The guy in the apartment below me is a large man, the kind of guy who walks around in the winter with a wifebeater on to show off muscles he developed 20 years ago that have since gone to seed. I've also suspected for about a week now that he was abusing his son.
Sweet kid, about fourteen years old, tall for his age but rail thin. Very artsy, from what I can tell, but not in that obnoxious goth way some kids are - the kind of teenager you'd expect to stumble across as the victim on a television movie. And every once in a while he has bruises.
They're not huge, or particularly nasty looking, but they do unmistakably demonstrate that someone is beating up on this kid. I hadn't brought it up with him before, because, you know, not something you can work in between "hey" and "how's school." Plus, not my place if the kid gets beat up at school - certainly not uncommon.
But about a week and a half ago, there was this huge fight below - I heard it when I got in from work and it went on for a good 20 minutes after that. Nothing to indicate violence, just the two of them, who live alone, screaming at each other. And the next day the kid has a black eye, when he didn't a couple days before.
It's become clear to me that this pattern's repeated itself a couple of times in the month and a half or so I've lived in the apartment, I just hadn't put two and two together.
Not being a man of action, I've been thinking about this for a while, wondering what to do. Then, yesterday, I notice a nice looking girl, a few years out of college by the looks of it, waiting on the porch when I get off work. She's holding a briefcase and a clipboard, looking very official. I ask if I can help her, and she asks me if she knows the people in Apartment One. Says she's from the kid's school, and from the way she says it its very obvious that she's actually from Child Protective Services.
I tell her yes, but only in an upstairs neighbor kinda way. She hesitates, then asks if I've ever noticed bruises on the kid. I hesitate, and she notices, and I ask her to the restaurant across the street to talk about it.
Five minutes later, we're sitting there, me generally looking nervous and her looking out at me with these big blue eyes from over a cup of coffee. She admits she's actually with the government, and that some teacher's at the kid's school reported his bruising, as well as this personal narrative he wrote that might as well have been titled "Daddy Only Drinks When I Anger Him." At this point I realize that something very serious is going on, that I need to step up to the plate.
So I tell her: "you have beautiful eyes."
She looks taken aback for a second, and then a smile comes washing over her and I know I'm in. Thirty minutes later, she's back in my apartment, and we're talking a little, getting to know each other a little better. She ends up spending very late. Pretty much a perfect evening, if it weren't for all the damn racket from downstairs.
So my question to you is: should I have called her back?
