W Is for Wasted

lined up. He took his time, looking at the name on each piece.
    “Sorry.” He rolled himself back to the counter and returned her ID. “Did you talk to Lucy? She was looking for you.”
    “I saw her Thursday, but not since. What’d she want?”
    “No idea. You might take a look at the board and see if she left you a note.”
    She stepped away from the counter and disappeared around the corner at the far end where the bulletin board was apparently mounted on the wall.
    Ken turned his attention to me. “What can I do for you?”
    I toyed with the notion of a ruse, but I couldn’t see the point. “I’m looking for information about a fellow named Terrence. I don’t have his last name, but I’m hoping you’ll know who I mean. He died a couple of days ago.”
    “We can’t give out information about our clients. The social worker might help, but she’s not here today.”
    “What about Dandy or Pearl?”
    His expression remained neutral, as though even acknowledging the existence of a client would violate protocol. “Can’t help. You’re welcome to come in and take a look.”
    Surprised, I said, “Really? You don’t mind if I walk around?”
    “This isn’t a private club. Anyone can join,” he said.
    “Thanks.”
    I circled the common room, which was spacious enough to accommodate the twenty-five people present without any suggestion of crowding. There was a big television set in one corner, but the screen was dark. There was a lone bookcase in evidence, the shelves lined side to side with an ancient-looking set of encyclopedias. One fellow had commandeered a couch for napping purposes, and he was curled up with a jacket over him. There were a few ongoing conversations, but in the main people weren’t doing much. An exception was the two women who sat at either end of a Naugahyde couch with knitting projects. One unraveled row after row of a pink sweater, which shrank in her hands, reduced to a lap full of kinked yarn. The other woman struggled with size-19 needles and a ball of thick green wool. The article she was knitting was impossible to identify, something with bumps and irregular edges and holes where stitches had gotten away from her. I don’t knit often these days, but I’m acquainted with the perils. The same aunt who browbeat me into memorizing the rivers of the world by length (the Nile, the Amazon, the Yangtze, the Mississippi-Missouri, the Yenisey, the Yellow, on and on) also taught me to knit and crochet—not for the pleasure of it, but with the intent to promote patience. This for me at age six when no child is content to sit for more than a minute at a time.
    More to the point here: no Pearl, no Dandy, no Felix, and I’d gone as far as I could go. The dead man was dead. If he’d needed my help, it was already too late to be of service. First thing in the morning I’d call Aaron Blumberg and pass along what I’d learned. Armed with a first name and a description of the deceased, he might track down a doctor who could fill in the blanks. “A bum named Terrence with a bad limp” was hardly definitive, but it was a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, my participation was at an end.

3
    Monday, I tried three times with no luck to reach Aaron Blumberg at the coroner’s office. I left messages, asking him to call me when he had a minute. I could have taken the opportunity to detail the scanty facts I’d picked up, but I was hoping for a pat on the head for my resourcefulness. I spent most of the day puttering around the office, feeling distracted and oddly out of sorts. I left early, arriving home at 4:15 instead of the usual 5:00 P.M . I passed Rosie’s twice in my search for a parking place and noted the building was now draped in enormous rectangular tarpaulins that were clipped together along the edges. The red, white, and turquoise stripes gave the place the look of a circus big top. I parked the car around the corner on Bay in the only semi-legal spot I could find.
    When I reached the backyard, Henry was hard at work in shorts, a T-shirt, and bare feet, his flip-flops tossed aside on the flagstone walk. His face was smudged with dirt, his white hair dampened by sweat, and his shins flecked with mud. His nose and cheeks were rosy from the autumn sunshine. He’d apparently spent the past couple of hours aerating the lawn in preparation for overseeding the grass. Some sections he’d attacked with a rototiller, then leveled the ground with a weighted roller he’d