Funny Once Read Free

was close to his own age, that his white hair was premature, and that the man was as confused by what Richard held as Richard was by the little rake.
    “Bonita,” Richard explained, gesturing at the purse. “Isaac and Bonita y mi hermano . No, mi hijo. Aquí? ” He indicated a door that might match the balcony he knew was hers. The man was frowning at Bonita’s belongings. “ Soy Richard ,” Richard added lamely. “ Trabajo? ” he said, hoping the word would inspire some kind of sensible cognition. Richard’s wife had spoken Spanish, so she had done all the talking. She and Bonita had often had lengthy conversations that left Richard with only the scantest broad understanding, through the few words he recognized, all subtleties lost. Had he pointed this out, his wife would have told him that it was a fair representation of men’s general understanding of the world: they grasped its fundamentals but not its tricky minutiae. “Gross motor skills,” she would have said. “As opposed to fine.”
    The man in the coveralls put himself between Richard and the door to apartment 3C, rapping briskly on it, the clawed tool in his other hand. Richard was glad that the building had a handyman who wished to protect its tenants; Bonita and Isaac occasionally spent nights alone here, when the older brothers were not around. From Richard’s wife, Bonita had learned how to have the locks changed so that her husband could not reenter the place. Richard’s wife had also helped Bonita get divorced, and had insisted on restraining orders when neither a locked door nor a legal document convinced the ex-husband that he wasn’t wanted.
    “And sometimes?” Richard’s wife was forced to concede. “Bonita actually does want him.” That was the tricky part the law couldn’t touch.
    “ Gracias ,” Richard said to the man in the coveralls, who nodded, still skeptical of the hapless Anglo with the woman’s handbag. “Isaac?” Richard called out. “Bonita? Danny? Open up, guys.”
    When Isaac finally cracked the door, the handyman stepped inside. Just before the door closed in Richard’s face, he saw the raw panic in Isaac’s eyes and understood that this character in the hall was Bonita’s ex-husband.
    “Fuck!” Richard banged on the door now himself. “I’m calling the police,” he threatened. A door down the hall opened and a head leaned out, then popped back in like a turtle’s. “I’m calling right now unless you open this fucking door! Danny!” he yelled. “Danny, Bonita! Open the door!” He was ransacking Bonita’s purse in search of her phone, tissue and candies and a tiny Bible spilling onto the floor. Just as he found it, the door flew open.
    “Dad,” said Danny, pressing into his father’s ribcage. “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s OK. Where’s Isaac?”
    “He locked himself in his room.”
    “You go get in there with him, OK?”
    From the kitchen came an animated exchange of Spanish. Not angry, Richard thought, but opinionated, people in passionate relation to each other, Bonita’s voice the more strident, the ex-husband’s explanatory, if not apologetic, pleading. Richard listened for some sign that he should intervene, follow through on the threat of phoning the authorities. He stepped around a plastic-covered dining table to wait outside the kitchen doorway. The buffet against the wall was stacked with canned goods, which reminded him of Bonita’s first day working for his family, a decade or so ago. She had retrieved from their trash the unopened yet expired boxes and cans of food that his wife had thrown away in preparation for a housekeeper. An embarrassing moment, not unlike this one, in which Richard had not known how to properly explain why Bonita shouldn’t consume the outdated food, or shouldn’t accede to her criminal ex-husband’s wishes. Above the buffet hung pictures of Isaac’s siblings and nieces and nephews and sisters- and brothers-in-law, each and every one a school or studio