Jeff and Marie had rented the dining hall at the Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club for the wedding reception. The décor was classy and the food was a hodgepodge of traditions and styles, from shark fin soup (Jeff’s mother insisted, even though it was illegal and damn near tasteless) to filet mignon. The Bon Ton Bakery outdid itself with a tiered matrimonial cake, topped with figures that vaguely resembled the bride and groom.
The newlyweds shared a microphone, mangling Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Jeff’s uncles traded cigars and dirty stories. His cousin Shuzhen, our former receptionist, emerged from the law library long enough for the ceremony and left after the second dance. Kay skulked by the bar with one of Marie’s cousins.
I’m not a party person. I mingled as long as I could, then drove to Hastings and took the work van over toward Mount Pleasant. I parked opposite Sabar Gill’s house on Quebec Street. Seated in the back on a milk crate, I could stare through the tinted panel at Gill’s front door.
Gill lived in a renovated Vancouver Special, a facade of masonwork below a gray-painted top story with a Juliette balcony. All lights soft, all curtains drawn.
The rain slid over the windshield and crackled off the roof. I’d liberated a flask’s worth of Macallan Ten from Jeff and Marie’s open bar. Gill’s television glowed through the curtains. He stood and moved left, his frame appearing in the kitchen. Simultaneous movement in the living room. Another form stood up in front of the television. Gill’s date, maybe. Popcorn and late-night TV, probably what Chambers and the waif were doing.
I opened the back door and climbed down, putting my feet in a stream of runoff from a clogged storm drain. I crossed to the sidewalk in front of Gill’s house. From here the shade in the kitchen seemed feminine, the other shade, slinking back onto the couch, more closely resembled Gill.
I took two steps onto the lawn and was bathed in cold white neon. Motion-activated lighting. I stepped back and walked to the corner, hooked left and then down the alley.
At the back of Gill’s small untended yard stood a rotting garage with one door hanging askew. The same drapes hung on the house’s rear windows as out front, no movement behind them.
In an adjacent backyard I spied a dog’s chew toy. I hopped the low fence and retrieved it. No lights, no alarms. I returned to the van.
The Wakeland & Chen work vans contained audiovisual equipment, a camera and tripod, microphone and field recorder. I extended the tripod legs and threaded the camera onto the base, training it on Gill’s door. The window of the van had a slight overhang, which kept the glass clear. I adjusted for low light, zoomed in, and focused.
If only Kay or anyone else had been free—but they were all busy living it up. The entire population of the world was paired off, reeling drunkenly toward the doors of their rented suites, to fuck and tell each other sweet nothings.
This was how I spent my time—peering through strangers’ windows. How I spent birthdays, holidays. Alone with the work. It was sick, perhaps, but it was a choice I’d made. Like Gill and his love of books.
I waited for a commercial break, a bathroom trip, something. At last the couple stood up and stretched. The shapes diverged, Gill this time heading to the kitchen. I felt the weight of the rubber toy. I jogged toward the house, hucked the toy at the living room window. I saw the throw was good and ran.
Two blocks up I paused, shivering. I went right, a long circuit to Broadway, past the darkened storefront of Mountain Equipment Co-op with its windows advertising backpacks and skis. Before I turned back down Quebec I made sure no one was waiting outside of the Gill house, no extra lights on. All told it was twenty-three minutes since I’d thrown the toy.
I crept back to the van, then drove a few minutes before stopping to check the camera. In the viewfinder, I saw myself throw the toy and run out of frame.
A moment later the curtains parted in both kitchen and den. It was clearly Gill in the kitchen window, but the woman was out of focus, and she quickly snapped the curtains closed.
The shades reconverged. I swore. Drenched to the bone and nothing to show for it.
Then the front door of the house opened and Gill stepped out, triggering the motion-activated porch light. He studied the ground and found the toy, smiled, relieved by such a harmless explanation for the noise. He turned toward the door and held up the toy.
And framed in the orange light of the doorway, evidently sharing his relief, Tabitha Sorenson smiled back at him.