Still Life North Milpas

D, our neighbor, is a mid-thirties white guy with an unhealthy pallor, greasy hair, and a big-boned frame carrying thirty pounds more weight than it should. We have lived next door to D for three and a half years, and in all that time I doubt we have exchanged more than a dozen words. It’s not that D is unfriendly -- it’s more that he’s reclusive and works irregular hours at a software company. He rides a bicycle to and from his job, and never wears a helmet.

No family ever calls on D. Every now and then a couple of his co-workers show up. D has no girlfriend.

Our recycling can is full so I go behind the building to toss some flattened cartons in D’s blue can, only there isn’t room in his can either because it’s stuffed with pizza boxes. I stop counting at twelve. There are beer cans and bottles, too, lots of them.

When he first moved in we figured D for a guy who planned to host many raucous and drunken frat-boy style parties, because he hauled more beer and booze into his apartment than furniture and clothes. Gallon jugs of vodka, gin, whisky, and tequila, cases of Tecate, Budweiser, Coors and Corona. We braced ourselves for a rave that never happened. D moved in and drank all that booze and beer by himself.

D keeps the blinds drawn and the windows closed, even on the warmest days of August and September. Dead insects line his windowsill. A Mexican cleaning lady came to clean the apartment a year or so ago but she left the insects on the sill.

It’s 1:30 a.m. We hear heavy footsteps on the landing, a thud, and then D’s voice: “Fucking lying slut. I’m going to put my fist through your head, fucking lying slut. Go fuck yourself, fucking slut.” He’s on his cell, my wife says, peeking through the blinds. “He’s wasted! He can’t find his key.” I ask if he’s carrying a pizza box.

We go to the grocery store, Vons on Turnpike, to pick up a few things for my wife’s parents. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and we notice immediately that by a wide margin we are the youngest shoppers in the store. Everyone else appears to be Medicare eligible and a recipient of Social Security; it’s as if Vons has declared this afternoon a Senior Special. Liver spots, rheumy eyes and osteoporosis are the order of the day. Arthritic fingers clutch lists and coupons; the oldsters wheel their carts slowly as if each step causes pain, and they spend several minutes comparing labels for sugar and sodium, fat and carbohydrate. They avoid the lower shelves. Watching them I feel like I’m staring at my future, the stark, inevitable cruelty of old age that I see in my in-laws; in the doctor’s appointments written on the white board in their kitchen, the pill bottles arrayed on their kitchen table, the illnesses that linger longer than they once did. We care for them as we hope our children will care for us when our turn comes.

My wife thinks D fits the profile of a serial killer, and that one day the police will knock on our door and ask if we ever noticed anything unusual about D. Did we smell strange odors emanating from his apartment? What about noises, did we hear any strange sounds? Did we ever notice D carrying rope, nylon or wire? What about medical equipment like syringes or scalpels, IV tubes?

I think D drinks too much to be a serial killer. Though the famous ones who evade capture are bat-shit nuts I assume it takes a certain clarity of mind, steady nerves, and the wherewithal to cover one’s tracks, not something a drunk can do with any consistency.