The Shadow of Your Smile

27

Andrew and Sarah Winkler had lived all their married lives in a comfortable apartment on York Avenue and Seventy-ninth Street in Manhattan, a block from the East River. Childless, they had never been tempted to move to the suburbs. “God forbid,” Andrew would say. “When I see a pile of leaves, I want them to belong to someone else.” Andrew, a retired accountant, and Sarah, a retired librarian, were perfectly content with their lifestyle. Several evenings a week they were at Lincoln Center or a lecture at the 92nd Street Y. Once a month they treated themselves to a Broadway show.

A fixture in their daily routine was their after-breakfast walk. They never broke that personal commitment unless the weather was extreme. “Mist is okay, but not a downpour,” Sarah would explain to her friends. “Cold okay, but not below twenty degrees; warm okay, but not if the thermometer hits ninety. We don’t want to turn into couch potatoes, but neither do we want to die of frostbite or heatstroke.”

Sometimes they would stroll in Central Park. Other days they would choose the pedestrian path along the East River. This Thursday morning they had opted for the river walk, and set out for it in their matching all-weather jackets.

It had rained unexpectedly during the night, and Sarah remarked to Andrew that the weatherman never gets anything right and that it made you wonder how much they got paid to stand up in front of the camera and point to the map, waving their arms to show wind currents. “Half the time when they say rain is a possibility, if they opened the window they’d be drenched,” she commented, as they approached the area of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the mayor of New York. “But at least it cleared up nicely this morning.”

She broke off her commentary on the exasperating unpredictability of meteorologists by suddenly clutching her husband’s arm. “Andrew, look! Look!” They were passing a bench along the path. Partially wedged under it was an oversized garbage bag, the kind used on construction sites. Protruding from the bag was a foot with a woman’s high-heeled shoe dangling from it.

“Oh my God, my God…,” Sarah moaned.

Andrew reached in the pocket of his jacket for his cell phone and dialed 911.