Chapter Two

Joe moved from his father’s apartment when he reached the age where he could sign a rental agreement. He no longer wanted to be confined by his father’s rules.

He knew he had reached the age where he had to move out and start his own life when he wanted to hit his father. If he didn’t leave, he would surely hurt him. He was gone the week he turned eighteen.

His father drank too much and made his and his mother’s life a misery.

Joe’s mother had died when he was fifteen and Joe had wanted to leave then but couldn’t. He and his father butted heads about almost everything.

Joe’s father thought Joe’s friends were lowlifes and would drag him down to their level. He didn’t like the fact that Joe wanted to be a writer or work in their white collar world.

Albert, Joe’s father, had worked with his hands forever and wanted Joe to do the same. He was an iron worker and had walked and revetted many of the beams in the tall sky scrappers that had made New York so famous around the world. He was fearless, or so it seemed to Joe.

“Maybe that’s why he drinks so much. He drinks to hide his fears perhaps,” Joe thought. It didn’t make any difference why he drank. It made Joe’s mother and his life a living hell.

It had been a struggle to find much work at seventeen, but he managed to find some. He had bounced around the city for a while sleeping on couches and floors when he couldn’t stand to be around his father. He couldn’t wait to turn eighteen.

He found work wherever he could. He found work in several kitchens of restaurants still running in the city and in several that were now long gone as he saved to could get his own place. “These restaurants come and go like phantoms in the night,” he often thought.

Now his long time girlfriend had turned into a phantom and disappeared in the night while he slept. Those old memories came rushing into his brain as he looked around his small, disheveled, apartment.

It was instantly obvious to Joe as he stood surveying his apartment, even in his state, that his love and fiance’ had packed her bags and left without any warning at some point while he was sleeping or passed out.

Suzan had finally reached her breaking point or so he thought. She had taken a drink with him as they came to bed, but Joe had several more to her one.

His small and usually slightly unkempt apartment felt large and empty now as he scanned the room for any remenants of Suzan. He then remembered that the argument had turned ugly. Alcohol had played it’s part as usual.

The apartment looked as if a tornado had come in from the southeast and swept all of Suzan’s belongings away to some unknown location. Some of Joe’s things were scattered about the bedroom in a crazy swirling, pattern as if they had been caught by that wind as well, as it blew out the front door of the apartment.

“It was Suzann’s way of venting as she left,” he thought.

It wasn’t the first time he had awoken to his belongings being tossed all over the apartment or out the third floor window of their apartment to the sidewalk below.

Once, several months ago, several items had found their way to the pavement far below their small apartment. Luckily, no one had been hit by his falling belongings, but there had been a heated argument between the super and Suzan about that incident.

As Joe walked around his apartment he could see that many smaller items were now missing from the bedroom and the bathroom, as well. There was no vestige of Suzan left to be seen, anywhere. Joe saw that clearing or taking away all of her personal items as her final goodbye and punishment of him.

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

Suzan 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 Autumn and “the bloom had fallen off the rose ,” as she had put it, more than once.

Joe had listened to her complain often about him and his “less than charming habits” over the nearly two years that they had been together.

He remembered some of Suzan’s short comings that he had decided to overlook and then the blood rushed to his head and ponded in his temples as his pulse quickened.

His work had turned out to be less rewarding both in prestige and financial rewards than he and Suzan had hoped for. The financial aspects of his work were the last straw, or so Joe thought. He knew the kind of life Suzan wanted was out of his reach at this point in time.

A National Geographic magazine still sat on the low, wooden coffee table in front of the couch across from where he stood. The bed in the small one room apartment was just a step away. The magazine had sat there for several weeks as Joe and Suzan had planned their honeymoon.

They had flipped randomly through the pages and landed in Africa. This was how they came up for the destination of their honeymoon. Suzan loved looking at the beautiful photos of the wild animals and imagining the idea of an exotic get away.

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 became an easy process once Suzan and Joe agreed top just let go of their worries over money. That lasted a few short weeks.

Joe had saved some of the money for the honeymoon and wedding by scrimping and cutting back on his meager lifestyle even more than before. He had done this now for nearly two years of unrewarding and tedious work at his office. His secretary had noticed that he had lost weight and asked him if he was ill.

Joe had other plans for 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 he and what ever woman he had finally ended up marrying. Those dreams were now changed if not shattered.

Joe and Suzan’s life together seemed to be over now, for many reasons apparent and perhaps some other unknown reasons that Joe was unaware of. That made him feel uneasy.

Bright sunshine shot through the gap in the dark drapes and splashed on the magazine and his now empty bed as a warm reminder of his laziness.

Suzan had asked him top put the magazine away after their plans had been decided upon and finalized a few days before. Joe, as usual, hadn’t done that. The magazine sat there in the same spot for days.

HIs 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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So, this is chapter two. Things are going to get even more interesting, I can tell you that, if nothing else.

Remember, “Sunrise, Sunset” my book of ten short stories and two novels are now on Audible.