Chapter 12 Friday, May 13

Lieutenant O'Shaughnessy had been reading the note on her desk that Clark had left her.He invited O'Shaughnessy to dinner at his house, offering to cook for her himself.He wants to cook by himself? She left a message on his voicemail, asking to come back another day.She hadn't given herself enough time to consider exactly where her relationship with Clark was supposed to go.Or what their relationship will mean for Tim and the kids.Maybe she's just avoiding it because she's not ready for a new relationship.But she had to admit, she liked Clark.And I like it very much. She recalled the sound of his rapid breathing as he kissed her neck that night in his car.One arm was around her shoulders, and one hand was wrapped tightly around her leg in his lap.That feeling made her want to come again a few times, and she also hoped that his hands could move further.But she was ashamed of her own thoughts.

It's not a good time to have dinner, she told him.She still has a lot to do at home.The children's clothes need to be laundered, groceries need to be bought, and bills need to be paid.By the way, Clark, I can't really come over tonight because if I did we'd have sex, which is what people usually do after initial contact, right? If there is a chance in the future, they will definitely have sex.Her life will take a whole new direction, one that other people she loves may not approve of. "Lieutenant," Constable Randall called.She quickly looked out through the glass, and Randall gestured to her with three fingers.She pressed the call button on the table. "Hi, this is Lieutenant O'Shaughnessy."

"It's me again, Detective Payne, of the Philadelphia Police Department." "Inspector Payne, have you received the autopsy report I sent?" "That's why I called to say thank you." "So I can get Andrew Marco's body out of the freezer now." "Actually, I would like to ask you not to do so." Payne wasn't sure if he could find out the truth, but if there was a chance he could find out that his death wasn't an accident, he wanted to try.If possible, he would take Marco's daughter to Wildwood tonight after Shirley visited the funeral home.

O'Shaughnessy took a pencil and tapped it lightly on the table. He leaned back on the chair and put one foot on the desk. "Okay. How long do you need?" "Just over a week is enough. I just figured out the breaking point in this case." A whirlwind blew by, turning up a pile of dead leaves.The whirlwind carried the dead leaves across the courtyard and finally scattered on a mound near the shed. The wind carried the salty smell of the sea and the smell of something rotting. Jeremy ran to the window, and the wind-blown curtains brushed against his face lightly.Dark rain clouds were approaching from the east, and several large barges were moving slowly across the headland.There was a rumble of thunder in the clouds, a gust of wind rustled the leaves, and something screamed piercingly.Jeremy hurriedly lowered the curtains and retreated into the house.

There was a deathly silence in the house, and he could smell the aroma of coffee and roasting meat wafting from downstairs.are they homeThen he should be called to have breakfast now, they will call him every morning. The screaming grew louder.He looked around his room. The baseball postcards on the bedside table had been blown to the floor, and the medals hanging from the trophies were jingling in the wind.He glanced up, and the medals from the mayor hanging on the wall were also shaking in the wind. He looked out of the window again, and the sea seemed to be rushing toward the house from the east.He immediately ran to the living room, and then ran down the stairs in three steps at a time.Unexpectedly, as soon as he reached the first floor, the floor-to-ceiling windows were broken, and a green wall of water rushed towards him.

The rooms on the first floor were flooded by sea water, and he was also trapped on the first floor.He kept paddling with his hands, struggling to swim to the stairs.A bucket floated past him, and then a pair of glasses floated by, and his chest seemed to be crushed by an elephant, and he couldn't breathe, blood pouring from a wound on his leg. Tick, tick, tick... He felt something dripping onto his head. What is dripping down? Tick, tick, tick... Slowly, he opened his eyes and found the source under a rusty sink. It turned out to be a blue coffee can lying diagonally under the drain valve.

Beside him, there was a big wet mattress floating. He grabbed the edge of the mattress vigorously, trying to turn over and lie on it, but unexpectedly, the mattress turned over after being stressed on one side, and pressed him underneath. His forehead was submerged in water. His right arm began to spasm so violently that he had to grab the mattress with his other hand and look around his room nervously.Everything changed in a blink of an eye, the beautiful curtains were gone, only a faded off-white towel wrapped around the window.The trophies and dresser were gone, as were the baseball postcards on the floor.

Jeremy woke up suddenly and it turned out to be a dream.He sat up, pulled on his only pair of trousers, and while trying to control the spasms in his arms, he ran through his hair twice with a battered comb.Then he went into the bathroom and took a handful of cold water to wash his face.Cold water is the only water temperature here, this is what the landlady said.Mrs. Lester also controls the heat, and in the winter she turns it down most of the time, "because the heat goes up and warms her room enough to warm Jeremy upstairs. That's it." So in winter, Jeremy wrapped himself up in blankets he found in the garbage.

Before heading out, Jeremy puts on his dirty brown overalls that he wears all year round, tall rubber boots, and rubber gloves. It's foggy outside.He walked quickly, with his toes turned in, and he limped on his right leg.A white canvas bag was hung on his shoulder, and an iron fork for picking paper was firmly held in his trembling hand.He is going to have breakfast at the harbor first. The waves were high this morning, black waves washing the jetty in white foam.Seagulls peck at the sea crabs brought up by the waves for breakfast on the beach.He thought of the dream he had just had, and felt an inexplicable sadness in his heart.

The Crow's Nest is a pub for fishermen, a small square building between the ice bank and the bait storage room.There was a funky jukebox in the bar, and a telephone, but it was fixed to the bar so no one could steal it.Tables and stools are fixed to the ground with screws.No one plays pool at midnight, so there is no need to buy a pool table.The only fun for fishermen is to roll the dice, and they usually lose all the money they just earned from fishing in a short time. Jeremy had left the canvas bag and the fork outside the door, and Janet had told him they were too smelly to bring into the bar.The bar has thick wooden floors and a wrought-iron fire.The bar is L-shaped and only fits ten stools.Jeremy habitually walked to the seat by the window where he used to sit.He stepped over a brown dog curled up in the men's room door and heard the flushing sound from the toilet.

"Hi, Jeremy," Janet greeted him, poured him a paper cup of coffee, and put the sugar and cream on the bar. Jeremy walked over with a smile and looked at Janet lovingly, "Morning...good morning, Janet." Janet returned him a charming smile. Janet sympathizes with Jeremy.Although he was always dressed in rags, he was still a handsome fellow.Some people who didn't know him also admitted this.If he had trimmed his hair a little and made up a little, you might think he was a distinguished guest from afar. When he picked up the candy, his arm started to twitch again, but he managed to add it to the coffee without spilling any of it.He proudly replaced the sugar bowl and picked up the coffee. Outside the bar, a small fishing trawler is sailing out of the harbour, its nets high on steel plates that look like two wings.Jeremy heard its low whistle and looked up out of the window. The lights on the boat disappeared in the thick fog in an instant. As Janet busied herself clearing away people's glasses, she wondered how Jeremy could turn his luck around.She often wondered if Jeremy would have lived bravely if he knew the tragedy that had happened to him. "Did you cut your hair again, Jeremy?" she asked him aloud, for he was a little deaf in one ear. "Yes... yes... yes, Janet." He lied and wiped his hair with his hands in embarrassment.Janet walked up to him, patted his head lightly, and said, "You do look more refreshed. As I said earlier, the sides should be cut short to look good. This is the most popular hairstyle nowadays." .” Jeremy felt as happy as living in paradise. There was another flushing sound from the toilet, and a fisherman in a rubber suit came out.Janet puts his order of beer on the bar.Jeremy looked down from his coffee mug to see the reflection of his head in the coffee. Janet went to school ten years after Jeremy, but everyone knows what he went through.In school that year, he was the best whether he played football or baseball, and he was the only student who won the title of "Best Player" consecutively.Later in the state Olympic Games, he won almost all the gold medals. But after his accident, all the previous honors were gone from him forever.Not to mention playing football or baseball, even something as simple as drinking coffee is difficult for him to take care of himself, and it is rare for him not to spill the coffee. Sometimes people who drink here will mention him in the past.As soon as Jeremy heard that familiar name, or saw an exciting sports scene on the TV in the bar, his eyes would light up and his face would show a puzzled expression. He had really forgotten the name and He didn't matter, but his bewildered look was fleeting. After the accident, he didn't even know his parents.They tried their best to take care of him for several years, but they didn't see any improvement in his condition, so they left him disheartened and left the town.On that day in 1976, Jeremy's life with his parents ended, and with the help of the townspeople, he began a new life of his own. Janet reached for a glass and dabbed it dry with a rag.Jeremy pulled out a coin and waved it in front of her eyes, and Janet gave him another charming smile. Jeremy is no longer what he used to be.Janet always wondered if he still had the linen ribbon that once hung around his neck with his medals?Had he met his high school sweetheart and her three grown children on the street?Did he notice the black-framed photograph that still hangs in the window of a shoe store?It was a photo of him in his jersey after winning a game with his "76 Warriors" teammates.If he pays attention to these, does he remember anything? Did he know that cheerleader Daryl McCormick was in Playboy?Did he know that Derek Hunter had died in Twenta?And did he know that Bill Grant and Gavin Thomas had died of AIDS, and that the Mitchelson brothers had both made the NFL? Janet put down her glass, walked over to Jeremy, and picked up the coin. "Thank you, baby." She patted his hand lightly, and to spare him embarrassment, Janet turned and walked away. Jeremy walked out of the bar at eight twenty.He picked up his fork, put an empty coffee cup into the cloth bag, and walked into an alley that led directly to the seaside drive. Trucks are busy unloading goods, and store owners are also busy cleaning up the garbage at the door, preparing to open their doors. On the road, car horns blared non-stop, and Jeremy walked among them, walked through one alley after another, crossed one street after another, and finally arrived on time at nine o'clock in the morning along a small fork 26th Street and the boardwalk. It never occurred to him why he would take a detour every time he walked through the high school gate, or that he would look at himself on the glass doors of the gymnasium, or that he would know how to cut across the parking lot to the football field.He never thought that those cheerleaders used to shout his name loudly in this stadium, and the crowded crowd stood up and shouted for him when he was running towards the finish line.He followed a path past the stadium gates and a hot dog kiosk built of slatted wood to the beach. It's Jeremy's job to clean up the litter on the beach and boardwalk.He's usually down the boardwalk picking up trash that people leave on the beach.Every morning, he could hear the sound of bicycles running over his head, then the footsteps of pedestrians, and the roar of trams. Most of the time, he kneels in the sewers below the boardwalk and digs for trash.But sometimes there were places where he could stand up, and he could look through the cracks between the planks at the people on the boardwalk, watching their bright clothes flash by. He loves the smell of the food that surrounds the boardwalk, with roasted peanuts, toffee, sausage and pizza.He also likes to watch people sunbathing on the beach. He picked up a sock, a candy wrapper, and a discarded bra. Before throwing it into the sack, he took a good look at it. "Breast...breast...bra." He giggled speak. The fog gradually dissipated, and the sun became more and more glaring.Soon the last bit of mist will all clear away, revealing the blue sky. Jeremy walked along the beach, his rubber boots comfortable in the soft sand, his eyes wary of the nasty trash.A plane roared and circled over the beach, dragging long advertising banners from its wings.He picked up another box of birth control pills, a dead fish, two paper cups and a hamburger box.His sack was filling quickly, and he climbed the steps up the boardwalk and emptied the contents of the sack into the trash can.Then he went down and up again... At noon, he put the cloth bag and fork on the beach, and then came back with the plastic coffee cup full of black beans and rice.He found a place under the boardwalk and sat down, eating half of the beans and rice and pocketing the other half for dinner. Another sunny day.The beach is full of people.Some of them played frisbee, some played badminton, some played football, and some played some things that were always fun in Jeremy's opinion. The girls on the beach wore very little, and Jeremy grinned when he saw girls in bras and shorts.There are not too many people on the beach right now, and in another month, the beach will be covered with greasy and shiny bodies, making it hard to see. He seldom squeezed into the crowd, and even if he got close sometimes, he just walked around the crowd.If they wanted to chat with him, he wasn't ready to listen.He was there to pick up trash, and they were there to make trash.He has to keep that in mind, as his boss, Ben Johnson, told him. A row of tall and majestic hotels cast a huge shadow on the beach under the afternoon sun.A group of trainee lifeguards were watching from the shore as they performed rescue drills in a small orange lifeboat. He was at Ronin's Pier by five o'clock, and he walked straight down the drainpipe.The middle part of the drainpipe was raised by a bracket, and then fell down along the bracket.He picked up a handkerchief in the sewer under the boardwalk, and saw another at the bottom of the drainpipe.Jeremy was six feet tall and would often hit his head in the sewers, so every step he took down there was careful to look up at the top first, when suddenly he saw something gleaming in a crack in the planks. He dug it out with the handle of his plastic spoon, and it turned out to be a ring embedded in a lump of dark muck. Jeremy left the bag in the sewer and crawled out into the sun.The strong sunlight made him unable to open his eyes.He had no choice but to cover his eyes with his hands, and slowly, after his eyes gradually adapted to the strong light, he walked towards the sea.He stopped at the water's edge, looked at the small hole left on the beach after the low tide, and squatted down. A flock of seagulls circles the shore, waiting for their meal to crawl out of those little holes.They crossed Ronin's Wharf, flew north as far as the boardwalk and Atlantic Avenue, turned suddenly west, and then circled above the waves.One landed on the sand beside him.He put the ring in the water, scrubbed it vigorously with his fingers, and when all the mud was washed away, he stood up. The ring is gold with the letters AMC engraved on it. Jeremy used to find rings and other jewellery, too, from time to time, though most of them were plastic, but there were some metal ones like this one too.Every time he found these things in the past, he always notified his boss, Mr. Johnson.But then Mr. Johnson said he was tired of having to drive every time he picked up the rubbish, and told Jeremy that unless he picked up something with shiny white stones on it, nothing else He can keep everything for himself. Jeremy pocketed the ring and returned to the sewer to retrieve his sack.He went on south and picked up more rubbish until he reached Kress Avenue and his day's work was over. It was past five and Jeremy was late again.Sometimes Mr. Johnson passed by at five o'clock and would drive him back to Mrs. Lester's flat.Of course, he got into the trunk of the car every time, because Jeremy smelled so bad, and Jeremy never wanted to sit in the car himself.Jeremy originally wanted to show Mr. Johnson the gold ring he picked up today, but it was too late when he came out of the sewer, and Mr. Johnson had already gone on inspection. On the sand near the slopes of Kress Avenue, a football game was going on.Jeremy sat in the shade under the sidewalk and watched the men jump up to catch the ball, then pass the spinning ball to a teammate, who leaned over to catch it. Football is a mystery to him.He himself doesn't know why, but every time he sees someone playing football, a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness rises in his heart.He also feels this way whenever he wakes up from his sleep.In his dreams he always imagined himself to be someone else, living in another house, but when he awoke he was still in Mrs. Lester's house, lying in his broken bed.When the leaves turn yellow in the fall, when the school bus goes by and the screams of children come from the windows, when he sees the black-framed photo in Mr. Bowser's shoe repair shop , that feeling would well up in his heart.He had also heard several times that a school bus had been involved in an accident in which all the children died.But every time he approached, people lowered their voices, as if they were afraid he would hear them.It was rarely mentioned after that. Maybe he'll run a few laps on the way home tonight when he passes the playground behind the high school.Thinking of this, he laughed.