I momentarily lost my hearing due to a long exhausted yawn and missed the blast of the gunshot next door. I probably wouldn’t have identified the sound anyway. I only know what guns sound like from movies and that’s probably an exaggerated noise. A fake sound effect produced by items other than guns. I think those people are called foley artists. They work in a recording studio and make sounds for films. It sounds like a fun job. I saw this thing once about the movie Psycho (1960) and how they stabbed a casaba melon to mimic the sound of a naked woman getting stabbed to death in a shower.

Hollywood has lots of good ideas.

There was no scream as far as I could tell. Nothing that indicated trouble. Apart from the gunshot. Which I didn’t hear. The neighbors next door (where the gunshot occurred) were a middle-aged couple named Bosko and Connie. His real name wasn’t actually Bosko. Bosko was a nickname that everyone (including Connie herself) used when addressing him. The news said his official name was Belvedere Aurelio Spilletocci. If that were my name I’d probably go by Bosko too. Belvedere means “beautiful view” in Italian which is ironic since he was shot in the face with a .44 Magnum. Beautiful view my eye! There was an old cartoon character named Bosko back in the 30s. One of the original Looney Tunes characters. That’s the studio where Bugs Bunny came from. Although I think Warner Bros. was the main company for all that stuff. There’s also a type of chocolate syrup but that’s spelled differently. So it’s not really relevant.

The local news didn’t mention any of that.

Anyway, I used to hear Connie and Bosko argue and talk sometimes because the partition between us is made of lightweight drywall and sound can travel through it with complete ease. That’s the reason I remain mostly silent in my day to day life. That and the fact that I live alone. Most of my conversations only happen in my head, where nobody else can hear them. I don’t make much noise apart from that. Music makes me nervous. So sometimes I’d listen to them yell at each other but they never said anything that indicated they were capable of murder.

I was wrong about that, of course.

I am not an eavesdropper. It’s not like I held a glass to my ear to listen to them. Their conversations just seeped into my head through my innocent ears. It was spillage, like getting wet when a car splashes through a puddle. It can’t be helped if you’re just standing on the sidewalk minding your own business and a car splatters summer mud all over your legs. It’s the cost of doing business in the first place.

I’m not a peeping Tom either.

Anyway, the police came to my door to ask me about the incident. They told me that Connie shot Bosko and asked me if I’d heard anything and I told them, “Not really,” and related the facts as I knew them. I told them that they mostly argued about minor issues. They just didn’t get along. I told the police that sometimes couples grow apart and familiarity breeds contempt. I informed them that Bosko and Connie didn’t work or go out much, so they were trapped with each other all the time. In close quarters. Day in and day out. That kind of living condition can prey on one’s mind. There’s this French term, folie a deux which describes a psychological disorder that affects two people at once. They go crazy in the same way. I mentioned the case of the Papin sisters who were French maids that killed the family they worked for. This happened in the 30s. They gouged out the eyes of the mother and daughter and did other stuff. The whole situation was chalked up to folie a deux. There’s also folie a trois which involves three people. Not to be confused with menage a trois which means something else entirely.

I don’t know if the police found any of this information helpful.

According to reports, Connie openly admitted to the crime. If I were a betting man I’d wager that she’ll plead insanity. If she really had folie a deux it might serve that defense well in court. She might also say that Bosko attacked her and plead self-defense. In that case I might be called to testify because I told the police that they were not fighting on the day Connie shot Bosko. I didn’t hear a thing. If I have to go to court and testify I would feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. It would be a lot of responsibility. My testimony could send Connie to the death chair. That sort of thing can burden one’s conscience. Especially since I am opposed to the death penalty on general principles. There are lots of botched executions. A lot more than people realize. There was a guy in Florida named Gustav Arapaho whose head burst into flames in the electric chair. The whole room filled with black smoke and made the witnesses sick. Before an electrocution they place a sodden sponge on the head of the condemned. Gustav’s sponge was misapplied and dry. Lethal injections have been known to go awry as well. I imagine it’s hard to find a competent executioner since most people wouldn’t want the job. Me included.

I only saw Connie a few times in the ten years I’ve lived in this building. She has a big hairdo and is, for all intents and purposes, attractive. She made a funny couple with Bosko because she was taller than him by about fifteen inches. Plus the hairdo. They weren’t exactly bookends! They reminded me of Boris and Natasha, who were cartoon characters on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (1959-1964). The characters were villainous Russians as the program was produced at the height of the Cold War. The show was partly propagandistic but often very funny and clever. It might seem offensive to Russian viewers nowadays.

But that’s neither here nor there.

As I said, as far as I know Connie and Bosko were never physical with each other. I mean that in a fighting, abusive sense. I also never heard them “make whoopee” to quote Bob Eubanks, who was the host of The Newlywed Game, a game show where bickering couples won prizes. Eubanks would use the term “make whoopee” instead of “have sexual intercourse” which was a term you couldn’t say on TV at the time. It would be kind of funny if Connie and Bosko had gone on The Newlywed Game. I can just imagine.

It’s much too late for Bosko now, of course.

I once spoke to Bosko in the parking lot outside. This was years ago. He was rooting around in the trunk of his car which was a vintage 1975 Ford Gran Torino. I don’t know much about cars but I know that the Gran Torino was what they drove on Starsky and Hutch (1975-1979), a show about two cops who have a good rapport with each other and investigate crimes. The guy that played Hutch was played by David Soul who was also a singer. He had a hit song called, “Don’t Give Up On Us Baby” which I remember hearing on the radio at the time. I guess I’m sort of giving away my age here….

Anyway, I passed by Bosko who was leaning into his trunk and he looked up and saw me and his face was all red and sweaty and he said, “Good morning,” with a smile that I interpreted as being more polite and perfunctory than friendly or glad to see me. So I informed him it was actually 1:00 p.m. which meant it was actually the afternoon. And thus not “morning” anymore. His smile disappeared and he ducked back into his trunk. I looked over and saw he was fiddling around with a Styrofoam cooler, filling it with bags of ice. I also noticed he had a case of Budweiser beer too and that’s how I learned he was a drinking man.

I told the police about this observation but they didn’t seem to think it was noteworthy. So I told them that alcohol can make some people abusive and that might help inform the whole legal scenario. It might give Connie more of a motive for her drastic action.

But they didn’t write any of my observations down.

I’ve never been much of a drinker myself. I think the last time I drank was at my sister’s wedding in 1989. We had a toast with champagne and I drank my glass but it didn’t make me feel anything. My sister had married a guy named Lin who worked at a law firm in Seattle and got fired and arrested for embezzlement. He stole the money because he was addicted to cocaine, which was trendy at the time. There was a neighborhood he used to visit to buy cocaine in powder form that was known colloquially as “The Nosebleed Bazaar.”

But that’s a whole other story.