Here name was Jackie, dammit. Not, "Jacqueline."
She liked football and animals and Pinot Grigio. She liked the latter quite a lot.
All that separated our lives was a few thin layers of drywall. She was gorgeous, not the frowning face the newspapers have chosen to show.
More than that, she was beautiful in a way that didn't even threaten my girlfriend, Jenni.
Jenni's first reaction, upon seeing the ID photo or mug-shot or whatever bad-shot the gutter-draggers passing themselves off as "journalists" published was to exclaim, "Where's her smile?"
Indeed. Jackie's smile could light up the whole out of doors, not just a room.
She was murdered this weekend. According to a friend of Jenni's privy to local law enforcement, it was grisly. A single shot from a large caliber weapon.
My girlfriend apparently heard it. Not knowing what guns sound like, outside of the fiction of film, she thought it might have been one of our cats engaging in the casual destruction of which they are so very adept.
She was wrong. I was asleep. It didn't even register. Then, this happened.
For the last 2 days, our world has been cops. City cops. County cops. State cops. They all descended upon us. Multiple interviews with cops. Telling them all the same thing; "No. I don't know anything. No, it doesn't make sense. No, I never thought there were any serious problems."
And Vultures. Taking pictures. Plastering my exact address and photos of my home across the internet. Which has brought the gawkers, the rubber-neckers and the sick-fucks. You want a photo? Here's a fucking photo. From inside my house.
Then, there is the obvious suspect. His name is "Doug," although the media, as of this writing, has not yet released it.
I liked him, too. He was nice to me. We often talked while his crazy, dumb dog tried to jump on me and knock me over. I liked that he was such a good neighbor. Whenever he had friends over, he would knock and say, "Hey, buddy. Wanna hang out? Just lettin' you know we might be loud and stuff."
More often than not, I would decline. But, it felt great to have people we thought we could trust.
They were also very beautiful together.
To be honest, I thought of Doug as a very, very lucky man to have so lovely a lady.
Which just serves to make this uglier and harder to deal with.
It was his mother whom I consoled outside in the earliest hours of Monday morning.
She loved Jackie. Everybody loved Jackie.
Jackie was altogether lovable.
And special.
And now, our world is the stuff of bullshit TV-movies and hangers-on and quick-buck artists hawking manipulative crap about "domestic incidents."
And blah, blah, blah. And blah, blah, blah.
I just want her back...
Walking up the driveway in that ridiculous pancho she actually knew how to rock.
Flashing a peace-sign as if it were current. Beaming that smile and asking, "How are you?"
So that I might shoot back, "good... and you?"
As it is with all things that are too hard to fathom and, simultaneously, too ordinarily lurid...
I want a Goddamn explanation.
In spite of the fact that I know there will never, ever be one.
