Sorry to trouble you was how the note began, which is such a great opener. Please, trouble me! Trouble me! I've been waiting my whole life to be troubled by a note like this.
Sorry to trouble you but it looked like someone was using a telephoto lens to take pictures through your windows from the street. If it was someone you know, then sorry for the misunderstanding, if not, though, I got the make/model/license of their vehicle.
Brian (from next door)
and his phone number
You don't really need a telephoto lens because we have giant windows in front with no curtains. Sometimes I pause before coming inside and watch Harris and Sam innocently going about their business. Harris mutely explaining something to Sam, or lifting Sam into the air. I feel such tenderness toward them. Try to remember this feeling, I say to myself. They are the same people up close as they are from here.
We all immediately knew which neighbor Brian was. The FBI neighbor. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Brian it’s that being in the FBI is not a secret like the CIA. He wears his (bulletproof?) FBI vest with the letters FBI on it way more than could possibly be required. It’s like if someone on the Dodgers wore his uniform to water the lawn. All the neighbors would be like, We get it, dude, you’re on the Dodgers.
So the first thing Harris did after I read the note aloud was scoff that of course the FBI neighbor had “caught” someone with a “telephoto lens.” And the second thing Harris did was nothing. He was busy and didn’t think it was worth pursuing.
“It’s a little creepy, though, right?”
“People take pictures of everything these days,” he said, walking out of the room.
“Do you think I should call him, though?”
But Harris didn’t hear me.
“Call who?” said Sam.
I stood holding the note with that funny little abandoned feeling one gets a million times a day in a domestic setting. I could have cried, but why? It’s not like I need to dish with my husband about every little thing; that’s what friends are for. Harris and I are more formal, like two diplomats who aren’t sure if the other one has poisoned our drink. Forever thirsty but forever wanting the other one to take the first sip.
You go.
No, you go ahead!
No, please, after you.
This sort of walking on eggshells might sound stressful, but I was pretty sure we would have the last laugh. When everyone else was sick to death of each other we’d be just breaking through, having our honeymoon. Probably in our sixties.
My friend Cassie says Love you! every time she gets off the phone with her husband. Whenever I overhear this I’m completely mortified for her.
But I do love him, she says.
You were just talking about how miserable and stuck you felt.
Then she kind of laughs as if it’s all out of her hands. I don’t expect her to be honest with her husband but at least come clean with me! Other people’s relationships never make any sense. Once I got my best friend, Jordi, to record a casual conversation between her wife and her. Jordi is a brilliant sculptor who can convincingly theorize about anything, but in this conversation she barely said a word while her wife ranted about the idiocy of a popular TV show. Only occasionally would Jordi murmur a question; mostly she just giggled at the things Mel said. I thought she might be embarrassed, but she wasn’t.
“I love how sure of herself Mel is. I love opinionated people. Like you.”
This was so flattering that I instantly warmed up to their dynamic.
“That show really is flawed,” I said. “Mel nailed it.”