~a column by Colleen O’Brien
I see this person every day either walking past my house early – 7 am or so – or driving by in a black Corvette, a black truck or a high-rise golf cart. He has a boat that I’ve never seen in the water. On my daily walk, I spot him in his driveway doing carpenter work, but so far he has not said hello when I do. Sometimes he looks up, says nothing and goes back to work. Mostly he doesn’t look.
He’s been re-doing the place for weeks. The entire kitchen was put out for the garbage man one day. Next morning, a freight truck pulled up and unloaded a new kitchen – stainless steel refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, sink – all IKEA.
He has installed his own new siding – pale yellow; and jalousie windows – nice touch. He has beautiful plantings – exotics, handsome palms, yuccas with orange plumes, lush ferns in pots as tall as me. I don’t know when he got them in the ground – one day I walked past and they weren’t there, the next they were in, mulched and flourishing.
I like his taste in his house re-do except for the plaster elves, frogs, alligators and monkeys hanging out beneath the wide leaves of the new plantings. How can one man have such good and bad taste at the same time?
No wife, girlfriend or now-and-then friend, male or female.
He’s a cipher.
Because the neighborhood is sparse when it comes to people right now – most of them having left the 90-degree, 90-percent humidity of summer in the south for northern climes – I don’t have anyone to talk to about him. We’re the only people alive on this street, he and I.
I think of moseying out to meet him as he walks by, but I’m shy. And busy.
So, rather than be a normal person and introduce myself, take him a cake or something, I make up stories about him:
Story #1 He’s on the lam, hiding out in a place no one would dream of looking for him.
#2 He’s a mourning widower, and he cries whenever anyone is nice to him.
#3 His girlfriend left him, and he doesn’t like women at all right now.
#4 He’s shy, and he can barely make eye contact, let alone speak.
#5 He’s a mute, and he is just tired of people yelling at him – he’s not deaf.
#6 He doesn’t like busybodies; and there’s justification for that.
Time moves along and I don’t see him at all. The ‘Vette and the pick-up are in the driveway, the golf cart is in the side yard. The house is dark. The boat is gone.
Story #7 He’s sailing to the Dry Tortugas. I hope he doesn’t have any close calls out there in the Gulf.
#8 He’s traversed the Ten Thousand Islands at the southwest corner of Florida and is heading for Bermuda. I hope he doesn’t go missing in the Triangle.
Whether he returns or remains gone forever, I’m sure I’ll never know any more about him than I do now. The stories I make up may have him living a more exciting life than he ever dreamed of. But from the little I observe, I can only conclude that he’s most at ease alone.
