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I asked if there was any Lee at Rosie’s house and that was a negatory too.
We took off to go see Rosie’s friend, emergency contact numero uno. He had a house in the Highlands area. Great old houses and bungalows, though Rosie’s friend didn’t live in one that had been renovated. For that matter, he didn’t live in a block that had a single house that had been renovated. Or in a block that had a single house with more than a dozen blades of genuine grass growing in their yards or decent curtains in their windows. It was semi-wasteland.
We knocked to no answer.
We sat in my car and called the house number on my cell phone, no answer.
We scanned the neighborhood and Ally pointed to the end of the block.
We got out of the car and walked to the corner Stop & Stab, which had surprisingly not been crushed by the overabundance of Denver’s convenience stores. A guy of Arab descent stood behind the counter.
We walked up to him and he smiled.
“You want gum?” he asked.
“No, we’re—” I started to say.
“Cigarettes? They’re bad for you but I have to sell them or I’ll go bust. Everyone in this neighborhood smokes cigarettes.”
I shook my head and then wondered briefly why Lee smelled like tobacco. I hadn’t seen him smoke since he enlisted.
I noticed Ally staring at me like,Hello?and I shook out of my Lee Reverie.
“You know Rosie Coltrane?” I asked.
“You’re not buying goods?” the counter man asked back, looking both disappointed and defeated.
I couldn’t help myself. He immediately made me sad.
“Yes, mints,” I grabbed a pack of mints and put it on the counter.
He stared at the mints.
I stared at the mints.
Ally stared at the mints.
The mints seemed lonely and the purchase of the mints was not going to do anything to help feed this man’s family.
I put another pack of mints on the counter, followed it with two candy bars and then walked over to the fridge and grabbed two bottles of water and two diet pops.
On the way back to the counter, I grabbed a box of cream-filled, prepackaged cupcakes. I hadn’t had a cupcake in ages.
He happily started ringing up my purchases. “Who are you looking for again?”
“Rosie Coltrane. He works for me and didn’t come into work today and I’m worried,” I lied.
I was a good liar. I’d been doing it since Lee, Ally and I were caught behind the garage trying to smoke leaves when Ally and I were eight and Lee was eleven. I came up with the imaginative excuse that we were thinking about roasting marshmallows but didn’t know how. Malcolm bought it. Kids, marshmallows, my cute, angelic smile. It all seemed benign and plausible.
After we got off with just a lecture about fire safety and the danger of matches, Lee tousled my hair.
Happy memories.
“I do not know a man named Rosie. What kind of man has a name like Rosie?” the counter man stated.
“Rosey Grier?” Ally tried.
“I don’t know a Rosey Grier either,” the counter man said.
