Intermediate to Advanced (length, slang, US popular culture references)
It’s 3 a.m. Jake and I are lying awake in the old fold-out bed in the living room of our “transition” apartment, listening to the inevitable creaks and groans of too much humanity pressing against itself all around us.
“I’m really starting to like this place,” I say. I literally* hear Jake’s eyes roll in the darkness beside me. “I mean, it’s noisy and claustrophobic with zero storage space, but other than that—it makes me feel, I don’t know, safe or something. Like I’m never really alone.”
“You got that right,” he says as the thump, thump, thump of someone’s bass track shimmers through our floor. And then, because he’s known me for a very long time, “Look, I love you for worrying I’ll go first—.”
“Women in my family live, like,** “You could die in a car wreck tomorrow,” he says, giving me a smooch. Jake always knows just what to say.
We’re at that age that our much younger selves thought of as the “later” in the whole “we’ll think about that later” ploy. It’s getting harder to put off awkward questions with words like when or alone or without. Our mailbox is stuffed with a seemingly endless supply of junk mail about Medicare, wills, and funeral planning.
The Scarlet O’Hara*** method just isn’t working anymore.
Jake has taken to buying me Navaho jewelry off the Internet “Because I can afford it now, but not when we retire.” He can never hold on to the surprise, just gives me the gifts as soon as they come in the mail. Once he bought me a ring that felt for all the world like the kind you wear when you just can’t quite bring yourself to leave that finger**** naked. I told him, “I’m not ready for this,” and he bought a kitschy one with petroglyphs. Both are sitting on my dresser right now. Sometimes I think this is our retirement, all these sparkly bits of silver.
I hear Jake get up and walk toward the bathroom. Halfway down the hall, he stops. “Well, aren’t you going to turn on the light?” I say.
A familiar hand pats my thigh. “You’re still in bed?” he says, his voice right next to me in the darkness. “So am I.”
And then we both turn to look down the length of our bed.
There’s a man in the hall, just backing out of the bathroom, right over the sight lines of our toes. He’s what I still think of as older (than me), a little stooped, balding, and shaped like a dumpling. He’s wearing a worn plaid robe over a wife beater t-shirt***** and athletic pants that have never seen anything more lively than what he’s doing right now. I think–well, I think he glows.
Jake says quietly, “You see that, too?” and I just squeak a little because there’s suddenly an air shortage in my throat.
The man turns to us, a look of polite surprise on his face. He’s got an old-fashioned manual toothbrush in one hand. There’s a white towel draped over his shoulder. What’s left of his hair is sticking up, as if in alarm.
“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. Most nights, you’re safely asleep at this hour.” He smiles affably.
We all stare at each other.
I slide my eyes quickly to check out the front door–yep, still blocked by the couch pillows we stacked there when we rolled out the bed. There’s no way he could be here but, thing is–here he is.
Slowly, Jake grabs our blanket with both hands and stands up to full height on the bed, teetering majestically on the slats of the foldout mattress. The blanket unfurls to its full queen size as he raises it over his head in a kind of victory sign. I have only a moment to admire the spectacle before he sends it flying in the general direction of the hallway. It lands with a soft little whump on the head of the dumpling-shaped man–and then, slides down to rest on the floor.
Something’s not right here, on so many levels.
“Really?” the man says, flickering a bit in annoyance. “You thought that would work?” I was thinking much the same thing, but hey–I’m with team Jake#. And this guy is starting to piss me off.
“Who are you?” I demand of the dumpling in the hall. “Why are you brushing your teeth in our apartment in the middle of the night?” Then a thought hits me. “Do you even have teeth?”
The little man pulls himself up to his less than impressive height and shuffles forward, hands outspread. Tacky slippers bunch the fallen blanket and he almost trips.
“Of course I have teeth,” he says, kicking at the offending bed covering. “What do you think I am?”
“Funny you should mention that–” I say.
“Okay, you caught me,” he says, flipping his hand at me. “Happy now? An unsolicited contact.” He stoops to disentangle an errant shoe, muttering. “You’ve never noticed me before.”
“Oh, I think I have noticed you,” I say. “Only you usually come in through the mail slot.”
Jake says, “What do you mean, before?” and calls him–well, something you wouldn’t want to be called.
The little man says calmly, “No, no. Don’t get weird. I’m just a watcher.”
And with that, I know exactly where we are. You can’t watch much cable t.v. without knowing a little something about folks who claim to be watchers.##
“Fallen angel?” I say (with understandable smugness).
He sighs. “Why do people always go there?” he says. “No.”
“Ancient alien astronaut?”
“No.”
“Ghost?”
“The polite term is app–but, no.”
“My future self come to warn me?” Jake asks, getting in the game.
“No!” I say. They both turn to stare at me.
“I am your watcher,” says the little man, pronouncing it in that slow, careful way you do when you have to repeat yourself.
“Our watcher,” Jake says in the same exaggerated way. “So you watch—?”
I sighed. He had to ask.
“Well– “ says dumpling man, “I watch you.” Of course lies heavy in the air.
“Why?” I say, then–“Wait–all the time? Even when we’re–” And there’s that squeak in my voice again.
“No, no–just the interesting bits,” he assures me. “Like paying the electric bill.”
“What? Why?” says Jake.
The little man gestures toward our flat screen. “You watch,” he says. “Why?” He shrugs his shoulders.
And then, as I’m scrambling for an answer that’s more than just “Well, because–” he starts moving toward us again. I jump out of bed sideways and block his path, torn between wanting to kick him out and not letting him get away with this inappropriate watching behavior.
He stops and sighs again. “Look, nothing personal. Just demographics. You’re on my list.”
“Apparently,” I say, “we’re on a lot of lists these days.”
He shrugs. “If it helps, I can make sure you forget all about this in the morning.” Then, he brightens. “Or, maybe you’d like to remember it as a dream?”
Jake says, “Babe?” But I’ve already thrown the first punch. Strangely, it doesn’t get anywhere near the little dumpling man. It stops short about two feet, in that maddening, liquid, slow motion that happens in dreams. No matter how many times I try, I can’t connect with the man.
“Listen, you pervert-angel-alien-ghost-app-watcherman–” I say.
“I’m very discreet,” he says. He’s trying to catch Jake’s eye while maintaining his distance. “In fact–“
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, flailing around with my fists. “We never noticed you before. Or we don’t remember that we did!”
“Exactly!” he says.
I reach behind me and blindly pick up the first thing my hands touch. It’s a three-hole punch that Jake left sitting on edge of the desk. I swing it with both hands.
“I did not invite you here!” First swing.
“I did not give you permission to be here!” Second swing.
“I already signed up for Medicare Part A!”### Swing, swing, swing.
Suddenly, whether it’s the power of the desk accessory or the reference to government entitlements, I’m connecting. The little man goes down on the floor.
But I keep hitting.
“You will not watch me.” Whack.
“You will not come into my home.” Whack.
“You will take me off your list.” Whack, whack, whack.
He doesn’t answer. Because he’s gone.
I have barely enough time to think, “Great–now I’ve killed a watcher” and “Wonder what to do with the body?” when there is no body. No toothbrush, no bathrobe, no wife beater t-shirt. No little pile of ancient dust. Nothing.
All that’s left is several hundred little paper dots that flew out of the 3-hole punch when the plastic backing got knocked off. Jake never empties the thing.
I brush a few paper dots out of my hair and look up at him. He’s standing in the hall, watching me. “I could get the Dyson#### and vacuum all this up,” I say. “But–you know. 3 a.m. Neighbors.”
He crosses his arms and leans against the door jam, a thoughtful look on his face. “You know what?” he says. “If I do go first, I think you’ll be just fine.”
Notes
*This is an informal use of literally. We use it to add emphasis or to express strong feeling. But expect to be corrected if you use this! The correct meaning of literally is actually. If Jake’s eyes literally make a noise when he moves them, it’s time to go see the doctor.
**Like is usually used to compare something: It felt like a new beginning. Informally, it’s also used as a filler while you’re thinking of the next thing to say, similiar to (like) uh, um, well.
***Scarlett O’Hara is a character in the book Gone With the Wind. She’s famous for dealing with problems by saying, “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
****That finger is the finger where a wedding ring would be. When a marriage is over (as it would be if Jake died), that finger would feel naked without a ring. Jake’s gift feels like a substitute for the wedding ring she now wears–almost an admission that she will need to take her wedding ring off soon.
*****A wife-beater t-shirt is a men’s sleeveless white t-shirt. It looks really sloppy worn on its own (not worn under a button down shirt). Apparently, the term got started in a murder case, where a man beat his wife to death wearing a stained sleeveless white t-shirt.
#Saying you’re on someone’s team [I’m with Team Jake] is a way of saying you support them, agree with them, are on their side. Interestingly, it’s also the name of a suicide prevention website: https://weareteamjake.com/
##These are all pop culture cable tv or streaming shows that investigate UFO’s, the supernatural, and the mysterious.
###This is a US government program that supplements medical care for older citizens. It has strict rules, deadlines, and penalties for not filing–so they bug (harass) people relentlessly to meet deadlines.
####The Dyson is a popular brand of vacuum cleaner.