Thin Walls

By

Nancy A. Collins

THERE are some personal milestones that have a way of cementing themselves to your gray matter. One of these is your very first apartment. You might be laid up in a nursing home, a tube up your nose and one out your ass, tranked out on heavy meds, your brain so scrambled by Alzheimer’s and strokes that you can’t remember your children’s names—but, for some perverse reason, you still can remember the color of the wall-to-wall in your swingin’ bachelor pad. Go figure.

Me, I know I’ll never forget my first apartment. No matter how hard I try.

The name of the complex was Del-Ray Gardens. Don’t ask me why. I never saw anything that even vaguely resembled a growing thing—much less a garden—the entire eighteen months I lived there, unless you count the dismal courtyard dominated by a cracked swimming pool that bred mosquitoes and scum.

The Del-Ray was old. It had been built at least a decade or two before my own conception, back when the school had been a simple state college. No doubt the Del-Ray, with its double-decker motor-hotel layout and muckleturd stucco exterior, was initially designed for the tide of GI Bill-funded married students who began to pour into the campus just before the Korean War. By the time I moved in, during the fall of ‘79, the only thing the Del-Ray had going for it was its proximity to the campus. It was literally a three-minute walk to and from school. And for someone like myself— who found attending classes the bitter pill one must swallow if you want to enjoy college life—the situation was ideal.

I moved in during my junior year. I’d spent my freshman and sophmore in one of the dorms and was sick to death of having to share the bathroom with three other people and not being (technically) allowed visitors of the opposite sex after nine in the evening. The Del-Ray was nearby and, at a hundred a month plus utilities, definitely within my budget.

I moved in all by myself—since all I owned in the world was a couple of plastic milk crates full of paperbacks, a double mattress (no box springs), a manual typewriter, a blow dryer, a digital alarm clock, a portable black-and-white television set, and a popcorn popper, it was hardly a Herculean task. So what if I didn’t have a chair to sit in? I was on my own! I had my very own place to party in! Although what I found waiting for me quickly dampened my youthful high spirits.

For one thing, I discovered that the previous tenant had left a half-dozen eggs in the refrigerator before pulling the plug a month or so back. Needless to say, the cleanup experience was unique. After getting the kitchen straightened out, I walked down to the Hit-N-Git on the corner and bought some macaroni and cheese and a couple cans of tuna for my first meal in my new home. My mother had been thoughtful enough to endow me with some of the old pot vessels and dishes she’d been meaning to replace, so there was a strange feeling of domestic déjà vu as I spooned my evening’s repast onto my old Daffy Duck plate.

As I sat, cross-legged, on the floor of the living room, my back resting against the cheap plywood paneling, I smiled contentedly and imagined the empty walls covered with blacklight posters and lined with bookcases full of paperback sf, the bedroom doorway draped by a glass-bead curtain, while a stereo system cranked out Alice Cooper and Kiss at volumes loud enough to put even more cracks in the Del-Ray’s crumbling stucco facade. I imagined all my friends nodding their heads and checking out the decor, toking weed and swigging beer and saying, “This place is really cool” or—”

“Who told you you could turn the fuckin’ channel, you motherfuckin’ cocksucker?”

The voice was so loud, so close, I actually jumped, thinking someone was in the room with me.

“You weren’t fuckin’ watchin’ it! You were fuckin’ asleep!”

“Bullshit! I was fuckin’ watchin’ the fuckin’ TV!”

“Like fuck you were! How could you be watchin’ the fuckin’ TV when your fuckin’ eyes were closed?”

“I was just restin’ my fuckin’ eyes, you dirty cocksucker!”

By this point I realized I was, indeed, very much alone in my apartment. What I was hearing was coming from next door. Both voices were male, more than a little intoxicated, and seemed to belong to older people—guys my dad’s age, if not older. Although the television in question was indeed turned up fairly high—something I’d grown used to in the dorm and had learned to ignore—I was unused to people yelling at the top of their lungs.

“Don’t call me that again, Dez! I told you before about callin’ me that!”

“I’ll call you whatever the hell I want to call you, damn it!”

“God damn you, Dez, shut the fuck up!”

“You shut the fuck up, you dirty cocksuckin’ piece of shit!”

I crept to my front door and opened it, peering out into the courtyard. To my surprise, none of the other tenants were visible. Was it possible no one else could hear what was going on in the apartment next to mine?

“Shut up, old man! Go to bed!”

“You fuckin’ piece of shit!”

“It’s time for you to go to bed, Dez!”

“You think you’re so fuckin’ smart!”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth and fuckin’ go to bed!”

“Don’t you touch me, you queer piece of shit! I’ll fuckin’ kill you if you fuckin’ touch me, you queer motherfucker!”

Suddenly there was a loud thump, as if someone had just thrown a duffel bag full of dirty laundry against the other side of the living room wall. Then another. And another.

I yanked the door back open and headed to the apartment across from mine, intending to borrow the phone to call the police. My heart was hammering away in my chest as I knocked on the door. After a few seconds I could hear the bolt being shot back, and a man I recognized as one of the English Department teaching assistants peered out at me.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your dinner, but I need to use your phone—”

The TA.‘s eyes flickered over my shoulder to where my apartment door was standing open. “You in 1-E?”

“Yeah. I just moved in this afternoon. Look, I need to call the cops—”

“You can use the phone if you like, but I’ll warn you right now—they’re not going to come. At least, not right away, and only then if two or three other people call in to complain.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just Dez and Alvin again.”

“Are you sure? About the cops not coming, I mean?”

The T.A. laughed the same way my dad laughs whenever he talks about the IRS. “Believe me, I know.”

That was my first exposure to my next-door neighbors, Dez and Alvin.

Over the next few months, I got to know quite a bit about them, although I never learned their last names. Most of the information was absorbed unintentionally, as there was no way I could avoid listening to their nightly harangues. During the day and afternoon they were usually quiet—although dormant might be a more accurate term. I quickly learned that their screaming matches, while loud, were usually brief and seemed to follow a schedule. They would start arguing about the time the five o’clock news came on, building to a crescendo around Johnny Carson’s monologue.

I had signed a lease, like a fool, and I knew that I’d never be able I to find anything as close to campus and as cheap as the Del-Ray, so I gritted my teeth and decided to ride it out as best I could. I spent a lot of time going to double-features, timing it so I wouldn’t get home until Dez and Alvin had finished their alcoholic kabuki theater for the night.

Although I heard them on a daily basis, I didn’t lay eyes on Alvin and Dez until my second week at the Del-Ray, and that was by complete accident.

It was about two on a weekday afternoon. I had gone to the Hit-N-Git, the twenty-four-hour convenience store down the block from the Del-Ray. There was a tall, thin man dressed in cranberry-colored synthetic pants—cheap Sans-a-Belt knockoffs—and a synthetic silk shirt with pictures of sailboats lithoed all over it, trying to microwave a burrito.

He reeked of cheap perfume, bologna, and gin so strongly I could smell him from two aisles away. Although he was probably forty-five, he looked a lot older than my dad. His hair, which had once been red but had faded to an unattractive carroty orange, was arranged in that style peculiar to older white-trash homosexuals: one part bouffant and one part rooster comb. As he headed for the cashier to pay for his burrito, I glimpsed a bruise under his left eye, covered by liquid foundation makeup that was a shade darker than he was. It suddenly dawned on me that I was staring at one half of the notorious Dez and Alvin. Probably Alvin. Dez’s voice was deeper, heavier, and seemed to belong to a much older man.

While at the counter, Alvin bought a pint of gin—the kind with the yellow label that just says GIN in big block letters—and a pint of equally generic vodka, then lurched out the door, leaving his microwave burrito sitting on the counter. The cashier, a Pakistani exchange student, simply shrugged and tossed the food in the trash.

I didn’t spot Dez until that same weekend, when I made the mistake of inviting a couple of friends over to my groovy new pad. The last couple of weekends Dez and Alvin had gone out drinking at some bar, and I made the mistake of thinking this was something they did every weekend. Nope. Just those immediately after Dez’s Social Security and Alvin’s welfare checks arrived.

I managed to round up a kitchen table and enough chairs to attempt a dinner party, of sorts. So I invited George and Vinnie over.

George and Vinnie were a gay couple I’d known since my freshman year. George was a theater major studying set design, while Vinnie was interested in architectural engineering. Really sweet, funny guys. Loads of laughs.

I made spaghetti and garlic bread (one of the few things I knew how to cook), and George and Vinnie brought a bottle of chianti. I’d just cleared the dishes and we were sitting around discussing the latest gossip when the living room wall shook so hard it dislodged the Jagermeister mirror I’d bought at the Spencer’s in the mall the day before and sent it crashing to the floor.

“Don’t touch my shit!”

“I didn’t touch your shit! Nobody ever touched your fuckin’ shit!”

“You’re a lyin’ sonofabitch, Alvin!”

“Shut up, old man!”

“Don’t you touch me, you queer motherfucker! You touch me again, I’ll kill you in a fuckin’ minute! I don’t give a fuck who you are! I’ll fuckin’ kill you, you fuckin’ piece of shit!”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth!”

“Shut your mouth, you fuckin’ queer! You’re a fuckin’ piece of shit, that’s all you are! Hell, you ain’t even a piece of shit! Queers ain’t human!”

George pushed back his chair, his eyes never leaving the living room wall. “We’d—umm—like to stay a chat awhile, but Vinnie and I really need to get home…”

“I’m really sorry about this, guys. Honestly I am…”

“I ain’t got no use for fuckin’ cocksuckers like you! All you queers ought to die! Leave us normal people alone!”

“Shut up, Dez! Nobody wants to listen to you!”

“I’m gonna kick your fuckin’ ass!”

“Just try it, old man!”

“Honey, not as sorry as we feel for you,” Vinnie whispered, hurrying to follow George to the door. They both kept eyeing the wall as if they expected Dez and Alvin to come busting through it like trained tigers jumping hoops of fire.

Just as George opened the door, Alvin and Dez’s slammed shut. All three of us stood on tiptoe and peeped around the corner of the jamb. A short, thick-set man in his sixties—with what was left of his gray hair in a military-style buzz cut—was weaving toward the parking lot and, the general direction of the Hit-N-Git’s late-night liquor supply. He wore a short-sleeve dress shirt and a pair of badly wrinkled slacks that, from the back, looked like he was smuggling well-fed bulldogs.

“Who—or should I say what—is that?” stage-whispered George.

“I guess it’s Dez. He lives next door with Alvin, the guy he was fighting with.”

“I’ve heard of closet cases—but this one takes the cake!” Vinnie marveled.

“You don’t think he’s gay, do you?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, I know Alvin is… But Dez looks like one of my dad’s old army buddies. Maybe they’re just roommates.”

George gave me a look he reserved for particularly dense straight people. “Honey, are there any two-bedroom units in this dump?”

“Uh.”

“Besides, I’ve heard stories about this couple. No one’s ever mentioned their names or where they live exactly, but I’m pretty sure these are the same guys. They’re hardcore alcoholics and they’ve been living together since the early Sixties.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding! How could two people who hate each other’s guts so much stay together under one roof that long?” I shuddered. The very idea was impossible to visualize—kind of like my grandparents having sex.

Vinnie shrugged. “Hey, my parents spent the last ten years of their marriage like they were fighting the Vietnam War, not raising a family in suburbia.”

“This whole scene’s too much like my own folks,” George agreed. “It’s weirding me out. Why don’t you come visit us next time? I don’t think I could handle having to listen to those closet queens screech at each other again.”

As you may have guessed, that was my one and only attempt at having friends over to my new place. Thanks to Dez and Alvin, I never once got to throw a wild and crazy college student-type party while I lived there. The possibility that they might crash the party in hopes of scoring free booze was enough to deep-six any plans I might have entertained.

I was amazed at how quickly Dez and Alvin had become a part of my life, even though I had yet to say anything to them and didn’t really want to. Frankly, Dez scared the hell out of me. As far as I could tell, neither of them worked, and the only time they left their apartment was either to go to the Hit-N-Git to buy liquor and cigarettes, cash their welfare checks, or go to the hospital emergency room. I soon realized that the long-term residents of the Del-Ray viewed Dez and Alvin as elemental forces outside the ken of Mankind. You stood a better chance of controlling the weather than changing their behavior.

Still, I often wondered what kind of hold Dez and Alvin held on the landlord. Surely enough people had complained about them over the years? I finally got an answer to this question when Dez nearly burned down the apartment complex one afternoon.

I arrived home after classes to find a couple of fire trucks pulled up outside the building, the smell of smoke and chemical fire extinguisher heavy in the air. A group of my fellow tenants were gathered in the courtyard, around the scum-pool, watching from a safe distance as a couple of firemen outfitted in heavy waterproofed canvas coats filed out of 1-D.

Dez was sitting on the staircase that led to the second-floor apartments, looking like a pickled fetus poured out of its jar. He was blinking in the afternoon sun and staring at things like he didn’t know where he was, his face grimed with soot, but not so much that I couldn’t make out the gin blossoms covering his cheeks and nose.

“Found what started it,” one of the firemen said, holding up a smoking piece of debris that looked like a cross between a frozen pizza and a hockey puck. “Apparently he put it in the oven without taking it out of the box.”

Just then an older man shouldered his way through the crowd, He was dressed in slacks and a golf shirt as if he’d just hurried off the seventeenth hole. “What’s going on here?!? I’m the owner, somebody tell me what’s happened—?”

As the fire chief explained the situation—pointing in Dez’s direction—the man who claimed to be the Del-Ray’s owner rubbed his face the same way my Uncle Bill used to whenever he was trying to hold his temper in front of company. The moment the firemen left, the owner stalked over to where Dez was sitting and began yelling at him, although at nowhere near the volume I knew Dez was capable of. It was only then—seeing them face-to-face— did I realize they were blood kin.

“For the love of God, Dez, what the hell did you think you were doing?!? You’re gonna put the insurance on this dump through the roof! I promised Ma I’d make sure you always had a place to live, but I’ve had about all I’m going to outta you! You fuck up one more time, and you’re out on your ass, you hear me? And that goes for Alvin, too!”

I expected Dez to start shouting back at him, but to my surprise he just sat there and took it. His head wobbled on his neck and he began blinking his eyes real fast. I couldn’t tell if they were tearing from the smoke or the chewing-out. After the Del-Ray’s owner left, Dez levered himself off the steps and shuffled back into the apartment. A couple of minutes later Alvin showed up. Apparently he’d been out cashing a welfare check.

“Omigod! What the fuck did you do, Dez?”

“I didn’t fuckin’ do anything, you piece of shit! You’re always accusin’ me of doin’ shit and I don’t do nothin’!”

“Don’t you lie to me, old man! Look at this place! Look at it! What did you do, Dez? What did you do?”

“You weren’t here to fix my dinner, so I fuckin’ fixed it myself!”

“You fuckin’ ruined dinner, didn’t you? Ruined it for everybody! See what you’ve done?”

“Shut up, you fuckin’ piece of shit queer cocksucker!”

That particular argument got so violent that Alvin ended up in the emergency room and Dez in the lockup. Alvin was out of the hospital in two days, but Dez was sentenced to thirty for resisting arrest when the cops finally showed up. The entire apartment complex heaved a collective sigh of relief, and the Del-Ray became—for a time—a relatively quiet place.

Then Deke showed up.

I don’t know where Alvin found Deke. I wouldn’t rule out the underside of a large rock. Deke was considerably younger than Alvin and a few years older than myself. I guess he was twenty-five, although he didn’t look particularly youthful. He was medium height, skinny, with shoulder-length, greasy hair and a droopy mustache that did little to help his weak chin. He was ferrety-looking and had all the twitchy mannerisms of a crack addict. He had one pair of filthy, raggedy jeans and an infinite number of sleeveless T-shirts and gimme-caps that promoted either Jack Daniels, Lynrd Skynrd, Copenhagen, or Waylon Jennings.

Where Dez had been somewhat scary, Deke gave me the out-and-out creeps. At least I knew Dez left his apartment only in times of extreme duress, such as the kitchen catching fire and the vodka running out. Deke, however, seemed the type who could suddenly manifest in the middle of my bedroom some dark night, steak knife in hand.

One day I came home early to find Deke hanging out in front of the Del-Ray, apparently waiting for Alvin to get back from the liquor store. When he saw me he grinned in that way guys who they think they’re a ladies’ man do.

“Hey, you’re that lit’l gal that lives next door to Alvin.”

I grunted something noncommittally affirmative and tried to move past him, but he attached himself to me like toilet paper to a boot heel. He loomed over me as I stood by my front door, keys in my hand, exposing yellow, crooked teeth in a disturbingly, feral grin.

“I been noticin’ you, y’know. You live here alone, right? I thought you might wanna go out or something—?”

I maneuvered my keys so that they jutted from between my knuckles. Since there didn’t seem an easy way out of the situation, I decided to take the bull by the scrotum, so to speak. “What about Alvin?” I asked. “Won’t your boyfriend mind?”

Deke’s face colored and he sputtered for a minute. “I like girls! I ain’t no fuckin’ queer!”

“That’s not what I hear,” I replied, determined not to open my door until Deke had cleared the vicinity.

“It’s a damn lie! All I let the old fag do is suck my dick!”

It was then I realized what Alvin saw in Deke. No doubt he reminded him of Dez as a young man.

“Deke!”

Deke jumped like he’d been bit. Alvin was headed toward us clutching a grocery sack, and he didn’t look at all happy to see Deke standing so close to me.

“Get in this house right this fuckin’ minute and leave that girl alone!” he hissed.

Deke complied instantly, going in ahead of Alvin, who lingered on the threshold long enough to fix me with a venomous stare.

That night I started sleeping with a butcher knife under my pillow.

When Dez came home after his thirty days, I expected Deke would disappear. No such luck. While Deke didn’t exactly live with them (I’m not sure if Deke actually lived anywhere), he sure as hell was over there a lot. And, to his credit, Dez didn’t like Deke any better than I did.

For one thing, Alvin obviously preferred the younger man to Dez, always deferring to what Deke wanted to watch on television or—more important—the kind of liquor Deke liked. This, apparently, was a big sore spot for Dez. Dez was a vodka man. Deke, on the other hand, favored rye. Once Dez came home from jail, every fight more or less began like this:

“There’s nothing to drink in this fuckin’ house!”

“Don’t you start that again, Dez! You know perfectly well there is rye in the fuckin kitchen!”

“Like fuck there is! I ain’t drinkin’ that stinkin’ shit!”

“Then don’t drink it! I don’t care! I didn’t fuckin’ buy it for you, anyway! I bought it for Deke!”

“I ain’t drinkin’ no goddamn rye! Rye is for no-good fuckin’ punk cocksuckers!”

“Shut up, Dez!”

“You shut your mouth, you fuckin’ queer!”

“Don’t call me names in front of Deke!”

“I want my vodka, goddamn it! Vodka’s what real men who are normal and like women drink—not fuckin’ rye! Rye is a queer cocksucker drink, you goddamn piece of shit!”

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It was the end of the semester and most of the Del-Ray’s tenants had already bailed for the summer when the sad and sordid love triangle finally collapsed. I knew it was destined to come to a bad end, but I was rather surprised by it nonetheless.

I’d been out late, partying with some friends at one of the local dives. It was almost three in the morning by the time I got home, only to find a couple of squad cars and an ambulance outside the Del-Ray, their sirens silent but the bubble lights still spinning. I sighed and rolled my eyes. No doubt another quarrel about the rye and the vodka.

The door to 1-D was standing wide open, light spilling out into the courtyard. In order to reach my place I had to walk past theirs, but the way was blocked by a beefy patrol officer with a walkie-talkie squawking to itself.

“I’m sorry, miss, but I’m afraid you can’t go in there.”

“I live next door. I’m just going home, Officer.”

“Oh.” The patrolman stepped aside.

I was fumbling my keys out of my handbag when I heard the officer clear his throat. “Uh, excuse me, miss? I know it’s late, but Detective Harris wants to know if you could step inside for just a moment?”

What the hell. I shrugged and followed him into Dez and Alvin’s apartment. It was the first and only time I’d ever set foot in it. It was exactly the same as my own one-bedroom, except that the floor plan had been flipped over. The only furniture in the living room was a swayback red velveteen sofa, an overstuffed easy chair that sported tufts of horsehair from its split seams, and a huge wooden Magnavox “entertainment center” that looked like a coffin with a picture tube.

Dez was sitting in the easy chair, wearing a pair of baggy khaki pants and a dirty undershirt. He was staring at the snow rolling across the television screen, muttering darkly to himself. If he noticed that the room was full of uniformed police officers, his eyes didn’t acknowledge it.

A weary-looking man in a rumpled suit and an equally rumpled raincoat, a badge fixed to the lapel, came out of the kitchen. “Excuse me, miss. I’m Detective Harris. I’m sorry if we’re keeping you from going to bed, but I need your help.”

“I’ll try. What’s wrong? Where’s Alvin?”

Detective Harris looked even wearier than before. “I’m afraid he’s dead, miss.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”

“No. I don’t think Alvin had any.”

“Well, he had at least one. We were wondering if you could tell us his name—?” Detective Harris pointed to the bedroom. I pushed open the door and peered inside. There were a couple of paramedics packing up their gear and discussing the upcoming baseball season. There was only one bed in the room—and it was surprisingly narrow. Sprawled across it were two nude bodies. Deke’s head looked like a dropped pumpkin, while Alvin had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck tighter than a Christmas ribbon.

“Do you happen to know the name of the younger man?” Detective Harris asked, pulling a much used notepad out of his coat pocket.

I nodded mutely. I’d never seen reallive dead bodies before.

“And?”

“Deke. His name is—was—Deke.”

“Deke what?”

I blinked and looked away from the murder scene, feeling odd-ly disjointed. “I—I don’t know. All I ever heard him called was Deke.”

Detective Harris nodded and scribbled the information down in his notepad. “Thank you, ma’am. You can go now.”

“Did Dez do it?”

“Looks that way. He used a steam iron to bash in the younger man’s head, then strangled his partner with the cord. Then he called the police.”

That part kind of surprised me. Not that Dez had done it; but who would have imagined Dez and Alvin owned an iron?

The beefy patrolman escorted me back out of the apartment. As we passed in front of the TV, Dez suddenly stopped mumbling and lifted his hands to his face. I could see now that his wrists were cuffed together.

“Darling.”

I was surprised at how his voice sounded at normal volume. It was a little bit like Walter Cronkite’s. Dez’s bloodshot eyes wandered the walls for a second before settling on me.

“He was calling him darling.” Dez’s meaty ex-marine’s face looked like it was in danger of collapsing in on itself. His eyes grew unfocused and began wandering again. “Who’s gonna fix my dinner now?

That night I slept without the butcher knife for the first time in weeks.

I got to read all about the tragedy next door in the local paper. According to the confession Dez gave the police, he had passed out in front of the television after a couple pints of vodka, so Alvin and Deke decided to have sex in the bedroom. Dez woke up unexpectedly and staggered in, surprising them in the act. Apparently the sight of Alvin and Deke together threw Dez into a murderous rage. The rest I already knew. The newspaper didn’t say if Dez claimed he “despised all queers,” but I don’t doubt it came up in the conversation. It did give Dez and Alvin’s last names, which I’ve long forgotten, and mentioned that they’d been sharing the same apartment since 1958, the year before I was born. The mind boggles.

Alvin wasn’t even in the ground (or cremated or whatever the hell the county does to people too poor and unpopular to be given a real funeral) before Dez’s brother had workmen in to renovate the apartment. By the end of the month there was an elderly retired couple living in Dez and Alvin’s old space. They were real sweet and clearly devoted to one another and were complete teetotalers. They had a wiener dog named Fritzi that barked now and again, but outside of that they were polite, quiet neighbors.

When my lease was up I decided to move out. It just wasn’t the same anymore. End of an era, you could say. It definitely gave me an unique yardstick for measuring my future neighbors, that’s for certain.

But sometimes I can’t help but think of Dez and Alvin. I’m pretty sure there must have been something like love between them, a long time ago. Maybe it was because, all the swearing and screaming and threats aside, Dez and Alvin rarely came to actual blows. And I can’t get the picture of that narrow bed out of my mind. Despite the hate, self-loathing, and mutual resentment, there was something between them, even if it was the companionship that exists between fellow alcoholic burnouts.

I can imagine what it was like: years before I was born, a handsome marine walked into a bar that self-respecting men, much less marines, weren’t supposed to know about and saw a redheaded young boy who was destined to be the love of his life. They had everything ahead of them, and all that mattered was their love. All lovers are invulnerable, sealed away from the harsher realities of life by their shared passion. At first. But society and its rules and expectations somehow find a way of eating through the protective bubble. And if you’re not careful, it’s real easy for love to curdle into resentment and anger; happiness into misery.

I’d like to think they knew something like joy before they turned into two bitter, miserable excuses for human beings, snapping and snarling at one another like animals sharing a cage that’s way too small. Or a bed that’s way too narrow.

Love sucks. It makes fools and slaves of us all.

But being alone and unloved is worse.

Just ask Dez and Alvin.

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