I Think The Neighbor Is Dead, Part IV

The strip of grass near the street is easily neglected. Because it isn't near the sprinklers, it needs more personal attention than the main lawn.

I pulled the hose across the driveway. The hose caddy spun its wheels as I tugged. I dialed the nozzle to its customary gentle shower mode. The sidewalk grass is a mixture of grassy weeds and turf. Years of neglect have allowed the intruding grasses to gain a stranglehold of the area. The week before I broadcasted weed-killing fertilizer and it seemed to have cleared some of the grasses. Unfortunately, the war for the turf has been stymied because of the asbence of consistent water.

I pulled the trigger on the hose and drenched the right side of the grass. In the distance, I heard a car screech around the street corner. A silver convertible Mustang with its top down was ambling down the road. The stereo was blaring a type music not blared from an automobile since the late 1970s. Maybe it was Styx or even Air Supply. A-ha! Only one person on this street blasts Air Supply--it was, our boy, Geoff!

He was his regular unhealthy, gaunt self with overly large sunglasses in the vein of Sophia Loren. I stopped my watering and held the hose at my side and enthusiastically waved him down with the other. He abruptly stopped at my patch of dying sod.

"What's up, dude?"

"Hey," I said, "We thought you were d-d-d-d, You're alive! What happened to you the other night?"

Geoff turned down the music and toned down his flamboyant mood for a second.

He said that he had been feeling depressed over his illness and felt like he had hit rock bottom. On that Saturday night while there was a party across the street from his home, Geoff nearly took his life.

He mentioned that he washed down a handfull of sleeping pills with vodka that night and nearly killed himself. The sheriff, paramedics and fire department were dispatched around two in the morning. One part of the mystery was still unclear, though.

If Geoff wasn't dead then why were his friends rummaging around his house and hauling artifacts away? A few days later, Geoff returned to invite us to a party he was throwing. Evidently, his friends, while he was in the hospital, were cleaning up the place for him. Seems suspicious. Within a week of nearly kicking the bucket, he's planning a soiree of expensive sushis and boos?

Regardless, the case is closed. Geoff the Rocker is alive and kicking.