Near Dweller

It was after midnight when Edward, who had been in bed, heard glass breaking and he thought someone was breaking into his house; his wife didn’t wake, she never woke up, but it aroused him in the middle of the night and for a few seconds he was frozen, scared, unsure of what to do because he thought it was his house being broken into and he laid there sweating, not sure if he was even awake, until he realized that the breaking glass was not occurring inside his house but outside of it. He stumbled over to the window which felt hot to his touch and he noticed his ring finger was slightly numb. Looking out, he couldn’t see anything because the ficus tree in the front yard was so overgrown. He couldn’t see around it. Edward walked back to the bed, turning on the small lamp with the red shade. His wife covered her head with a pillow. He put on his robe and went down the stairs which were covered with a strip of a yellow rug they had bought from a rug discount store. The sound of the breaking glass had stopped and since Edward was tired and feeling a bit muddled, he thought he should just go back to bed until he heard glass breaking again. He peeked out the window in his dining room but his view was blocked by their SUV. He walked over to the living room and, lifting up the brown curtain, he saw his neighbor Dan standing in his own front yard, breaking all the windows of his house. They were neighbors but neighbors who smiled politely and nodded and waved. He watched Dan’s torso twist, Dan in blue jeans and a red polo shirt, and Dan’s right arm slowly came back so Edward could see it, the slow bend of Dan’s arm which then released back out of his frame. Edward then heard the breaking of more glass. He glanced around his new neighborhood, a suburban neighborhood with houses packed closely together like shoeboxes arranged on a shelf. No lights were on in any of the neighbor houses that he could see which Edward found curious that no one else was roused out of bed as he was. Edward was also surprised that the red and blue flashing lights of a police squad car weren’t illuminating the night since the police should have been there questioning Edward’s neighbor as to why he was doing this. But the night was unlit and quiet save for the sound of breaking glass. Edward was unsure what he should do. He considered returning to bed because none of his other neighbors seemed concerned, and Edward wondered that if they didn’t believe in the necessity of going out to say something to Dan, perhaps he shouldn’t either.