Free The Girl in White Pajamas by Chris Birdy

place now it was unrecognizable to him. Some of the old furniture was still there but totally destroyed. The blue tweed couch now had springs popping out of the back and large stains over the cushions. Some of the unidentifiable stains were three dimensional. They matched similar stains on the carpeting. The walls had unusual substances attached to them. As he glanced at the one wall, Bogie remembered the saying ‘If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it sticks’. It looked like some of the shit stuck to this wall. There were bullet holes in the wall between the living room and what had been Amanda’s bedroom. The furnace was running nonstop and waves of heat made the room feel like it was a hundred degrees, but he felt a cold breeze as he crossed the hall to the living room. He assumed the fresh air was a result of Mother McGruder shooting out the kitchen window.
    The smell in the apartment was a combination of second hand booze, greasy take-out, dirty bodies and shit.
    Sadly, Bogie looked down at Jeannie’s greasy, gray hair, her enlarged abdomen and her swollen hands and feet. He helped her to the couch and said, “I’m sorry, Jeannie.”
    She squinted as she studied him then made a curling motion with her index fingers as she tried to point to him. “ Sorry ,” she repeated. “You hated him!” She cackled.
    “I’m not sorry for him. I’m sorry for you. You’re the one who got the shit end of the stick.”
    “We have to make arrangements for Bud. Are you up for it?” Bogie asked.
    “I don’t give a shhhhit! He’s dead!”
    “Don’t you want to be involved?”
    “Involvvved? He lived up there!” She pointed to the ceiling. “Wouldn’t even let me come up any more. This is myyy…hous…,” she tried to say with her finger still twirling above her. “He said I was…he was a bad...”
    “I know,” Bogie said softly. “You don’t rent out this apartment anymore?”
    She looked at him blankly then shook her head. “Not since you.” And then she seemed to drift away into her thoughts.
    “How about if I come back tomorrow, and we can talk about the arrangements?”
    She nodded.
    “I’ll send somebody over this afternoon to fix your window.”
    Jeanie moved her head in a strange motion resting the side of her face on one shoulder and then the other. “Why?”
    “So you won’t have animals crawling through your window,” Bogie said.
    Jeannie cackled again. “Like the old lady?”
    Bogie smiled and repeated, “Like the old lady.”
    “She’s fuck’n crazy! They should lock her up and throw away the key!”
    Bogie only nodded.
    “What happened…to...you and the kid? Where’d you go? You look…different.”
    “We moved to Florida.” Since she probably wouldn’t remember it the next day, Bogie figured that was all the explanation she needed.
    Bogie left the apartment and walked down the stairs even faster than he had four years earlier. This time he needed fresh air, but he was also in much better shape than he had been just before the heart attack, the big wake-up call! He was forty pounds lighter with no fat. All flab had long since turned to muscle.
    As Bogie returned to the McGruder house, he somehow resented that these God-awful tasks were falling on his shoulders. He wasn’t a real McGruder and his old man and Elizabeth McGruder went to great pains to remind him of that on a regular basis. They did, however, change his name. They believed Boghdun Uchenich just wasn’t an acceptable handle in Boston society. Even that turned into a battle when the judge in Family Court asked him if he was okay with changing his name to Bradley McGruder. Bogie told the judge that he didn’t want to change his name; he was being forced to change it. Bogie pointed out to the judge that his father had helped name him Boghdun and was the one who shortened it to Bogie. The judge was surprised to hear that Baxter McGruder lived with Mary Uchenich and their son Boghdun until he deserted them