We are the storytellers.

We called him A.A.-Guy. When we moved into this apartment two years ago, he was the first neighbor to introduce himself. His name was Jim and he told us he was having a party, but not a big one - we don't drink, he said, so don't worry, we'll be quiet. We didn't call him A.A.-Guy to his face, obviously, but that was the story we told ourselves about him.

Jim had the craggy face and distant eyes of a reformed alcoholic. He smelled of twelve-step program. He drove a big truck and a Harley. He was constantly smoking. We always knew when he came and went. Even though the entire apartment building had been told, on many occasions, that there was no smoking in the public areas, e.g., hallways, porch, balcony, et cetera, Jim always smoked as he stalked through the hallways. Either coming or going, the stink of cigarettes and the stomp of his boots heralded his presence.

He was the building handy-man. When something broke, our landlord always sent Jim in first. Jim inspected the leak in our bathroom ceiling. Jim was the first one to see the water pouring down our walls when last winter's snowfall melted through the roof. At times, it was like he never slept. He was always busy. He would wake us up at the crack of dawn, mowing the lawn just outside our window. He seemed to come and go at all hours, always barking on his cell phone.

Jim was loud. He annoyed us to no end. He wouldn't stop smoking on the porch, right in front of our window. It seemed malicious, like he was doing it on purpose. We thought he hated us. There was a heart there though. He had regular guests and the occasional roommate. We told ourselves these were fellow recovering alcoholics Jim was helping to stay clean.  I saw him at the detox facility once, picking up a guy from the drunk tank. When my cursed car became too much to maintain, Jim was the one who bought it from me for the two-hundred dollars it wasn't worth. When he would drive past me while walking to the bus stop, he'd offer me a ride. But this morning, we woke up and Jim was dead.

I heard a frantic pounding on a door upstairs. I heard someone running through the hall and out the front door. I went and looked out the window. A woman in pajamas was sitting in a car talking on a cell phone. She was radiating nervous energy. Slowly neighbors began to congregate in the front lawn. Friends we'd seen Jim with joined the pajama-clad neighbors. A police car arrived. Then another, and another. The forensics truck arrived. Then the coroner. Finally, a nondescript white minivan with a stretcher.

We watched through the window and listened to the stories. No one had seen him since Friday night. His friends had been trying to reach him all day Saturday. One neighbor said he'd been having a lot of problems lately. The police asked a lot of questions about any strange vehicles in the area. They asked about his massage therapist girlfriend. Outside on the lawn, everyone talked about when they'd last seen him, everyone speculated about what had happened. 

We speculated as well. We tried to complete the story. Was it a suicide? If so, what kind of person was Jim? We never heard a gun shot, so we ruled that out. Was he the kind to hang himself? If the story we'd told ourselves was true, did he succumb to the demons that drove him to drink in the first place? Was the darkness finally too much to overcome? Did he drown himself in pills & liquor? I thought I heard a neighbor say 'heroin'?  Really, did I hear that?  Or was it a trick of the wind and my ear?  How would that play into the tale?  What if it was murder? What if his massage therapist was a "massage therapist"? What if his girlfriend and the other women who frequented his apartment weren't girlfriends at all? What if, what if?  we asked ourselves.  We heard a cell phone ring.  It sounded like Jim's ubiquitous tone.  "The ringing of a dead man's telephone," I said.

When we finally left the house, the police were still here, chatting on the lawn while forensics and the coroner were upstairs in Jim's apartment.  As we drove away, they wheeled the stretcher out. Jim's body, covered in a rusty red blanket, was loaded into the white van.  We wanted to see this, we wanted to seem him leave.  The story, the experience, didn't seem complete until we saw Jim leave.  Like a splinter in our morning, the wound wouldn't heal until we saw him leave.  We thought about the story, character arc, and wondered about the story we'd constructed for Jim.  Was it true? Was it fair?  What if we'd weaved him a different tale?  What then?