James Siegel - Epitaph

It was Jean. It wasn't Jean.

That was the only way to put it. And for a brief moment, he wasn't exactly sure why. After all, the features seemed just about the same: those thick eyebrows, the hollow cheeks, the drooped lip. Of course, he was dead. No doubt about that. But it was more than that, something else entirely. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen him, walking out of the office with a single box under his arm, why hello there, Jean, and then, like that, he understood. Jean had never been defined by his looks. He'd been defined by his, well… passion. For his work, for his regrettable parade of cases. Remember? Give him a new one and he'd get all lit up with a kind of perverse expectation, the way a house cat gets when its dinner lands by a half-open window. He'd just about lick his lips, Jean would. Then it would be days, weeks, of peek-a-boo, of coming and going, of in and out and where's he gone to, with the occasional glimpse of sly exultation as the case unfolded, as it turned to red, a euphemism Jean had coined due to his peculiar habit of changing files as a case progressed. The first file white, the last red, and the irony, William was convinced, firmly intended. For white was the color of innocence, something his clients could rarely claim, and red the color of penance, something they rarely did. But if his cases weren't exactly admirable, his passion was; at the very least it made him top-shelf at what he did. It made him Jean. Death had robbed him of the only thing that made him recognizable.

His hands, delicate hands for that body, were crossed over his chest like an Indian chief who'd died in battle, the kind that Randolph Scott was always running across and warning stupid white settler number eight million and one to leave alone. It was bad juju to touch a chief on his way to the underworld. Of course, no one ever listened to him, and before you knew it, half the Apache nation was out looking for their scalps. And now William wondered if he'd been just a little stupid himself. He wasn't the only one. As he reached down and took Jean's left hand in his, shaking goodbye for the last time- "Sir! Sir!" William jumped; the sudden sound tore through the silence like a siren. It was the old man; he'd followed him in. "Close the coffin, sir! Close it! We don't open coffins here without permission." His face was flushed; power had been usurped. "Closed coffin. Those were the directions." Where was Randolph Scott when you needed him? "You have to ask permission…" Down went the lid. "Closed," William said. "You have to ask…" the old man muttered, shaking his head and walking back out through the entranceway. William followed him; the old man back on his chair again, rigid and unforgiving. The landlord came over to introduce himself. His name was Rodriguez. Only he wasn't the landlord after all- just the janitor. "I just said I was the fuckin' landlord. The Jews don't respect you unless you own something, know what I mean." Jean had asked him to take care of things if something happened to him. "What exactly did happen to him?" William asked. "Heart attack," Rodriguez said and slapped his chest. "The doctor came too late. He was already gone." "Heart attack," William echoed. Rodriguez hadn't known whom to invite to the funeral. "He didn't have any family, did he?"

"No. He didn't have any family." William thought of that tattered picture; had Jean still kept it with him? held together with Scotch tape, taped and taped so that it became like a laminated ID, which, in a way, it was.

"Just another old guy with nobody," Rodriguez said. "No offense. There's a lot of them in my building-breaks my heart, right. So I put a notice in the paper, okay? I figured if anyone cares, if anyone knows him, maybe they'd come. Like you."

Rodriguez was wearing a yarmulke too, but inside out: Sarah Levy's Bat Mitzvah his head said. He asked how William knew the deceased.

"We used to work together," he said.

"Yeah-I thought it was you."

William must have looked puzzled.

"He's got this picture in his apartment. You, him, and some other guy," he said. "By a door-the Something, Something Detective Agency, right?"

"Three Eyes."

"Right. The Three Eyes Detective Agency. How long ago was that?"

"Long time ago."

"No shit. I bet you could tell some stories, huh?"

"Sure. Lots of stories."

He asked if William wanted it-the picture. There were other things in Jean's apartment too-he could take his pick.

William was going to say no, was going to say that he didn't want anything of Jean's, but then he thought the picture might be nice after all. "Okay," he said.

"Let's go."

"Now?" "Yeah. Now." "What about the burial?" "Cremated," he said. "That's what he wanted." Cremated. Off to some furnace to be burnt up. Like his wife and children went. If they weren't buried, he wouldn't be buried either. He would have wanted it like that, William guessed. Just like that. "So," Rodriguez said. He'd gone back for the half- drained bottle of Mogen David. "What do you say?" "I'll meet you there." "You'll meet me there. Why's that?" "I have something to do." He did have something to do; it had just come to him. "Have it your way. Fifteen-twenty-two Beech Avenue." William said fine. He'd be there in just a little while. When he walked out, the schedule board said Silverman, M.-4:30 P.M. Out with the old, in with the new. The Puerto Ricans were right where he left them, still leaning on wheel-less cars, their radios pouring out the same lyrics, more or less, that they were before. Screw her booty… The boy with the red headband was sharing a tender moment with the smirking girl. He was shoving his hand down her pants, and humping her up and down in time to the music as she whispered into his ear. William stood across the street, staring at them. Do something, he thought. You came back, now do something. Anything. But he didn't of course. Instead he suddenly felt like he did late at night when he'd wake to the sound of the TV he'd forgotten to turn off, something shrill and insistent on, buy this, order that, and him suddenly helpless and immobile, too weary to cross the carpet to turn it off. The TV was simply too far away to do battle with; and now, so were they. The street before him might as well have been a river; he was too old to swim it.

Then the boy saw him. He smiled, and ran his tongue across his girlfriend's ear. They both giggled. William, like something unimportant and ugly, had just been dismissed.

He turned and walked back up the street, his shadow just a stunted half-moon of gray, as if his sudden shame had just made him smaller.

When Rodriguez turned on the light in Jean's apartment, bits of brown scattered in all directions as if a gust of air had just attacked the last leaves of autumn.

"Roaches," Rodriguez said, in a tone that somehow mingled disgust and admiration. "I hate them, but what can you do?"

William had found Rodriguez in his first-floor apartment at 15-22 Beech Avenue, slumped in front of his TV set with the empty bottle of Mogen David in his hand. There'd been no need for Rodriguez to buzz him through-the front door of the apartment building was permanently kicked in, the intercom suspended from the wall by one naked wire. When William knocked on his door, Rodriguez had screamed at him-I'll fix the hot water when I'm good and ready, comprende?

It's William, he'd said, from the funeral, and Rodriguez said come on in.

He was watching a program with the TV set on mute. Didn't matter. Someone had slept with someone's sister's husband; that's what it said right there for everyone to see, right next to this sad and angry-looking threesome. Something like that anyway-William's eyesight not being what it used to be, someone's sister's husband or sister's brother or sister's father. Anyway, someone was guilty of something. The man in the middle of this glum trio casting sullen glances this way and that, looking like he wanted out, wanted to be anywhere but there. William knew the feeling; it came with getting old, it was what getting old did to you, but the only place you could go was no place.