Abduction

He was quiet. Very.

I ran into him at the drugstore one Saturday. Choosing his words carefully, slowly, he’d filled me in on his day’s activities.  I noticed the glare coming off his bald head as he spoke of mowing his lawn. It wasn’t much of a lawn, I’ll tell you.            
 I’d bought my little stucco ranch two years before he moved in. His near silent comings and goings unnerved my wife at first. The previous owner had been a young couple, their kids running activities constant fodder for our bitching’s. Funny how we talk about each other. Tongues click and clack informing each other of other’s comings, goings, and lawn mowing’s. Perhaps, just a thought, we should all tend to our own gardens.  

            His only purchase that Saturday was a newspaper.

We tried to tend to our own garden, my wife and I. But when she showed up, our tongues clicked and clacked.

It was two weeks after the drugstore Saturday when she clicked up the walk to his little white house with the little green shutters. I loved those shutters. As a matter of fact, I loved his house.

            As I said, there really wasn’t much of a yard. Perfect. Mowing sucks. What little grass there was could be cut with a hand held trimmer. None of those annoying whining weed whackers for this guy. Perfect again. He did sometimes mow. More for something to do, I believe.  

            His roof was green shingles to match the little green shutters. It was just a pretty pretty little house trimmed in green. Next to the starkness of my stucco bungalow, it reeked of charm and I stood quite envious.

            She wore a light green dress with flat shoes and a floppy hat the day she clicked up his pretty little walk.

            Sam was cool. We’d been friends since, well, even before high school. Sam pretty much played by the rules so I guess it was just natural for him, becoming a cop. He was good, no, great at the job. I’m glad someone wants the job cause I sure wouldn’t. Sam was a natural, you could even say, he was born a cop. He made plain clothes but at his insisting, went back to uniform. He said this was real police work. The kind he liked. I asked once if he looked forward to his time being in. I asked if looked forward to retirement. “Shit no,” was all he said. Sam did not waste words. He always mentioned how in the book of Proverbs it said that you could tell the lack of wisdom a man possesses by the multitude of his words.

              From time to time I saw my little bald neighbor’s girlfriend coming and going from his little green roofed house with the little green shutters. Her ever present floppy hat always matched her outfit.

            “The bitch can dress,” My wife said one day. She really liked Sam’s practice of the quote from Proverbs.

            He hardly, or more precisely, never really spoke to me. My little bald neighbor. Other than the time at the drugstore.  

            Seeing him at the store again, with his singular purchase of newspaper, I asked about the health, happiness, and overall welfare of his girlfriend. To match his singular purchase his singular reply was, “Fine.”

            Did he also subscribe to Sam’s favorite quote from the book of Proverbs? Heaven knows.

            The days past as we busied ourselves with life and tried to mind our own business and gardens. She in her floppy hat came and went and went and came. We all went to work and came home and went to work and came home. Sam sat on our little bungalow patio and very briefly, with few words of course, filled us in on his weeks happenings. Being privy to all unusual events in our little community with its little houses and little lives, he kept us informed on new gossip. Nothing that would jeopardize his position and get him in trouble with the powers that be, just neat little stuff on crime and cases closed. Cool guy Sam.

            Sam had married his high school sweety. A cheerleader she had been and so remained to this day. She was his biggest fan. Thought his doo doo had no odor. I knew different thanks to a drunken fishing trip years back and Sam’s impromptu taking of a dump too near camp. But fish were caught, beer was drank, lies were told and fun was had by all. ‘Cept Sam’s Cousin Ernie, who, on going to take a leak, placed a bare foot in an unfortunate spot.

            Sam and the lifelong cheerleader, just as us, had no kids. “Hate ‘em,” he’d said. “Noisy.”

            My crap did smell for I found myself being ever nosier.

            The floppy hat girl was, well, sorta' lookin' good. I felt guilty spying as she’d meandered up his walk; however, being the male I was and am, I justified it in the usual way.

            One afternoon Sam and I sat on the patio sipping gin and tonic. I told him I thought the neighbor’s girl was sorta hot.

            “Looks dowdy and low to the ground ta' me.”

            Wow. A whole sentence from Sam.

            That next weekend the poop hit the wind makin’ device. Cop cars were all over the street in front of the bald dude’s house. Going to tell the wife, when we got to the window all cars and everything and everybody were gone.

            “Zover,” says my wife. Damn Sam and his favorite verse.

            We got the scoop from Sam on the goings-on not much later. A week, week and a half maybe.

            I’ll tell you in my words, rather than his as getting him to complete sentences is like threading a needle, drunk, on a roller coaster.

            The little bald neighbor was a wig case. Like, gonesville.

            His house, Sam said, was plastered with pictures of this model. From the newspaper ads he’d cut them.

            This model was all on the walls, wearing floppy hats in a lot of the pictures. The man was in his own little fantasy dreamland. He’d called the cops saying his girlfriend had been abducted and forced into pornography. In the last shot on his wall was her in an underpants-bra ad. The dude was walking around dressing like her, speaking in a female voice, and having this hot affair with her. And I’d said she was hot. Egads!

            “Ala Norman Bates,” Sam had said.

             “How Hitchcockian,” my wife replied.

            Wonder what the new neighbor will be like? Hope they don’t read Proverbs.