CW: Contains possible/implied violence/abuse.

Alright… I took the money. Part of me knew that I would.

The lying became easy, and astoundingly quick. The knowledge that I’d take the money wasn’t really that deep in my mind. It was at the forefront. It was like that kid at the front of class who always knows all the answers, practically lifting off the desk to move its already raised hand even higher. I was the teacher, desperately looking around the room for some other student to call on, knowing there’d be none and that I’d have to call on this one, but trying all the same.

It’s not lying outright, though. Technicality, but still… it’s not lying outright because nobody would ask me about it. Nobody is going to ask me what I saw or if I saw… What I’m to do—what I’ve agreed to do—is convince myself I didn’t see what I saw. Sorry, I must convince myself I didn’t see anything… because I saw nothing.

When I saw my neighbor carrying food into the basement, I figured there must be an extra freezer down there. Something to store extra food bought in bulk or on sale. I happened to notice it a few times, just glancing over at the movement I caught out of the corner of my eye while I was out tending to my own yard. A quirk of the older houses in this neighborhood is that the only access to the basement is from the outside by way of the bulkhead, a pair of metal doors slanted at a severe 30-something-degree angle flush to the ground, that opens to a short staircase down into the basement. It registered as no more or less important than my other neighbor taking out his trash or edging the grass. My work schedule isn’t convenient for doing yardwork after work—I’d have about 30 minutes before it got dark by the time I changed and hauled out any equipment—so I only noticed it on Saturdays, when I’d spend most of the day outside. It was several weeks before I recognized the pattern. I know how that sounds but imagine yourself in that situation. How often do you see the same things over and over without really seeing them? Especially with a week between sightings. It all barely registered. Or so it seemed.

I know most of my neighbors enough to give a halfhearted hello-wave combo but not much more than that. It’s not a “close-knit community”.  When I moved in, I told myself I must, must, must get to know my neighbors, remember their names, be a good member to this community. That ended quickly. Don’t get me wrong, everyone is friendly, but we’re not friends. At the time, it made me wonder why I did what I did next. but looking back it makes perfect sense.

“Hello,” I said.

My neighbor stopped and turned to look at me almost instantly. Not startled, but alert.

“Oh. Hello.”

That was it. “Oh. Hello”, before disappearing underground.

I’d watched my neighbor carrying food outside for weeks now. Mid-morning, every Saturday, it was the same: out the back door, across the deck bursting with potted plants, down the rickety wood steps, and around to the bulkhead, opening Bilco doors to the basement, and making the descent. Some time later, it would be the same thing again in reverse. Some people like shopping bright and early on a Saturday morning—there’s no accounting for taste—and I was convinced I was witnessing the storing of that bounty. Until I got a closer look, that is.

#

The food was always carried in a white laundry basket, plastic and with little windows all along it. I must’ve seen some sort of food being carried when I first noticed it, but I can’t remember what now. One Saturday, I was out working in a flower bed right at our shared fence. As I was deadheading what were once white daisies—and, a quick aside, must they smell like shit?—the pilgrimage started. This time, being closer than usual, I could see through the little gaps of the basket. I couldn’t see well enough to read the labels, but there was no mistaking it. Cans. Less than a dozen. Soup? Vegetables? Fruit cocktail? Whatever else is sold in cans? I guess it was possible that instead of a big chest freezer there were shelves for dry goods.  My grandparents had a closet under their basement stairs for storing cans, though it made for a better hiding-and-seek place than it did storage. I can still picture the canned corned beef hash. It occurred to me that in all the times I’d seen food carried down I’d never seen anything carried back out.

You might be thinking that I have no idea what happens the other 6 days I’m not watching. And you’d be right. Until a few weeks ago.

#

I took some time off work. I was going to get a few projects done around the house, but I’d be primarily in the garden. This would be good for me. Weeds and overgrowth under control now, I set my sight on the paved walkway that needed resetting. I would’ve loved to change the pavers outright but there was nothing wrong with them and I couldn’t justify the expense. They just needed resetting after years of shifting ground had begun to heave them.  

It rained all day Saturday. Even still, I caught my neighbor emerging from the basement. The basket wasn’t empty this time. From my kitchen window, washing a few dishes I couldn’t be bothered with the night before, I could see a bowl and small saucepan inside. I supposed that if my neighbor was a doomsday prepper it would track that there’d be dishes in their fallout. I did wonder why you’d remove them, but thinking of my own dusty and cobweb-filled basement, it was probably wise to wash them out periodically.

I was about to leave my station when in a flash my neighbor flung the contents of the saucepan out into their yard. Tarnished gold bejeweled with bright orange and dull green flecks arced through the air before disappearing into the grass. I felt my forehead knit together before I even registered my curiosity. It was several minutes after my neighbor retreated inside before the saucepan and bowl were marched back into the basement. My empty-handed neighbor resurfaced from the basement so quickly that the bowl and saucepan must’ve been thrown into basement from the second lowest step.

I waited several minutes after the backdoor closed before, cool as could be, I walked out into my own yard. I approached a garden bed along the fence and, in what I hope was a convincing display, investigated some mysterious thing that caught my eye from inside. Particularly something to do with this shrub, a spirea, right up against the chain link. Nothing to see here, just a normal neighbor inspecting their shrub in the rain, nothing weird. And while I had crouched down in faux observation, I glanced to my right into my neighbor’s yard. Fleshy, near-white strands clung to the grass. I thought they were worms or maggots before noticing their squared ends and the bits of orange and green dotted alongside them. Some sort of noodle soup. Not wanting my neighbor to grow suspicious of me, crouched in a flower bed and staring at grass that wasn’t mine, I stood up and went back inside.

#

Not feeling very compelled to do yardwork on sodden ground, I opted to stay inside on Sunday. I kept to myself, too. Well, I felt the urge to do a little surveillance, but I inadvertently slept in, passed the usual Saturday ritual time and reasoned that if there was anything to see I’d missed it.

I was out bright and early come Monday. It would be dramatic to say I couldn’t tell who was more surprised to see who when my neighbor emerged from the backdoor a few hours later. It wasn’t me. I had been wondering what I’d see all morning. I was prepared. I received a tight smile and a “good morning” in exchange for my own.

My recollection of high school science is a little hazy, but I think that, having seen my neighbor carry a scantly filled basket down into the basement countless Saturday mornings for months, the scientific method had been satisfied and I could say it was a proven fact that this occurred every Saturday. Seeing it on a Monday, and just once so far, this was just a hypothesis, but I was confident in it all the same: this was not a weekly occurrence, but likely a daily one.

And another thing: the garage hadn’t opened all morning. I had a clear view of it all morning. The overhead door hadn’t opened, the car hadn’t backed out, and its driver hadn’t gone for an early morning grocery run to hit the sales. It’s possible I’d missed it, that my neighbor left long before I entered my yard, though it would mean waiting in the grocery store parking lot until it to open, and I would’ve seen the car pull back in. I didn’t. And while it was entirely possible to walk to the nearest grocery store, it was nearly an hour’s-long walk at three miles away—thanks to the Maps app on my phone—and I would’ve seen my neighbor return. But I didn’t. Because my neighbor hadn’t left.

I know it sounds innocent enough. Obviously at some point, or likely several, my neighbor had done some bulk grocery shopping and had built up considerable stores of shelf-stable foodstuffs. The cans had to come from somewhere. The question was: why take them down into the basement, six or eight at a time, over the course of several months? Presumably each day, at that. How much canned soup would you need to buy for that? I did a quick calculation on my phone for 6 cans of soup each day for 90 days, the three months of summer that I was consciously aware it. 540 cans of soup. Is that a normal end-days amount of soup for one person? Maybe there’s no such thing as too much in that scenario. I don’t know the first thing about doomsday prepping. But still, carrying them down every day… They’d need to be carried down in several trips, but if it were me, I’d probably take more than a half dozen at a time and make more than one trip per day. The basements in this neighborhood aren’t exactly spacious but neither are the kitchens, and 500+ cans must be taking up some valuable real estate. I would think you’d want to take the day’s purchases down that same day, maybe the next, even if it took three or four or five trips. This method of carrying six or eight down at a time and just once each day, which I was convinced was the case, it was almost like, well… It was almost like they were be rationed out.

#

It came as no surprise to me when Tuesday morning was nearly identical to the day before. Door opened, wood steps creaked, Bilco doors groaned. Again, I said a cheerful “good morning” and got a perfunctory “’morning” for my troubles. On the way up from the basement, we did catch each other’s eye again. Wednesday was virtually a carbon copy of the day before.

On Thursday, I was attempting to drive a stake into the ground through the paver edging—only to hit yet another rock—when I noticed a shadow fill the glass of my neighbor’s backdoor. Glancing in that direction had become habitual. By the sound of the latch barely scraping the strike I knew the door had begun to open, but you wouldn’t know looking at it. You might think that my neighbor had a momentary change of plans. You might, if it weren’t for the shadow still filling the tinted glass. Nothing more happened for long enough that I had time for two thoughts. One being that my neighbor had noticed me and the noticing I’d been doing. The other was simply the word, “hesitation”.

We caught each other’s eye again, but something was different this time. I was being surveyed through slightly narrowed eyes. I was being sized up. I was being evaluated, considered. I tried to give the same back but thinking back on it I think I must’ve just looked confused.

“Good morning,” I said after I grew uncomfortable with our silent stare-down.

I was met with more silence. My eyes shifted towards the basket, holding the now familiar cans. That clearly hadn’t gone unnoticed as just a beat later the basket was shifted to the side, obscuring my view. There was no “good morning” in reply. It was total silence, save for the groan of the Bilco doors and dull thud of footsteps on the stairs.

#

Friday morning was something else entirely.

I saw the person sitting on one of my cheap patio chairs the moment I stepped onto my deck. Recognition was slow outside of the usual context. My neighbor. What was she doing here?

The difference a few feet can make. This was the closest we’ve been, and what struck me first was how much younger she seemed now. I would’ve said late 30’s, maybe early 40’s before—and I’m admittedly no good at guessing ages—but now I might say late 20’s. The other striking thing was her reaction to my arrival. There wasn’t one. She just stayed as she was, in profile, leaning back into the chair, gazing into the dewy yard.

“Hello?” I said. What else was I supposed to say?

Nothing. She didn’t even move. I stood there for so long just staring at her that I wondered if I was hallucinating.

“I don’t know exactly what it is that you’re doing,” she started. The break in the previous silence was jarring.

“What it is tha—,” I started to say.

She raised a hand to silence me. Her near accusation of whatever I was doing left me feeling indignant—kettle, black, and all of that—but something told to keep it to myself. I almost silently thanked her for the prompt to shut up.

“What’s it going to take for me to get my privacy back?” she asked. The tone was so cold I could practically see the steam her words created when they touched the already hot morning air.

So many questions buzzed and I couldn’t seem to catch one. I opened my mouth in the hope that words would formulate out of some automatic response or muscle memory, but instead all that came out was an eeky throat-catch of a noise.

“Twenty thousand dollars,” she said.

Something about the mention of money got things moving in me again. I tried to speak again but she was too quick for me.

“At first I thought you might just be on vacation,” she said, turning only her head to me now, but ever so slightly. “It’s easy to find most people’s employer online, though. It’s even easier to search for that employer and see they just laid off a third of their workforce…”

Well, secret’s out, I guess.

She continued, “You could probably use the money. You could even hire someone to help relay those pavers. They look like shit.”

She was offering me money. For her privacy?

“What’d ya say?” She was looking straight ahead again.

I think I knew what this was the moment I saw her, but the revelation fully hit me then. This was hush money. But for what? I wanted to know what I was being hushed for. I started to ask, “What… What am…” but she threw her hand up again. That itch would not be scratched. This wasn’t hush money to keep me quiet about what I’d see, this was hush money to stop me from seeing anything at all.

I was trying to weigh the options in my head. What’s down there? What are the implications of my silence? What…? I don’t know. My mind was an echo chamber of voices all shouting different things. But you already know what I did. And, like I said, I knew I would, because of all the voices, the one screaming “take the money!” was by far the loudest. So I did.

She turned to me, looked me up and down once, and gestured to an ugly wicker stand by the back door, just behind me. There was a thin brick-shape wrapped in brown paper. It couldn’t have been even an inch thick.

“It’s all there,” she said. As she stood up, I saw the aluminum baseball bat clutched in her hand. It had either been so perfectly placed at her side that it was invisible, or she’d brandished it all along and I just hadn’t noticed. I couldn’t decide which was worse.   

And that’s that. I leave my neighbor alone. I don’t look over for what I’d come to think of as our mid-morning ritual. I’ve shifted my yardwork focus to the opposite side of the house. When that’s done, I’ll tackle the front. After that… Hopefully it’ll be winter by then. I do still catch a glance of her from time to time, but I immediately look away. Partly out of our agreement, but I also don’t need the reminder. I avoid thinking about it. I try not to dwell on it. It’s not always easy. Especially when the bulkhead door opens, and I think I hear a big, heavy chain being dragged across the concrete floor. But that could be my imagination. Probably is.

Oh, and I didn’t hire anyone for the pavers. I finished it myself. But it does kind of look like shit.