LATER THAT DAY AN ORANGE BUS APPROACHED the corner of Willa Street and Barnum Avenue, on the same side of the street as the Silver Streak. Julie stepped off the bus and squinted at the slice of pinkish sun about to set into the warm July night. While she waited for the light to turn green, a breeze blowing off the sound flapped her full skirt. With one hand she held the hem against her knees, so it would not work its way up her thighs, and when she stooped over, the wide patent leather belt around her waist dug into a midriff thickened with middle age. She had bought the beige silky rayon outfit from Goodwill, where the saleslady, in a nearly identical dress, had told Julie it accentuated her small bust line. In the fitting room’s full-length mirror, her eyes were drawn to the shadow beginning to form beneath her jaw line, so she missed how the dress flared out at the hips. She ran her hands over her cheeks. She was still pretty, but because of her age, more times than not, only annoying men with large bellies asked her to dinner. She always refused.
It normally took five minutes to walk from the bus stop to Jack’s house, but Julie’s bad leg forced her to walk slowly. On a dare she’d once walked blindfolded and backward from St. Patrick’s on the corner, landing right at her front door. Blindfolded or not, Willa Street constantly drew Julie back. Here, her grandparents had raised her mom. Here, her mom had returned when pregnant with Julie’s older brother Jack, and again a dozen years later, after she’d divorced their dad.
Julie climbed the stairs to a warped stoop, faced a wooden storm door with half its screen in tatters and knocked lightly. The door creaked open, and she pushed it wide, a spider’s silk snagging her face and the stench of rotting garbage and stale cigarette smoke making her gag.
“Jack, you home?”
Julie peered into a small darkened hallway. Straight ahead, an open door showed the kitchen, its sixty-watt bulb reflecting off a pile of dirty dishes. To the right, a short landing led to a flight of stairs.
“Jack? Where are you?” Julie ventured the two steps to the landing, and with a diffuse shaft of light piercing the small, stained-glass window behind her, she cautiously followed the varnished hand rail until the shape of a body sitting on the top stair stopped her. Tremulously, she whispered, “Jack, that you?”
In jockey shorts, his bearded chin resting on his bare chest, Jack sat with his arms folded across his thin, naked thighs.
“Jack, you okay?” she asked gently.
“Julie?”
“Yeah, what’re you doin’,” she asked, her voice tentative.
“Go ’way, don’t bother me!”
In the shadowed stairwell his face appeared like a dark gray blot, but she knew her brother’s throaty voice.
“Get outta here. Don’t come any closer!” Jack barked, as Julie put her foot on the next step.
“Jack, what’s the matter?”
“Nothin’. I got business to do.”
“Business? What business?” Jack hadn’t worked in months. Not since Anna had left with their daughter.
“Sheriff came. Couple days ago. Tacked papers to the door. Did you know that Anna wants a divorce? Irreconcilable differences. All I did was call her to say three solitary words: ‘Will is dead!’ Julie, he ain’t never coming back.”
“I know, Jack, let him go. It’s been ten years. Jack, she’s a good woman, she loves you.”
“Just go away, I gotta take care of business.”
The stairwell was quiet. Julie looked it up and down like a mouse looking for a place to hide. She broke the silence. “So why are you sittin’ in the dark?”
Jack ran his hands through his graying hair. “Dark’s natural. It’s always dark, otherwise ya wouldn’t need light. Anyway it helps me think things out.”
“Jack, you’re not making sense. What’s the matter? What things?” Slowly moving closer, Julie was hit by the stench of whiskey.
“Nobody’s business, for Christ’s sake.”
“How can I help?”
“Can’t, unless you want to pull the trigger!”
Julie saw a flash of silver as Jack quickly lifted a small revolver pressing the barrel hard into his temple. Julie clutched the handrail, fell a step back, and struggled to catch her breath.
“What the Christ you goin’ to do with that?”
Jack’s thumb rubbed the treads on the hammer pulled halfway back. “I’m squeezin’ it and... Whammo!”