CHAPTER 21

Walking into Tina’s place reminded me of how different a single man’s and a single woman’s apartments can be, and it got me thinking about the contrasts between my own place and Jan’s when we first started dating.

On one level, it was a matter of stuff. Scattered about Jan’s place were what could be called collectibles--stuffed animals and dolls, porcelain statuettes, pretty containers for everything--and although there appeared to be a randomness to where everything was, each item seemed to be in the perfect place. The walls and shelves held framed pictures of family and friends, people smiling while on vacation or at special occasions, evidence of a life being lived. The furniture, while not expensive-looking, seemed to belong together, even if they hadn’t been purchased as a set. Things matched--the colors in the throw cushions on her couch blended with the curtains that hung at the windows, and which, in turn, meshed coherently with area rugs. Her plants thrived.

My place more closely resembled a storage unit than an apartment. I’d purchased a few cheap, third-hand pieces of furniture at a Goodwill store and strategically placed them about to provide unobstructed viewing of the television. The centerpiece of the living room, besides the TV, was an old recliner with worn armrests and a somewhat temperamental lever on its right side that sometimes stuck and left the leg rest up and sticking out at a shin-bruising height for days. Personal belongings languished in cardboard boxes, long after I’d moved in, retrieved only when I needed them. The bookshelves, on which books were stacked, not lined up, were three-fourths-inch-by-eight-inch planks of cheap pine resting on cinderblocks. I’d inherited the dirty white aluminum window blinds when I moved in, and who-knows-how-many years of dust stubbornly clung to the slats? The grayish white walls were bare, except for the BankBoston calendar with photos of scenic New England landscapes and the current Red Sox or Bruins season schedules that were attached to the walls using multi-colored push pins. The only plant life was the mold and mildew that had conquered the bathroom years before I had arrived.

It was, therefore, no surprise that when Jan and I found a place and moved in together, the distribution of personal items that followed us to our new apartment was probably ninety-five percent Jan’s and five percent mine, and every new thing we purchased as a couple seemed to replace those few items I had managed to hold onto--even, against my strongest objections, my old recliner.

“Oh, damn, I forgot about her cats. They’re probably starving.” Terri had said once we’d crossed the threshold into Tina’s apartment, bringing my thoughts back to the present. We were greeted by three very loud, hungry, impatient, and demanding cats. “I hope she has cat food left or I’ll have to run out and get some.”

She went off to the kitchen, somehow not tripping over the cats who performed figure eights through her legs as she walked. Her absence allowed me the opportunity to take a private look around the place.

Tina, it seemed, liked purple, and all its various shades, and that color dominated her décor--lilac pillows on the sofa, lavender patterned drapes, the walls a light plum. There were a few thriving houseplants about the place and the room was dominated by frog collectibles. There were frog figurines, frog statuettes, blown-glass frogs, stuffed plush frogs, plastic frogs, frog candle holders, practically all things possibly frog one could imagine.

However, there was a very comfortable-looking, dark brown leather recliner in the living room and on one shelf of a bookcase, filled otherwise with more frogs, was a row of books on motorcycle repair and maintenance and others with titles like Well Made in America: Lessons from Harley-Davidson on Being the Best and The Biker Code: Wisdom For The Road. Maybe Tina liked to kick back in the recliner and read The Harley-Davidson Data Book, but I doubted it. These must have belonged to her husband and she hadn’t been able to part with them.

I sat down on her sofa and noticed a stack of photo albums on the lower shelf of the coffee table. I grabbed them and put them out in front of me. The top album had a clean, white leather cover.

“That’s Tina’s wedding album,” said Terri, who must have found something to feed to the cats and come back, alone, not trailed by the cats, into the living room. “She was so happy and Jimmy was the best thing that ever happened to her. He could handle her, you know?” She sat down on the sofa beside me and opened the album, revealing a close-up photo of a luminescent Tina in a one-tier wedding veil and a beaming Jimmy, his long hair and bushy mustache groomed for the occasion.

“Big guy but gentle. Treated her like a queen. I thought she finally had just what she wanted, what she needed,” Terri said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Jimmy drove a truck for Hunter Oil, you know, making heating oil deliveries to homes and it was around the holidays--their first Christmas being married--he was working long hours. I remember it was a cold winter. They were saving for a house.” Terri’s finger gently traced the outline of the couple’s picture as she talked. “Maybe he was tired, or another car pulled into his lane. No one’s really sure, but he lost control of the truck, crossed the median, and crashed into oncoming traffic. God, why do these things happen to people?”

“I don’t know,” I said, picturing Tina getting the phone call, here, perhaps a decorated Christmas tree in one of the corners, maybe a few wrapped presents already beneath it, frog dolls in red felt wearing white fur trimmed Santa hats scattered about.

“Tina was devastated. I thought--I thought she was going to crack, you know, really crack. She locked herself in here for almost a month, only came out for the funeral. Jimmy was buried the day after Christmas. She wouldn’t return phone calls, open the door to anybody. Then one day she called me, asked me to pick up a bottle of tequila and margarita mix and come over. We took down the tree, packed the ornaments away, cried--lots of crying. She let me wash her hair, like I used to when we were kids. We sat here and got drunk and then went out to some bars and got even drunker. After that it was the same old Tina, only it wasn’t, if you know what I mean.”

One of the cats that had returned from the kitchen picked that moment to spring up from the floor and lightly thud down onto the open album. It leapt from the coffee table onto Terri’s lap and began walking back and forth, rubbing first its left side, turning, and then the right side of its body against Terri. The cat’s tail, sticking straight up and weaving like a cobra, caressed her face with each passing. She gently stroked the animal and it began to purr loudly.

I turned my attention back to the album, turning the pages past more photos of Tina and Jimmy posing alone together until I came to one of the wedding party, bridesmaids lined up to the left of Tina, groomsmen to the right of Jimmy. The women, Terri among them, wore rather ghastly lavender--of course--taffeta V-necked dresses with large puffy sleeves, a clinched middle and a stiff, cascading ruffled skirt that fanned out like a purple inverted open pine cone. The men wore powder-blue tuxedos with dark blue trim on the wide lapels and the outer pant seam, white ruffled shirts and powder-blue ties that matched the tuxes.

“Do you know all these people? Could anyone of them be Puddy Salvatore?” I asked, pointing to the picture.

Terri sat forward, holding the cat in place with her left hand while continuing to stroke its head with her right.

“Let’s see. I know the bridesmaids. That’s Monica Satsburg,” she said, removing her hand from the cat’s head and pointing to the girl on the far left and working her way toward Tina. “And that’s Patti McGriff, and Lori Reynolds, and of course me. The guys I’m not too sure of, they were friends of Jimmy’s. Who is this Puddy Salvatore? You mentioned him before.”

“Just someone who knew Tina and who I’d like to talk to,” I answered, still looking down at the wedding pictures. “Who’s this guy? He looks a little scary.”

I pointed to the man standing closest to Jimmy who was a good head taller than the other groomsmen, thin, with a long nose, small eyes, and a thin mouth. His long hair was pulled back in a pony-tail and a silver skull earring dangled from his left ear. Of all the people in the picture, he was the only one who wasn’t smiling and, instead, was staring at the camera with a bit of a menacing look.

“That’s Ricky, um, Ricky something...I can’t remember his last name. He was best friends with Jimmy. They used to ride in the same motorcycle gang before Jimmy married Tina.”

“Jimmy was in a bike gang?”

“Yeah. She made him drop out. She was afraid he’d get in trouble, end up in jail.”

That explained the motorcycle books.

“Why’d she think that?”

“The usual biker shit--drugs--speed, I think--whores, fights. I know for a fact she wouldn’t tolerate any drugs around the apartment, didn’t like what it did to Jimmy. Wasn’t too fond of Ricky either.”

“And you don’t remember his last name?”

“No, I just remember he was a real asshole, got real drunk at the wedding reception, made loud remarks about Jimmy being pussy-whipped, went around groping all the bridesmaids, even me, though my husband was right there. Didn’t seem to care, seemed like he wanted a fight, though I had the feeling all the other guys there, all Jimmy’s friends, were a little scared of him.”

“How about these other guys, know any of them?”

“No, sorry. Like I said, they were all Jimmy’s friends.”

We went through the rest of album, but Terri wasn’t really much help. Besides family, she really didn’t know many of the other people at the wedding. She and Tina had lived pretty separate lives. I didn’t see anyone who resembled the guy I saw Tina with at Stevie’s service.

The other albums were filled with older photos, from Tina and Terri’s childhood. Terri took a long time lingering over each page. Everyone seemed so happy. It took a while to go through them and they really didn’t give me anything I thought I could use. The room had darkened and I got up and put on a light.

“Would you like a drink?” I asked. I had stopped at a liquor store on the way over and purchased a bottle of Powers whiskey.

“No, thank you. In fact, I have to be going. It’s a bit of a drive back to Elmsville, and I promised my husband I’d be back in time for dinner. Looks like I’m going to be a little late.”

“Do you mind if I stick around a little longer? I promise I won’t take anything.”

“Of course, do what you have to do, if you think it will help. Actually, I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

“Well, I guess I do owe you. I know this wasn’t easy. Want me to carry some boxes out to the car for you?”

“No, I was hoping you’d stay here and watch the cats.”

It was probably my imagination, but I could swear the cat on her lap gave me a rather chilling Oh-this-is-going-to-be-fun look.

“Um, well, actually, I’ve got a motel room that I paid for through the week, and, um...that’s where anyone who wants to talk to me knows where to find me.”

It was a lie of course, and after all she’d done, allowing me access to Tina’s things when she didn’t know me from Adam, it was a pretty low one. However, the thought of being holed up with three cats, two of which I hadn’t seen since we walked in and who were probably already plotting the mayhem they’d wreak the moment Terri walked out the door, sort of filled me with dread.

“Please. I’d take them with me but my youngest is allergic and I’ve got to figure out where I can find a home for them. I know Tina wouldn’t want me to just drop them off at the SPCA.”

“Terri, I’m not real good with animals--”

Terri straightened up and gave me a cold look. “Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to let you poke around into Tina’s life, trust that you won’t just dig up whatever dirt you can find it, and then put it all out there for the whole world to read about, but I ask you one little favor--”

“I do appreciate the offer, really, but me and cats...Isn’t there someone else?”

She must have sensed that I was weakening. Her eyes warmed a bit and she leaned forward, gently laying her right hand on my left knee. “They’re really very sweet and all you have to do is feed them.”

I could see resistance was futile and raised my right hand in surrender. “Okay, if you show me where the food is and--”

“--and maybe clean out their litter box once or twice.”

“Once or twice? How long do you think finding places for them is going to take?”

“Not long. I have some friends who love cats. I’m sure one or two of them will take them in.”

“One day? Two?” I asked, optimistically.

“No more than three, for sure. But Tina’s cable and all the utilities are probably paid up through the end of the month, and there are some frozen meals in the freezer that you can microwave, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Besides, you can save the money you’d be paying at the motel.”

Well, payback can be a bitch. I’d asked a lot of Terri. How bad could it be? She took my silence for a yes.

“Great,” she said, lifting the cat and placing it on the sofa between us as she stood up. “Let me just grab a few things from Tina’s room, and if you don’t mind maybe you could help me carry some things to my car.”

She headed off toward and through a door into what I guess was Tina’s bedroom. As I watched her go, the cat walked over to me and stood on my lap.

I ran my hand across the cat’s back.

“Well, it looks like we’re going to be sharing a little time together,” I said.

In response, the cat looked up at me, turned, and raised its ass toward my face. We were off to a great start.