“Desperate to fuck you,” Maggie deemed. “And there you are, right next door. If he comes over next time smelling of some Rat Packesque cologne? Bolt the door. He’s after you.”
“I hope he’s aiming for his students. Teaching assistants. Sorority girls.”
“Those could get him fired. The hot divorcée who moved in next door is legal game. He may have binoculars trained on your windows right now.”
“If he does he’ll see Eddie’s Star Wars curtains. My room is on the other side of the house.”
As August yawned deeply into its dog days, Bette avoided contact with her next-door neighbor, not wanting to hear Are you doing anything tonight? again. She drove home, scanning Greene Street for signs of Paul Legaris. Once he was on his front lawn and he waved as she pulled into the driveway, calling out, “How you doing?”
“Just super, thanks!” she said. She hustled inside like she was very busy with something when, in fact, she had nothing going on. Another time, there he was watching the neighbor kids kicking footballs in a game called Pig on the Fly, so she grabbed her idle phone and pretended to be on a call as she went into the house. Paul waved at her, but she just nodded back. During the evenings she feared the doorbell would ring and there he would be, freshly showered and smelling of Creed, asking if she wasn’t doing anything, would she be interested in dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory? She had once taken her dentist up on that very offer. He turned out to be such a narcissistic bore she changed her dental care provider. Around then she declared an Armistice in the Dating War, and now she was hell-bent on keeping her new life on Greene Street void of attachments and thus disaster free.
As it turned out, the kids saw more of Paul Legaris than she did. He was washing his car on a Friday evening (who washes a car on Friday evening?) when Bob picked them up for his weekend of custody. Bette showed her ex-husband around the lower floor of her new house as the kids packed their weekend bags, then she watched as they all piled into Bob’s car. Paul came over when Eddie wanted to introduce his dad to the guy who taught Cosmos at the college. The two men chatted longer than necessary, Bette decided. When Bob and the kids drove off, Paul went back to washing his car. Though she did not have a vision about the exchange, she wondered if the two men had compared notes on, well, her.
The next morning Bette slept in, wonderfully late on a Saturday morning without the kids. She came down the stairs of the quiet house barefoot, in a pair of yoga pants and a light cotton hoodie, carrying her iPad.
“Hey, big boy.” In bare feet she steamed up her morning elixir, taking it out to the backyard before the sun broke over the roof and the heat became too much. She took her iPad with her; it seemed like years since she had used the thing anyplace other than in bed. She sat in a plastic Adirondack chair under the backyard tree, scrolling through back issues of the Chicago Sun-Times Sunday magazine, then lingering too long on the Daily Mail website, when she heard klock klock klock klock klock.
A woodpecker was doing the woodpecker thing somewhere.
Klock klock klock klock klock.
She scanned the branches of the trees for a sign of the bird but found none. Klock klock klock klock klock.
“Persistent fives,” Bette said, counting the klocks.
She looked at the exterior of the house, happy she didn’t see the bird damaging the siding by digging for insects, then came again klock klock klock klock klock.
The sound was coming from over the fence, from Paul Legaris’s backyard. The tall fence—which even on Greene Street made for good neighbors—blocked any view of next door, save the higher tree branches. There were no signs of Mr. Peckerhead up in them, but the klock klock klock klock klock sounds kept coming, which made Bette curious. She wanted to see how big this woody-bird was, so she moved her chair to the fence and stood on it, hoping to see the bird in action.
Klock klock klock klock klock.
Paul Legaris kept his backyard neat and organized, with a vegetable garden with drip irrigation and beanpoles. An antique plow, rusted and in need of a horse, sat in the center of a patch of grass beside, incongruously, an array of solar panels. Toward the back of the yard, distant from the patio, was a massive brick BBQ and one of those freestanding, mail-order-catalog hammocks.
Klock klock klock klock klock.
Paul himself was sitting at a picnic table on a redwood deck under a sloping canopy, already dressed in his uniform of baggy shorts, polo shirt, and those flip-flops. His too-cool eyeglasses were set on the top of his head, and he was bent in concentration over a hunk of machinery that looked like it had been made in the 1800s.
Klock klock klock klock klock.
The machine was a typewriter, though it looked like no typewriter Bette had ever seen. The thing was ancient, something out of the Victorian era, a mechanical printing apparatus with hammers arcing onto paper rolled into the carriage. Paul hit a key five times—klock klock klock klock klock—added a touch of oil to the inner levers of the typewriter, and repeated.
Klock klock klock klock klock.
This was how Paul Legaris could ruin a peaceful morning on Greene Street, servicing a writing gimcrack straight out of Jules Verne.
Klock klock klock klock klock.
“Yowza,” Bette mumbled. She went back inside for another jolt of caffeine and stayed there, reading her iPad in the relative quiet at her kitchen table, still hearing the muffled klocking of her neighbor’s ironclad word processor.
That afternoon, when the sun was turning Greene Street into both the frying pan and the fire, Bette was on the phone with Maggie.
“So he’s got telescopes and typewriters laying around his house. I wonder what else,” Maggie wondered.
“Old toasters. Dial telephones. Washtubs with wringers. Who knows?”
“I checked some of the dating sites on the Web. Couldn’t find him.”
“CreepyNeighbor.com? SadSacks4U?” Bette was looking out the front window when an unfamiliar car pulled up across the street—one made in Korea the color of red nail polish. A young man, the driver, got out along with a girl a few years younger, no doubt his sister. As they walked across the street, angling toward Paul Legaris’s front door, Bette recognized the Legaris gait in the boy.
“Kid alert,” Bette told Maggie. “Guess who just showed up.”
“Who?” Maggie asked.
“Pretty sure it’s the offspring of Professor Lonesome next door. Son and daughter.”
“They showing tattoos or Birkenstocks?”
“Nah.” Bette eyed the kids for signs of youthful rebellion or oddity. “They look normal.”
“Normal is a setting on a washing machine.”
The girl let out a squeal and ran toward the front door of the house. Paul Legaris was heading for her when they intersected on the lawn. She took him in a headlock and bulldogged him into the turf, laughing. The son joined the fracas, two kids dog-piling on the father they had clearly not seen in a while.
“I may have to call 911 soon. I think a separated shoulder is due,” Bette opined.
That night Bette, Maggie, and the Ordinand sisters met for dinner at a Mexican cafe made of cinder block and with paper shades over the lights, a place so authentic they were afraid to drink the water, but not the margaritas. The night filled with laughter and stories about former husbands, lousy ex-boyfriends, and men who lacked both common sense and sanity. The talk was fun and saucy, much of it about Paul Legaris, none of it flattering.