Neighborhood Watch

fiction

The curtains had been drawn for a week. This was unusual—Sophie loved sunlight, loved the big windows in the home she and Trevor shared. Marcie first noticed this on her daily walk—she took two a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, unless she was at one of her exercise classes. And she was no snoop, no indeed. What was snoopy about knowing what was going on in her neighborhood and noticing something unusual? Wasn’t that how serial killers were caught? They did something that their victim would never do, it was noticed and bam! No more bad guy. Simple, yes?

The truth was, though, Marcie could be counted on to know every single thing that went on in the neighborhood, from a new dog to what kind of paint used in the back bedroom. So the question became, were the closed curtains a sign of something nefarious or a ruse? How to tell? What if the serial killer/bad guy/kidnapper knew there was a busybody on the street? What if his (or her; serial killers could be women as well) aim was to draw Marcie in using her natural curiosity and sleuthing ability? What then?

It was a true dilemma. Perhaps, Marcie thought as she passed by Sophie and Trevor’s $750,000 home for the second time that day, perhaps nothing was wrong after all and one of them was ill. A migraine could lay a person out for days at a time, Marcie should know because she had the mother of all migraines when Albert said those horrible things to her but that wasn’t something she felt comfortable thinking about so she chucked that line of thinking and concentrated on her serial killer theory.

She reached the end of the block and turned smartly on her heel to begin the trek back to her own modest bungalow ($65,000 ten years ago when she and Albert said nice things to each other), breathing in the night breeze, slightly spoiled by the traffic on Blair one street over but what could you do? You lived where you lived and sometimes things changed. You just had to roll with it.

Still, there was something odd about the curtains. Marcie couldn’t put it out of her mind. She’d gotten used to waving at Sophie and Trevor when she walked by and they were sitting in their huge living room with that huge flat screen television hanging right on the wall where everyone could see when they watched those dirty movies and acted like they didn’t care that the whole neighborhood could see how perverted they were.

Not that Marcie thought that way, of course not, judge not was her motto in life although she had to admit that she didn’t always follow that credo but she tried and surely that counted for something.

But she knew in her heart that something wasn’t right and as she approached Sophie and Trevor’s home (overpriced home for sure) she squared her shoulders and took a deep, fortifying breath, deep like that one doctor she saw for a while told her, so deep that her bosoms stuck out like some twenty-year old’s and that was okay because what woman didn’t want bosoms like a twenty-year-old?

Marcie walked determinedly up the sidewalk (not cracked like hers), her head held high because didn’t Doctor Whatshisname tell her to do that along with the fortifying breath that lifted her bosoms and if there was one thing Marcie was, it was the kind of person who followed suggestions when they made sense.

Her finger shook a little bit when she pushed the doorbell but that was all right because it was normal to be a little nervous when she hadn’t ever really spoken to Sophie or Trevor, just waved at them through that big picture window while they watched those dirty movies that most likely played on HBO or Showtime, two channels that Marcie refused to have in her home because of those dirty movies that no one should ever watch but who was she to judge?

The doorbell ding-donged somewhere deep inside the over-priced house that sat like an overfed dog on the tiny lot, which was okay if you didn’t mind not having a yard. Marcie loved her half-acre (she always called it three-quarters, it sounded nicer to her ear) lot and certainly would never cut anyone down who had less but really—who needed such a large home and no children?

No one answered, so Marcie pushed the bell two more times in a row, not meaning to be irritable but her show would be on soon and she didn’t want to miss the first five minutes because that’s when the crime happened and if she missed that she might as well just turn it off and wait for the rerun in the summer.

She pressed her face against the glass, trying to see inside, but it was too dark to see much of anything (odd that there were no lights, and what was that dark spot on the floor? Young folks certainly had strange ideas about where rugs ought to go) so she turned and carefully stepped down the cement steps. It wouldn’t do to break a hip, not now that she lived alone since being abandoned by Albert.

Marcie shook that thought away and filled her mind with thoughts of the good-looking actor on her show, the one who Albert thought was stupid but who cared what he thought anyway? She’d have some of that wine in the back of the fridge, too, because she still had ten minutes before her show began and a glass of wine would ease her nerves because there was something about that dark rug in the hall that bothered her but maybe she was reading too much into it.

It was probably nothing.