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By Root 1163 0

stemware, flatware, pots and pans, four lamps, a coffeemaker, a chandelier, a desk, a dining room set, a buffet, books, a machete and a saw, not a single piece in poor condition “and all of it,” Hastroll explained loudly, “of exceptional quality”—they said they were sorry, they were stocked up on all those items. He called the homeless shelters and the Boys & Girls Club of America, but they didn’t need his stuff. He called Goodwill, but they didn’t do pickups. Finally, out of desperation, he drove to Alphabet City, went up to the first two suspicious-looking thugs he could find, arrested them, and hustled them into his car, gently pressing their heads down as they got in. He explained the situation—“You will take all of my furniture, and I’ll pay for the transportation”—and brought them back to his apartment.

The men, Roscoe and Lee Browne, stepped inside and looked around. “Shoo,” Roscoe said.

“Shoo what?”

“This is a setup is what this is,” the man said.

“This is way too good to be true,” said Browne.

“This isn’t a setup,” Hastroll said. “It isn’t too good to be true. This is charity.”

“Maybe we don’t need no charity,” said Roscoe.

“This is charity for me.”

The two men looked at each other, shook their heads pityingly, and both went, “Tssss.”

“Maybe we don’t like your shit,” Browne finally said.

“Please,” Hastroll said, “take it. I’m begging you. Or you’re under arrest.”

They began to carry the furniture out the door.

“What’s going on out there?” Hannah said.

“Nothing,” Hastroll said. “I’m just giving our furniture away.”

“Oh,” Hannah said.

“That’s right,” Hastroll said. “It’s out of here!”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, Ward,” she said. “You’re kidding.”

“See for yourself.”

In the pause that followed, he rushed to the bedroom door, ready to pounce.

“No,” she said. “I believe you.”

Roscoe dropped her favorite lamp, and it shattered. Browne took down the picture she’d painted of Hastroll’s rose garden and dropped that too, the frame falling apart.

“It sounds like they’re really working hard,” she said.

“You can’t believe it,” Hastroll said. “They’re like a pair of thieves.”

“I can hear all that space,” she said. “It almost sounds like a cave in there.”

“It’s like being in an empty stadium.”

“It must be like when we were a young couple.”

“Back when we were broke.”

“Like when we had nothing,” she said.

“Right, when we first got married.”

“You had a futon,” Hannah said. “And you drank out of empty yogurt containers.”

Hastroll smiled, pressing his palm to the door. “That’s right.”

“But you kept your bathroom so clean.”

“Come on out and feast your eyes. It’s a trip down memory lane!”

The bed creaked, and Hastroll’s heart jumped. Then silence.

“Did they take the love seat?” Hannah said finally.

“They did.”

“What about the dining room table?”

Hastroll winced as the men dinged the jamb with one of the legs.

“It’s gone.”

“Does the place seem roomier now?”

“You’ve got to see it to believe it.”

Hastroll, thinking he heard her move, rushed to the door again.

“No,” she said. “I think I’ll stay where I am.”

Hastroll rested his forehead against the door.

After a minute, she said, “Ward?”

“What?”

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“For getting rid of all that stuff.”

“Why are you thanking me?”

“Because now I won’t have to clean it.”

He gave the men forty bucks each and made them bring everything back upstairs.

“Something suspicious happened,” Nurse Ritter had told Hastroll, “on the day Alice died.”

Ritter was a tough little cookie, a Brooklyn girl like Georgine Darcy and proud of it. Her father was a fullback for the New York Giants, she’d told him, and though she was diminutive she possessed the same bluntness necessary to knock things out of her path.

“David, her husband,” she said, “he shows up here at school, out of the blue, all sweaty and stressed. Agitated. Says he’s got to talk with her. As in right now. You’re wondering why I know this. Well,” she said, “my office, it’s right next door to Alice’s classroom. Anyway, they have this big fight—like a pair of pit bulls ripping each