The car was too far away and now she realized it. The man was watching her from his front window, so she waved. She pulled the dog along as she made her way up the street, just like any person walking the area would. Just like any innocent person.

It was close. He’d only just made it home after lunch, after having another errand to run and stopping at the post office. That’s when he discovered the neighbor in her front yard. He waved.

“Do you smell gas?” she asked.

He stopped and waited for the acrid smell to hit him and said,”No, not over here.” And then he waved and continued inside. 

“Jade?” and he listened, shuffling through mail, then called once again, “Ja-aade?” But there was no answer and he wasn’t about to climb those stairs to find her. So he left, locking the door behind him. 

At the office, there were four missed calls from Jade.

“Hey, what time are you coming home?” was the first message.

The next was about twenty minutes later.

“Are you there? A guy called from the project. He wants you to meet him at the house in about an hour, something about the code requirements,” she said.

He hit pause and called the planning department.

“This is Cecil Goldfaut, is there an inspector available for me to talk to?” he asked.

“Someone called and said there was an error in the fence height. You could be issued a ticket,” the woman read from the info on the file on her computer. “Says here he’s coming to the site in about 45 minutes,” she told him.

He hung up and pushed play.

“I think there might be a gas leak over here. The neighbors are out in their yard. Call me.” she said and he grabbed his car keys and headed to his car.

The project was about 45 minutes away, outside the city, in a newly designated Historic District. The house he was working on was one hundred and fifty years old. The city was grappling with how to implement the new design guidelines nad it wasn’t the first time an inspector had called, insistes that he was going against code, only to be shown after an inordinate amountof time, that he was in fact, mistaken. But it came with the territory. Historic Preservation wasn’t for the faint of heart, and it was often misunderstood and its rules and codes were frequently misapplied. He was used to it. He made his way into the house, the cold air surrounded him and the cavernous, dark walls gave the feeling that something was closing in on him. He shivered. It was a long way from downtown, from anyone really, except the vagrants that frequented the area, often sleeping in the boarded up houses, shooting drugs, hiding stolen property that they sell for drugs and sometimes, starting fires in the old houses to stay warm. His footsteps echoed through the hallway and he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He heard tires on the drive out front and he looked out the window, expecting to see the city vehicle. Instead, an old Impala, the color of putty, rolled slowly past. The driver was looking at the house, then stopped right behind his car. The man came out of the car, got out and peered in his window, feeling the handles in the back seat doors to see if they were open before opening the passenger side door. 

Cecil banged on the upstairs window. “Hey!” he yelled and the guy still had his head in his car. Cecil felt for his wallet and it was in his back pocket. He ran back down the stairs, and onto the porch. By the time he flew out the front door, the car completely disappeared. Cecil looked both ways on the broken asphault road. It was long gone. And he wondered for a moment if he’d even seen it at all. 

He rubbed his eyes. His neck was killing him from sleeping wrong the night before. He’d tossed and turned half the night, and was awoken by Jade in the middle of the night after he finally did get to sleep.

“Cecil, “ she’d said.

“Huh?” he mumbled from a sleep stupor.

“It sounds like there’s someone outside,” she’d said, sitting upright in bed. The window was always open this time of the year. She loved the fall weather and loved sleeping in the cold. The heat only was used in the daytime i their house in Winter.

“It’s probably a possum,” he’d mumbled and rolled over. But she nudged him again.

“It sounds like metal,” she said, being very quiet and waiting for another sound.

Cecil let out a soft snore. She got out of the bed and tried to look straight down to the first floor alleyway beside their house. Another clink and she shook Cecil again.

“Cecil, someone might be trying to get our copper pipe or something,” she said with insistence. Chill bumps were forming on her arms. 

The dogs started barking then and she ran to the window. He sat up and then made his way to the stairs. The dogs were still barking and barking. She was at the window. There was another muffled sound, barely discernible over the dogs’ noise and she positioned herself in the corner of the window. A cat shrieked and a shadow streaked past, just as Cecil opened the front door. He made his way to the side of the house, just under the bedroom window, The garbage was overturned, papers and old food littered the alley way. He went back inside and up to the bedroom.

“It was a cat,” he said. “Well it’s five o’clock in the morning. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now. Guess I’m headed to work,” he grumbled and headed for his shower.

She lay in bed listening for the noise she’d heard before. A cat doesn’t make those kind of noises, but there was no sense arguing. He was already in a bad enough mood as it was.

It was still pitch black dark outside. Even the paper boy hadn’t come yet. Just as she was dozing off, she heard the beep beep of the alarm. He had already showered and was on his way out. 

She listened again to make sure he’d locked the door and thunder rumbled in the distance. She couldn’t be sure, so she crept past her childrens’ rooms and tiptoed down the stairs. There were no curtains on the first floor, so the front hall was illuminated somewhat by the porchlight. She stood at the door and stared at the brick street and noticed a huge possum wadling along the curb. She watched him follow it all the way to the storm drain before ducking down and into the drain. 

“It must’ve been the possum,” she thought, and turned the deadbolt on the door. But it was already locked. He almost always remembered. And now she felt kind of bad for waking him so early. She’d probably never have heard the possum under normal circumstances, in the summertime, when the windows were closed because the air conditioning was running. As she turned to go back up the stairs, there was a flash of lighting, no thunder yet and from the corner of her eye, it seemed like a figure stood just to the edge of the dining room window. She froze, at the bottom of the stairs and looked again, but could see nothing from the dark. only the old oak limb rubbing against the glass, rustling in the wind of the coming storm. She ran up the stairs, looking in on each child as the lightning flared again. At least on the second floor no one could be standing outside the windows. That was the beauty of the second floor. You could leave your windows open all day long and no one would bother with putting a ladder up and crawling up fifty feet. Her children were in the same position they were in when she passed by the first time, sleeping under quilts, the street lights illuminating their rooms.

As she crawled back in her bed, it was still night time. She wondered if he’d made it to the office okay. It was a short drive in the same neighborhood, but there were a lot of homeless people walking the streets and often drunk partiers. She listened to the outside, being particularly still, hoping that she’d be able to hear any type of menace that might be outside at this time. But there was only silence and wind and the distant thunder. Lightening flashed again and her whole roomlit up in blue flourescence. But there was no sound yet. She waited.

“One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississi…,” she counted and a vicious crack sounded above her house. It was almost like it was in the bedroom with her, or right outside the bedroom. The windows rattled with the vibration and she could hear the soft pellets of rain begin to fall on the tin roof. At least whoever was out there would be scared away by the prospect of the storm and dealing with the rain, she imagined. The rain fell harder and harder and blew against the windows as she finally fell asleep. The thunder moved farther away, after shaking the very foundations of the home. It was easy to fall asleep to the steady beat of rain on the roof. It was like a lullaby, gently rocking the whole world to sleep.

At the end of the block, the paper boy threw his first ten papers, stopping in the middle of the road, leaving his car open and running, while he tossed the papers on each front porch. He had to avoid the enormous flower bed in the front of 731 and then make sure he got the paper as close as possible to the door of 727, for old Mr. Simpson. He drove with the door open, because he was only going fifty feet at a time and about three miles an hour. It was because of this that he almost hit the woman in the black pants and jacket as she ran in front of his car. He slammed on his brakes and his car slid sideways a little, being so slick with rain. But the woman didn’t even stop or turn to see him. She just kept walking, faster and faster, hobbling a little as she went.