Chapter Two

Joe had moved form his parents small apartment when he reached the age that he could no longer stand the confinement of his father’s rules. He knew he had reached the age to move when he found himself wanting to beat his father half to death. If he didn’t leave he would surely hurt him. He was seventeen.

His mother had died when he was fifteen and two year later he had had enough of his father. They butted heads often and about almost everything. “A perfectly normal set of circumstances, no doubt, he had thought as he packed his bags. His father watched from across the living room behind his paper that he often raised to end conversations.

Joe’s father thought Joe’s friends were lowlifes and trying to drag him down to their level. “Your better than these guys Joe, don’t forget that. They will just lead you into trouble,” he had said more than once. Joe proved him wrong, thankfully.

Joe wanted to be a writer or to work in that field in related jobs until his time came. He worked on short stories and on few ideas for novels at night as he worked his long tedious days in a publishing company. The irony was not lost on him. The months turned to years and he had worked his way up in the business, but still not a writer. He was hurt but had not given up yet.

His father Albert had worked with his hands forever down on the docks and wanted Joe to do the same. Joe had different ideas. It had been a struggle to find decent work at his age. He had to stay with friends until he was old enough to sign a lease for n apartment that he still hadn’t found. He worked in the kitchens of many restaurants still running and many that were long gone. These thoughts came to him as he looked around his apartment.

It was slowly become apparent to Joe, even in his present state, as he stood surveying his apartment that his love and fiancee’ Suzan, had packed her bags and left with no warning at some point while he was sleeping or actually passed out. Suzan had reached her breaking point, finally. She had taken a final drink with him as they came to bed, but Joe had several more drinks to her one.

His small and usually slightly unkempt apartment felt large and empty now as he scanned the room for any remnants of Suzan. There were none. He now remembered that the argument had been uglier than most. Alcohol had played it’s part as usual.

The apartment looked as if a tornado had come in from the southeast over the plains of the flat, sparsely furnished living room and swept all of Suzan’s belongings away to an unknown destination while leaving his untouched. It looked like a photo from a midwest newspaper with one house torn from it’s foundations and one ten feet away still standing, or so Joe thought. Some of Joe’s belongings were randomly scattered about his bedroom. It was Suzan’s way of venting on her way out. It wasn’t the first tie he had awoken to see his belongings tossed all over the apartment. Once, several months ago, some of items had found their way to the pavement below.

As Joe walked around the apartment he could see the many small items were now missing from the bedroom and bathroom as well. There was no vestige of Suzan left to be seen anywhere. oe saw that as her final punishment of him.

As he came back from the bathroom in a panic, he noticed Suzan’s shot glass sitting empty under her lamp on her nightstand. Her bright red lipstick was smeared on the rim of it as if her last drink had been one made in a rush after a quick decision.

Susan Cline had warned Joe in many subtle and not so subtle ways that their life together had taken a turn for the worse over the last few months. It was now Autumn “and the bloom had fallen from the rose,” as she had put it. Joe had heard her complain often about him and some of his “less charming habits” over the nearly two years that they had been together. He remembered some of Suzan’s short comings that he had overlooked and the blood rushed to his temples. His head throbbed.

His work had turned out to be less rewarding both in prestige and financial reward than Suzan had hoped for. Joe still sometimes worked at night writing but that only angered Suzan who thought he might get a second job, instead. The financial part of their life was the final straw or so Joe thought. He didn’t know the truth yet. He knew the kind of life that Suzan wanted was out of his reach at this point of his life and perhaps for ever.

A National Geographic Magazine sat on the low dusty coffee table in front of the slightly tattered but comfortable couch across from were he stood near the bed in the small apartment. He had a clear view. The magazine had been there for several weeks as Joe and Suzan had planned their “wonderful honeymoon and adventure.” They had flipped randomly through the pages and landed on Africa. This was how they had come up with their destination for their honeymoon. The cost of the wedding and the honeymoon soon had Joe at his wits end.

Suzan loved looking at the beautiful photos of the wild animals and the broad low landscapes with the silhouettes of tall trees standing in front of the large, orange, sinking sun while imagining the idea of an exotic honeymoon. They both agreed that chance should decide where they would travel to on their honeymoon, just as chance had led them to each other. It had started out as an easy process once they agreed to just let go of their worries over money. That lasted a few short weeks.

Joe had saved some money before he had met Suzan and saved more money needed for the honeymoon by scrimping and cutting back on his meager lifestyle, even more than he had before over nearly two years of unrewarding and tedious work. Joe had other plans for some of that money he had saved, but he had decided to go along to get along. He had hoped to buy a house out in the suburbs one day for him and a wife that he had hoped to find one day. Those dreams were now changed if not shattered. Joe and Suzan’s life together now seemed to be over, for many, now apparent and perhaps some unknown reasons.

Joe squinted his eyes as bright sunshine shot through the gap in the drapes and splashed on his face and on the magazine on the on the coffee table as a warm reminder of his laziness. Suzan had asked him several times to put it away after their plans had been finalized, a few days before. Joe, as usual, hadn’t don it yet. The magazine sat there in the same spot for days.

Joe’s lack of follow through on things like this was just one more point of contention in a relationship growing more difficult each day.

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Well, this is up beat and fun.

Soon many things will be explained and made clear.

More tomorrow.

Don’t forget “The House On The Cliff,” my fun ghost story on Amazon, “The Bad Seed,” my new detective novel and my three books on Audible.