This morning, 3:00 AM, the doorbell rings. A midnight cab. I sleep through it. There's no way I'm getting up in the middle of the night to redirect a taxi driver, they can miss it.
And then, 7:00 AM and I'm vaguely awake, making coffee in the kitchen I notice a big yellow crime scene tape winding around to the back door. And I go outside for a cigarette and there's a police car, the crime scene tape winding around the whole front yard, I think they (the neighbors) must have gotten home late, played a little joke...but there's the police car, and I'm still a little groggy....
And a police officer gets out and tells me that he tried to wake me, that there was a fight in the yard last night, I need an escort if I want to leave the house.
The neighbors.
And I'm still a little groggy, but when it sinks in I finally ask: "All this for a fight?" and he tells me that it was a stabbing...
I wonder which of the neighbors or many guests it might have been. I was tired and didn't hear a thing. There's some blood on the sidewalk, the victim's fine (whoever that was), just stabbed is all...they're waiting on the CSI to show up and get some pictures, shouldn't be too long. ...
Now it's me, I know it's me, I'm a snob, everybody's different; probably they would write (if they could write) equally damning things about me.
And I'm worried about the utilities they owe, because I'm small-minded like that and money's tight, and I wonder if I should send a photo to the landlord, the skip on my lawn, police car, the crime-scene tape. The great impression we're making with our neighbors on the block, take a chance, maybe I can get new neighbors, not that there's anything wrong with the ones that I have, but they're, well, .....
They're not my sort of people.