Sipowicz
by Molly-Ann Leikin

I've been watching too much NYPD Blue. 'Way too much. And I've almost become detective Sipowicz, the character deliciously played by Dennis Franz. Frankly, I'd rather be Martina Hingis, the tennis champion.

But Jay Neremberg had been my reliable webmaster for three years. Every two weeks, I sent him an e mail, giving him the changes to the Songwriter's Collaboration Network, and my new column. He'd always respond immediately, telling me the work would be completed within a day or two, and when it was, he wanted me to go over it to make sure he got it right. Then I sent him a check.

Jay wouldn't take the money until the work was done. That's the kind of man he was.

So imagine my surprise when, in early May, I sent him the customary email with my new column and the SCN changes, and he didn't reply. I kept sending an e mail a day, but he didn't answer. Then I called his house, but the phone was disconnected. So was his pager. I called information. No listing. Strange. Very strange. I thought he might've succumbed to some blonde and run off to Rio, but Jay would've told me if he were doing that, and most likely would've even found me a replacement webmaster. That's the kind of man he was.

So I figured he would call me in a day or two with a new phone number and address, but that didn't happen. A few days later, as I went through my bank statement, I got a nut in my gut when I noticed my check had been cashed, which was completely out of character.

Something was very wrong.

That's when I jumped into my car and raced over to the West Hollywood address to which I'd been sending Jay's checks for three years. West Hollywood was a place I stayed away from, ever since a former client who lived there was arrested for and pled "no contest" to raping fourteen women. And I notice his apartment building was right next door to Jay's.

This wasn't a good sign.

When I rang the buzzer of apartment 309, there was no answer. When I buzzed the manager, she told me 309 was vacant.

"Can't be. Jay lives there."

"No he doesn't."

"Well where did he go? He works for me. I have all the cancelled checks to prove it. Tell me what happened!"

She couldn't. I wasn't a blood relative.

This wasn't sounding good.

I was shaking so badly I couldn't even open my car door. And although I knew where the police station was, having passed it every single day of my life for ten years on my way into town to see my publishers, that night I couldn't find it. Circling block after block, I finally flagged down a police car and asked the cops to lead me to the station.

That's where I found out Jay was dead.

He was thirty years old and had a heart attack. Bam. Since he lived alone, and did all his business on the internet, nobody missed him at work, nobody was used to seeing him leave the building in the morning, and nobody thought it was strange that he didn't answer his phone.

I was devastated, especially when the manager told me Jay had been dead for four days before she found him. I felt so badly that I didn't know he was in trouble, 'cause if I had known, if anybody had, the paramedics could have been there in seconds. I wish I could've said goodbye, because he was a good man and a friend, someone I loved. He shouldn't have died alone at age 30 on the floor of a tacky West Hollywood apartment, next door to a rapist, unable to dial 911, and ask for help.

Jay's death was a terrible loss. And like any death, especially when it is a young person, the only consolation we can take from it is the reminder that we don't have all the time in the world, and we better get on with it. Immediately. So I called my travel agent, said I needed to get out of town and two days later, I was on the deck of the MS Ryndam, sailing through the Inside Passage of Alaska.

Sitting in a deck chair, I barely moved for eight days and nights, spellbound by the view sailing by. Even though it never stopped raining, everything made me cry - a bald eagle diving for salmon, a mother sea otter swimming on her back, cradling her babies on her chest, a big old floppy moose and a lumpy brown bear ambling along the shore, all those spruce trees, and nothing else but ocean and snow-covered mountains, horizon to horizon.

I found it hard to believe I that was still in the USA - that the same people who protected and cherished the College Fjord and the inland waterway were the same people who brought us the wrath and fumes of the 405 Freeway.

My last evening on board, when everyone else was at dinner, I walked around the windy deck alone, and the sun finally came out. No matter where I looked, all I could see were splendid turquoise glaciers named after Ivy League Universities, and blue, clear sky.

A whale swam by, flipping his tale at me, and spouting water three times before he was gone, probably to rest up for the Princess Cruisers due the next day.

Hey, I thought to myself, the whale was probably a message from Jay, saying he's okay and telling me to get on with my life, making sure I see all the beautiful places in the world, and take them home in my heart.

Before I went to sleep that night, I went into the ship's chapel and lit one white candle in memory of Jay Neremberg. Sipowicz would probably have done the same.

© 2000 Molly-Ann Leikin

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