by Jennifer Lai

As a general rule, Larry never spied on his neighbor Mary. But when the same red Mustang from three Tuesdays prior roared into her driveway that evening, again, an exception was made. He killed the lights and peered through a raised blind to find a sharply dressed man banging on Mary’s door. After two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of no answer, the man glimpsed past the curtain gap of the front window – likely taking notice of Mary’s George Orwell book, 1984, face down on her coffee table, the one with the architect lamp that’s always on and craned over the green chaise lounge she had delivered eleven weeks ago by two teenage boys who told Mary their mother said to call if she needed anything – and crossed the garage, triggering one of the four recently installed LED flood lights before halting at the shiny new Beware of Dog sign posted on the squeaky side gate, at which point Larry wondered if the man knew that there was no dog like he realized yesterday when Mary didn’t answer the door. In fact, she told him later she was likely coming down with something when he suggested getting together, and Larry contemplated relaying this information to the man or the fact that she had left that morning at 4:07 a.m. with an athletically built busty brunette in a souped-up Ford F-150, hurtling two garbage bags and three suitcases into the trunk before speeding away, but he didn’t think it wasn’t any of the man’s business.

Jennifer Lai lives in Washington state. Her stories have appeared in Vast Chasm, Maudlin House, Milk Candy Review, HAD, and elsewhere.