As of Monday night, my husband Dan and I unofficially joined the ranks of the Neighborhood Watch, inevitably trading in our edgy, progressive, quiet-young-couple-on-the-block status for a new role: the nosy, responsible, suburbanites who could be watching you — yes, you — through binoculars from a perch in the kitchen.
The evening began innocently enough. We were watching Castle, starring our friend Nathan Fillion (big fans of his ever since Firefly, just in case you forgot we are sci-fi nerds) when Dan saw a beam of light shining from the house diagonally behind us.
After rejecting my idea that there was an alien abduction occurring in our backyard, Dan noticed the beam of light was protruding from a dark figure circulating our neighbor's house. Dan concluded that the dark figure was carrying a flashlight.
I, in turn, concluded, "He's trying to break in!"
The dark figure was actually a middle-aged man, dressed in a polo shirt and jeans who looked as though he was checking out the siding and the second floor window frames. Why he was doing this at 9:00 in the evening rather than during daylight hours was a mystery to us. And that also begged the question, why, if he was a burglar — a very preppy burglar — would he be trying to break into the upper story windows?
“Should we yell at him?” I asked Dan.
“What would you say?”
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Call Paul," he suggested, referring to a neighbor friend and an active Homeowners Association member. "He knows everyone. He’s probably watching this guy from his own house.”
Dan flipped on our porch light. It didn’t get Flashlight Man’s attention, so I started flicking the light on and off.
“What are you doing?" Dan said. "Sending him Morse code?”
I kept flicking until Dan put his hand over the light switch.
“Don’t do that! That’s just stupid!”
By this time, I had thoroughly amused myself and was practically rolling around on the floor laughing at my poor mortified husband.
Dan left the kitchen for a minute and then returned, motioning to me excitedly, "Come in here. You can see better from the bathroom window!"
The only way to see through the window in our master bathroom is to stand in the bathtub. So the two of us climbed into the bathtub, making sure to keep the lights off, lest Flashlight Man discovered us on our clandestine mission.
Flashlight Man circled the entire house. At times, he looked as though he were measuring the windows and examining the side panels. If he was casing the joint, he wasn't being very sneaky or inconspicuous. He was also shining the flashlight right by the house's lit-up living room, which made me think our neighbors were actually at home. In fact, it finally dawned on me, maybe Flashlight Man was our neighbor, and this was his house.
Eventually, Flashlight Man went back into the house through the unlocked garage door, simultaneously turning off the porch light.
“He wouldn’t have the porch light on and casually walk into the house through an already unlocked door if he was trying to break in, would he?” I asked Dan.
Dan didn't answer. He was too busy watching Flashlight Man, who had just appeared inside the house.
“What’s he doing now?” Dan whispered. “He’s getting into the fridge.”
“And now he’s picking up a T.V. remote," I said. "And now . . . I think he’s looking at us! Can he see us?”
“Probably, especially after you used our porch light as a telegraph.”
“Eeeek!” I squealed, and I clambered out of the bathtub, giggling.
That night, when we were getting into bed, Dan climbed back in the bathtub and looked out the window longingly. (I think he may have pictured himself as a skinny Jack Bauer in an episode of 24.) Then he gasped.
“He’s got the flashlight again!" Dan said, a little too eagerly. "Oh, never mind. It’s just a reflection from someone's living room light.”
And that is the story of how Dan and I became our neighborhood's most voyeuristic couple. Good thing nobody knows about this self-appointed covert operation of ours . . . yet.
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