7.

The side of the white Ford van read “Torres Bros.” and it had a huge painted image of an extremely happy looking man in shorts and a ball cap pushing a lawnmower while jumping in the air and clicking his heels together. The van was parked half on the curb and half on the street, resting cockeyed on the sidewalk across from the Troy home. Above it the trees of late autumn dropped the last of their crinkled, mostly brown leaves. Just one flamboyant Maple, which stood in the front yard of the Troy’s next door neighbor had the audacity to still cloak its limbs in shocks red, yellow and orange this late in the season.

Inside the van, the men who’d earlier mocked Vivian’s attempt at exercising her green thumb, made small talk and enjoyed their breakfast. Steam rose from their stainless steel thermoses as they ate their donuts. They teased the eldest among them, Joe Torres, who was also the owner of the landscaping company, about the new girl he was seeing, which was risky territory for the employees to enter considering the fact that Joe’s wife had left him for his rival, Tony Bruno, owner of “Bruno & Sons Lawn Manicuring Services.” Tony and Joe grew up on the same street in Jersey City and had been rivals, it seemed all their lives. Entrepreneurs from the start, as boys they were the first ones on their block to put up lemonade stands, competing for the same business. Tony’s business grew faster than Joe’s, though, when his dad gave him a case of plastic cups and lids he’d gotten from an associate’s warehouse allowing Tony to tap the market demand for lemonade on the go. When Joe bought a lemon yellow whatever would be a pretty cool car in 1968 but not brand new, Tony bough a cherry red whatever would top Joe’s cool car. When they both tried out for an open position as a running back on their high school’s football team, both boys made the cut, but it was Tony who was given the starting spot. Joe was Tony’s back-up. Joe had wanted to go to Rutgers, but it was Tony who actually got in. Joe went to Temple and majored in horticulture and architectural landscaping, came out of school and took over his father’s small lawn care service—a company that performed basic lawn care tasks like lawn mowing and weeding and provided Joe’s family with a modest but stable upbringing. Joe’s training and talent allowed him to build the service into one of the most successful landscaping businesses in metro NYC, catering to wealthy Manhattan executive’s suburban estates. Tony, on the other hand, graduate from Rutgers with a business degree and was working as an assistant manager at the local branch of a large national bank when he ran into Joe, who had come to the bank to sign papers for a loan to purchase several new vans for his booming company. They made small talk and Joe was very polite, realizing that his successful business had finally given him the upper hand in the strange dynamic between the two lifelong…acquaintances. You really couldn’t call them friends.

And then one day, Joe was coming out of a Dunkin’ Donuts shop near a job with a cardboard container of coffee and a box of donuts for his men when he saw it. A bright red pick-up truck with the words Bruno & Sons painted on the doors in bright yellow. In North Jersey, you can’t really swing a dead cat without hitting a Bruno, so Joe was at first willing to consider that it probably didn’t belong to the Bruno he counts as his nemesis. He began to make his way down the block to where his van was parked, but decided to hang out for a few minutes and weight for the truck’s driver to return. Just to be sure. At the exact time the hot coffee inside the box began to leak through a shoddy seam and burn Joe’s hand that he saw Tony, jet black pompadour on his head and bright red jumpsuit to match his truck, walking with a Bagel Chateau bag in his right fist, and the keys to the red landscaping truck in his left hand.

As it turned out, Tony Bruno, Sr., hearing from his son about the financial success Joe Torres was enjoying by simply fixing up people’s yards, found a few associates who were easily persuaded to act as investors and get Tony started in the landscaping business. The capital raised allowed Tony to start out with a fleet and state of the art equipment and three men to a truck. It wasn’t long after Joe saw the Tony and the truck that billboards started popping up on the Garden State Parkway and Routes 78 and 80. The slick commercials, a succession of clips exhibiting Bruno & Sons’ best work with a friendly voice over urging viewers to call 800-THE-YARD for a free consultation, started appearing with regular frequency on ESPN and stations that cater to wealthy males. Finally, Tony scored a gig, no doubt with the help of a favor owed his father, as the private landscaper to the Governor of New Jersey—a fact that was touted on the cover of NJ Monthly and in the pages of North Jersey Upscale Living, a publication widely coveted by those offering manual labor services in the Garden State. Once again, Tony had edged Joe out.

But he was used to losing or, as he chose to see it, coming in second place. It was better than third place. Or fourth. Or last. And ultimately, having the better car or the bigger business wasn’t as important to Joe as it was to Tony. To Joe, happiness was defined by his relationships with his family and friends. Weekends spent cooking food and drinking beers by his pool or Monday night football at the Beacon Tavern with his buddies. Get-away weekends with his wife. Summer vacations at the shore with his kids. As long as his business enabled him to enjoy good times with the people he loved, Joe was content to leave the petty one-upmanship to Tony.

Then one evening, after working late on a job, Joe decided to return to the his company’s headquarters to drop off the van rather than taking it back to his home. After such a long day, Joe was exhausted and wanted to take the next day off. He went into the office and wrote a note on yellow lines sticky, informing his staff that he’d not be in the following day and requesting that one of them clean out the inside of the van, as he’d tracked a great deal of mud into the cargo space. Joe locked up the office and walked out to where he’d parked his car that morning and the slight swaying back and forth of one of the vans in his fleet.

“What the hell,” he said as he walked in the direction of the van in question. As he got closer, the swaying became more of a rocking and he could hear quiet murmuring which soon turned into grunting and moans.

A smile crept across his face as he realized there were two people doing it in the back of one of his vans. He wondered which of the little dogs he employed had the audacity to use his property for extra-curricular activities. As he tiptoed toward the back of the van, Joe rubbed his hands together in front of him, as if here were sitting down to a delicious feast. He was going to enjoy this surprise confrontation. He wasn’t actually mad, but he was going to have fun scaring the hell of out one of the cocky little punks. Joe decided maybe he’d come in to work the nest day, after all. He couldn’t miss the opportunity to make the little fucker squirm all day and, hell, he’d need to fill the rest of the crew in on the details of whatever activity was taking place in the van.

Joe reached the van and was praying that the kid hadn’t had the smarts to lock him and his little lady inside. He fully intended to throw open the door and scare those kids right out of whatever clothes they were still wearing. Joe’s fingers quietly wrapped around the bar of the door handle and his thumb depressed the button to unlatch the door and with all his might, Joe threw the van door open.

“Aaaahaaaah!!!!” he yelled as a woman’s voice screamed in response.

“How da-” Joe began to chastise, but stopped just as quickly as he’d started and just stared at the naked couple inside his van. The man was lying on his back with his head closest to Joe, looking up at him in wide-eyed disbelief. The woman was completely naked, straddling the man and covering hear breasts with her arms. The silence between the couple in the van and the owner standing outside of it lasted only momentarily and Joe spoke first.

“Why are you hiding your tits from your husband, Melissa?” he said. “I’ve been looking at them for 25 years.” And then Joe walked away from the van. The woman, still naked, jumped out of the vehicle and barefoot ran after him across the gravel parking lot.

“Joe! Joe, please come back. Please Joe,” his wife yelled after him, but he didn’t stop and he didn’t turn around. There was no sign of a naked Tony Bruno following after Melissa, though Joe assumed he remained back at the van to gloat. Once again, Tony got the better of Joe. And Joe’s own wife helped him do it.

He reached his car and fumbled with is key, giving his now sobbing wife the opportunity to catch him. “I’m sorry. Oh God Joe, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me. We can work this out. We’re going to be okay.” As she pleaded with him, she tried to hug him, tried to pull him toward her. But the naked body and the gorgeous curves and soft skin that he’d worshipped since it was 25-years-old, now only repulsed him. The moment she touched him, the numbness that overcame him back at the van all but disappeared and it was replaced with rage.

Melissa reached for Joe’s face, attempting to kiss his lips and still begging for forgiveness, but he pushed her away and she stumbled backwards, landing on her ass in the stones. She stayed down on the ground as he spoke.

“Whore. I have no love for you. Do not come home.” He got in his car and backed out quickly and carelessly, despite the fact that his wife was on the ground, inches from his tires. He drove away and didn’t allow himself to look in the rearview until he was certain her form wouldn’t be part of the view.

Melissa stayed away for a while. She knew she had betrayed her husband and that he was devastated. She knew it would take time before he could look at her again and not call her a whore. She knew of his history with Tony Bruno, which is also why she believed she deserved to be called a whore. But she also knew that she was Joe’s first and only love. That aside from her, Joe had only made love to one other woman in his life. She’d fucked up majorly and she knew she’d probably pay for it in one way or another for the rest of her life. But Melissa knew that Joe needed her. So on a Friday night about three weeks after the incident, she gathered her courage to return to her home to ask for Joe’s forgiveness. But this time it was her turn to be betrayed when Jane, Joe’s 29-year-old, live-in girlfriend, answered Melissa’s door. And she was wearing Melissa’s aquamarine and diamond earrings from Tiffany. The ($60,000!) gift Joe had given her on their 25th anniversary last year .