Enrico rubbed his face. The wind blew his thin black hair about so forcefully it stung his skin. So he rubbed the sting away and looked at the ten story drop below. It'd be really easy to just slip off the windowsill... maybe he'd find Izzy on the other side... The two things that kept him from planting his feet against the side of the building and just pushing off was that it was only ten stories. He might just land wrong and survive. The other was that, being Catholic, suicide was a one way ticket to hell... Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars... He would never see Izzy again if he killed himself. So he sat there, thinking about killing himself rather than actually going through with it.

His cigaret burned down past the filter and he cursed as it burned his fingers. He jerked his hand up, letting to of the butt. "Mierda madre!" he spat and put his fingers in his mouth. Just then his alarm clock went off and he looked into his meager one room apartment to the clock radio on Izzy's nightstand.

It's blare caused him to recall the way she would kiss him awake after hitting snooze. The jarring scream of the alarm clock pulled him inside where he hit the snooze and flipped the alarm to off. He sat down on her side of the bed and lifted her pillow to his face. He buried his face into the cover and inhaled. He'd promised to get her a new pillow and had never gotten around to it. This one was two that had been slept flat, then pushed into the same case to make something decent. He should have given her his pillow... It was thick and had been new and she always took it after he got up for work.

He wrapped his arms around Izzy's pillow and the taught muscles in his dark arms bulged as the pain in his chest doubled at the loss of his sweet Isabelle... It had been more than a year ago. Why did it still hurt so much?

He rolled over onto Izzy's side of the bed and reconciled himself with the fact that he was not going to work today. His uncle would understand... maybe

When he had fallen asleep he wasn't sure, but it didn't feel like long at all when a loud banging woke him at the door. "Hey spic!" His neighbor's voice called. Mr. Arloski was Russian and Izzy had started calling him 'The Ruskie' as a sort of a friendly joke. This had translated into Enrico being called a spic. Never Izzy, despite that she was just as dark as he was. "Phone call." Mr. Arloski's voice called through the door. "Your boss, he sound pissed."

Enrico kissed Izzy's pillow as if it were her there instead and stood from the bed. He went to the door and opened it to the stubble sweaty face of Mr. Arloski.

Mr. Arloski's face changed when he saw Enrico. He had liked Isabelle too and her death had hit him and everyone on their hall a little hard. Still he knew Enrico had to get his act together. "I'm coming." Enrico told him. "Let me grab a shirt." He was in his work jeans and nothing else. At only five feet six inches he was a small man, but he was strong, broad for his size and it showed.

"Leave it, Sasha loves your big man boobs almost as much as I do." He was joking, trying to bring a smile to Enrico's grave face. Sasha was his daughter and given time she wouldn't mind taking Izzy's place in Enrico's bed
Enrico didn't smile at the joke at his expense and Mr. Arloski knew it had been one of those nights. He didn't say any more and led Enrico into his apartment across the hall.

Izzy had worked at a Mexican restaurant a few blocks away and Enrico built furniture at his uncle's factory. His uncle didn't own it, but he was foreman. With both of their income they had been able to afford a phone, with Izzy gone, Enrico had been forced to rely on Mr. Arloski's phone.

He spoke briefly with his uncle. Though they used Spanish, yelling and cursing sounded the same in any language. Mr. Arloski gave him privacy by shooing Sasha back into the kitchen where she was cooking breakfast. Enrico listened to his uncle's shouts. His Spanish was flawless, but when his uncle got going, it was hard even for him to understand. He stood there saying things like, "Sí tío..." and "Entiendo tío..." Which meant "Yes uncle, I understand uncle." Meanwhile nothing really made it through. The only reason he agreed to come in late was because his uncle used the old, "I promised your father I would take care of you."

Enrico hung up shortly after that and stood looking at the phone on the table by the couch in the living room. He didn't feel... anything. Not anger at his uncle's lack of sympathy and not anger at being torn away from his mourning because a mess of lazy boys needed assembling by 5pm today. There was just... nothing.

Mr. Arloski appeared at the door to the kitchen when he no longer heard Enrico speaking. "You want breakfast?" He asked. "We have plenty." Enrico wasn't starving, but he wasn't exactly eating either. He was too lean in Mr. Arloski's opinion.

"No, thank you..." Enrico said and turned for the door.

"No." Mr. Arloski said. "That was not question." Even though it had been. "You will eat with us, then you will go to work. Sasha, crack more eggs and get milk. We feed this boy."

Enrico was not a boy, he was thirty-two, but anyone ten years younger than Mr. Arloski was a boy. He stopped on his way out only because Mr. Arloski fetched him and guided him into the kitchen.

They ate oatmeal and biscuits with goat butter. It wasn't much but the butter was good. No one lived in this building because they wanted to. They lived here because they couldn't afford to live anywhere else. Sasha silently made Enrico eat a second bowl of oatmeal and wrapped up a few of the biscuits with a little portion of the butter because he seemed to like it. After breakfast she followed him to the door and said the only words she had said all morning as she handed him the parcel she had made. "For lunch."

He thanked her with an awkward kiss on the cheek and took the bundle and returned to his apartment. Sasha was a pretty girl. A bit of a lazy eye she kept hidden with her hair kept her from being too pretty, but she was sweet and Izzy had loved her. He couldn't bring himself to be anything but friendly with her.

He didn't bother showering for work, but he did put on clean clothes and he kept extra deodorant in his lunch box. He put the biscuits in, an extra pack of cigarets and left the apartment ten minutes later.

He worked most of the way through lunch, trying to make up for the time lost this morning. He upholstered the twenty recliners his crew had made this morning and fell into his normal spot on the line. His hands and arms were lined with old scars from the metal framework, but it gifted him with the strength to load the recliners by himself when the boys went to lunch. The biscuits went untouched, but he did take a break long enough to smoke a cigaret on the loading dock.

He was tired. He'd only slept an hour before Mr. Arloski knocked on his door this morning. He sat on the dock, leaning against the doorway as he smoked. His mind was still blissfully blank. He was thankful that his work was repetitious and didn't require much thought. He was too tired to grieve, despite that Izzy's blood soaked face never left his thoughts. No matter how blank his mind seemed. Like a portrait hanging in the back of his head, that image stayed.

As his eyes closed, he could hear the spatter of rain around him as he held Izzy's dying body in his arms.

They'd gone to the movies. They never really went out, but Izzy had wanted to see Stand By Me, so they had scrapped up a little money to go. On the way home he'd stopped at a news stand for gum and she'd gone on with the umbrella. Juicy Fruit had helped him to quit smoking and he'd been on his last stick. If he'd been walking beside her and Izzy hadn't had the rent money in her purse because they'd just cashed his check on the way to the movies, she'd still be alive now.

He heard her scream and looked up as his hand was still cupped, waiting for his change from the pack of gum. He could see her clinging to the strap of her purse while some man was pulling on the bag. "Fuckin let it go lady!" He cursed at her and before Enrico's body could even register what was happening, the yellow flash of a muzzle flare lit up the night like a bolt of lightning. The old man at the news stand dropped his change and Enrico felt dimes and pennies trickle to the ground as if in slow motion. Only one made it into his hand and for what ever reason, as his body finally began the process of movement in order to run to his Izzy, he put the dime in his pocket. He still had it. It was in his lunch box.

Her name tore out of his chest as his cowboy boots pounded against the slick pavement. The smooth bottoms of his boots slid on the sidewalk and he crashed to the ground beside her, tearing the knee of his jeans. The muzzle flash had caught her blouse on fire, but the rain had put it out and it was now smoking lightly with little hisses. The man must have hit her because a gash over her left eye poured blood across her beautiful face. She looked at him, smiling and he would never forget her last words to him... "Did you like the movie?"

Like flicking off a light switch, she was gone.