[click to read the first chapter]
4
So you know already, the blows didn’t come, the fight didn’t finish the way it might have finished, the way a lot of people maybe thought it should have finished. Jerzy didn’t get the gold, or the silver. He got the bronze. And that’s why you and I are in this place right now, why you’ve come to me to get the story you’re looking for. The bronze, jesus, the bronze. So I’ll tell you. She took it. She just took it, right off the wall. And that’s how it all began.
•••
Greenpoint, Brooklyn 1994
Even before she got to the old man’s house, Amanda was angry. She had started her day by phoning Jersey, to find out why he’d stood her up the night before. All her life, if there was one thing she knew how to be, it was angry.
—It’s me.
She had known it was early, that he was likely to be in bed still.
—’Manda, ’Manda. I was. I got. Lemme call you right back.
—Are you kidding, Jersey? Because if you’re kidding, it’s not funny.
She could picture him, fumbling his way out of bed, looking for a cigarette, waiting for his brain and tongue to connect. It could be a while.
—And if you’re not kidding, that’s not funny either.
—No, no. I mean.
—What do you mean? Exactly.
—I’m just looking for. Wait a minute.
So she hung up. She wasn’t short of minutes, but she wasn’t about to waste them waiting for Jersey to come up with an excuse for the inexcusable. She had other plans.
She knew how much Jersey’s grandfather—after whom Jersey’s own father had named him—meant to Jersey, even though Jersey’s father had grown distant from his old man over the years. Jersey had brought her to the house several times in the months since they had been seeing each other, and each time she had marveled at the change that had come over Jersey in front of his grandfather. He should be so good to her, she thought, so respectful and, what was the word, deferential. That was it. Way more often he treated her the way he had treated her last night, and she was sick of it. If she could piss him off by getting at him through the one thing she knew he valued, so be it. She would.
Truth was, though, when she got to the house on Milton Street, she realized that was about as far as her plans went. This was not unusual for Amanda, and some of the people who knew her best would probably even call it her trademark. She walked in knowing she wanted to do something to make Jersey as mad at her as she was at him, and that she had a pretty good shot at doing just that in the old man’s house, but exactly what it might be she had no idea.
So, once she had walked in through the habitually unlocked front door and couldn’t think of what to do next, she just stopped and looked around. It was as if she were looking at the little house for the first time. Which was odd, since she had been in and out of houses just like it since she was a kid in the neighborhood.
She had come up from the sidewalk onto the small porch fronting the nearly 100-year-old brick house with upstairs and downstairs bay windows, and headed straight through the front door, into the narrow hallway where she was now standing. She knew Jersey’s grandfather was down the street at his club, where he spent every morning, and many afternoons except Sundays. The house was filled with the kind of quiet that only a truly empty space can have, but she felt the need to call out anyway.
—Mr. Kocerka?
Not a sound. Her own voice sounded smaller than she expected, diminished even within the confines of the tiny house. She got a little attitude and tried again.
—Mr. Kocerka. It’s Amanda.
Some of the anger she felt toward Jersey creeping in at the edges, attaching itself to the old man’s name. There was no one home.
She stepped through the hallway and right, into the living room, which was separated by an archway from the dining room and kitchen beyond. Everything was in its place, and it really hit her how little there actually was in the house. In the living room, nothing but a sofa and two chairs, what seemed to her like a pretty expensive rug, a low table and a couple of floor lamps. That was it. No television, no bookcases, no wood or tools near the clearly unused fireplace, no knickknacks on the mantel. Didn’t old people have knickknacks? In fact, now that she was looking, she saw that there were no photographs, no pictures on the walls, nothing in the way of adornment of any kind. Ok, so his wife had died years back, but still. No wonder he left his door unlocked. What was there to take?
She crossed back into the hall, and went upstairs.
Another narrow hall, four doors, three of them open. Wooden floors everywhere, clean and bare. She stepped into the first, what looked like a spare bedroom. Light came in from the windows across a neatly made bed and a chest in the corner. She quickly looked into the bathroom, and another room made up like the first, with the exception of a small rug and a single, ornate lamp over a chair that looked pretty lived in—maybe this was where the old guy read or relaxed or whatever. She suddenly had the urge, which she resisted, to call out again. It was very quiet, and, careless and impetuous as she was, she knew she shouldn’t be in the house without Jersey. She had pretty much decided to finish her look around and get out.
The last room’s door was closed.
Click to read Chapter 5
Losing the Bronze is Copyright ©2009 Nigel Hinshelwood
