Gerald sat there, listening to the banging on his door. The cops wanted to ask if he had heard anything - which he had - but he’d rather not get up from where he was sitting.
He’d met the couple a few months before. Well, they hadn’t really met but he’d made eye contact with them a few times. He discussed their arrival with Annie his cat that day they arrived as he scooped her food out for her, “odd folk they are - and awfully young to be moving into an apartment complex of old folk.” The first months were great, for them at least, Gerald had been slipping at calling the Jeopardy answers for a month or two and his hands were getting too shaky to cut out cat food coupons from the paper, so for him they were bad months.
Things started to go bad when the husband started to get lots of packages. Mary, the heifer downstairs, noted it one day as Gerald was walking to the grocery to get cat food, “They’ve been arguing. I thinks it’s about the packages he’s been getting.” When Gerald came back up, he noticed packages by the couple’s door addressed for the husband.
The cops knocked on the door and one of them shouted, “Mr. Arnold? Are you there Mr. Arnold?” Gerald sat in his chair, pet his cat, and kept Jeopardy on mute. Cops had scared him since he was little and he’d rather them not hear Trebek.
Gerald had one contact with the husband before the incident. “You buy that full price?” he asked the husband as the husband picked up a package. The husband nodded a “yes”. “You went full retail, man,” Gerald said smiling, not sure of whether to condescend or to offer advice, “never go full retail.” He smiled at the husband and walked away.
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