that man is not a friend of mine. I would like him to move
away.” Lloyd stared straight ahead and did something he never
should have done, but when he looked back upon it months
later, during wrestling season, when they were on their way
to the Championship, it was pretty much the best thing he
could have done.
Lloyd said
to Alex, “That man is not a friend because my wife is betraying
me with him.”
“She’s fucking
him?”
The words were
severe and they hurt. “Yeah, I guess that’s how you’d say
it.” He turned to Alex and looked him in the eye. “I’d appreciate
it you kept this between us.”
“No problem,
Mr. H.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, and Mr.
H?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for
the heads up about the cops. My brother appreciated the information.”
Lloyd felt
guilty about this transaction, but when he picked Izzy up
at the park, her mother off with Michelle on another “emergency,” he
didn’t feel so bad not reporting Elvira to the authorities.
Chances were he saved the dog’s life. Chances were, if the
authorities came in and arrested Alex’s brother, all the
dogs, including Elvira, would’ve been put down.
Underneath
the headline, Heat Wave Breaks! it made the front of the Sunday paper: Emergency
Room Doctor Lands in Emergency Room from Pit Bull Attack.
It wasn’t bad.
The doctor lived. He didn’t end up in a coma or need surgery,
just some stitches on his left shoulder and right leg. The
police had no suspects, no witnesses, no DNA. The attack
occurred inside the condo during the early dark hours of
the morning, after the doctor had returned from his shift.
As the doctor opened his door, two men with a pit bull appeared
and forced their way in, sicing the dog on him. The men took
fifty dollars in cash and left. The entire assault occurred
in five minutes. “I didn’t hear a thing,” said the doctor’s
neighbor. “I take Ambien, you see.” The neighbors on the
other side were away for the night.
The doctor,
who could not give a good description of the assailants because
they were wearing ski masks, longs sleeve shirts and jeans,
could only recognize the pit bull’s name. “The victim said
the men referred to the dog as Lila, but he couldn’t be sure.” At
the end of the article, a phone number was printed for readers
to call with any leads.
Lloyd watched
his wife’s face as she read the article. He placed it in
front of her, over her morning coffee and granola. “Take
a look at this,” he said.
After glancing
at the paper, she pushed it aside and said, “So?”
Lloyd pushed
it back. “Isn’t this your man?”
Corrine stared
at him and then down at the article. Her mouth twitched slightly
as she tried to keep her expression motionless. “I don’t
know him,” she said after a while.
Lloyd let out
a deep, angry breath. “You’re lying.”
Corrine kept
her head down. “I don’t know him.”
Lloyd could
feel his chest hurt—anger swelled inside. “You’re lying.
His wife was
quiet. Then she said, “Okay, I’ll stop.” Suddenly she began
to cry and beg for forgiveness. “I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry.
I don’t know what got into me…” He let her go on and on,
listening to her as she talked about her loneliness and the
difficulties of growing old as a woman, and how she probably
needed some counseling. Would it be okay if she found a good
therapist, perhaps he would attend some sessions with her?
She really wanted to save the marriage, that it was Lloyd
she truly loved, and that many people survived affairs. “I
won’t see him ever again, I promise.”
Lloyd wasn’t
sure he believed all of this because he had heard it the
last time, but he was willing to give her another chance,
despite how angry he was. After a while, after her weeping
subsided, he gently took Corrine’s hand in his. She smiled
at him. “I love you, baby.” Lloyd returned the smile and
then, he squeezed her hand hard, envisioning it was a vice.
She winced in pain but did not cry out. After a moment, he
let go. “Good, then it’s all settled.”
She said, “Yes.”
After a while,
he stood up, snatched the paper and shoved it in the garbage.
“Hoffman!” Steve
shouted to Lloyd as he and Izzy made their way around the
cul-de-sac. Lloyd rode over to Steve and Scott while his
daughter circled around.
“How’s the
wife?” Steve asked.
“She’s fine,” Lloyd
answered.
“The world
is full of coincidences, isn’t it, Hoffman?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Amazing,” Steve
said.
Steve glanced
at Scott who said, “We do know all, but things don’t always
connect for us.”
“Well,” Scott
added, “they connect for us but not for, let’s say, a district attorney.”
Izzy had finished
circling and asked her father if they could go. Lloyd said
yes and turned to the men. “That’s too bad, when things don’t
connect.” Then he waved and wished them a good night.
“How’s what’s-her-name?” Lloyd
asked Alex when he stopped by his classroom in September.
“She’s good,
Mr. H.” He explained that his brother had retired Elvira. “She
got hurt last weekend in Philly and she won’t be able to
fight no more. So he let me have her. He said she did good,
but he has other dogs now. Those dogs don’t live with me.”
“No?”
“No. My brother
and the dogs moved to a better location. The new place has
more room for them to run around, you know?”
“Dogs need
a big backyard.”
“Yeah. Oh,
yeah—we changed her name. She ain’t Elvira anymore.”
“What’s her
name?”
Alex shrugged. “It
don’t matter.”
Lloyd nodded.
A moment later, he asked Alex if he would like to wrestle. “You
know I coach the wrestling team. We’ve won a few championships.”
Alex scuffed
his foot along the floor. “No offense, but I ain’t much into
team sports, Mr. H. I don’t like too many commitments, you
know?”
Lloyd smiled. “Sure.
No offense taken.”
“But I appreciate
your offer.” Alex paused for a moment, pondering a thought,
and then said, “By the way—I think that condo is for
sale now, officially. My brother says there’s a sign in front
of it.”
Lloyd wasn’t
expecting this. “Really?”
“I guess the
guy found another place to live.”
“Yeah,” Lloyd
said, amazed.
Alex shrugged,
turned, and waved. “See ya, Mr. H.” And in that slow, lazy
way of his, with his oversized white t-shirt and long jeans
shorts hanging on his frame, slipped out of the classroom.
