by Mark Nutter
I can’t help it if I’m confined to a wheelchair with a cast on my leg, and now and then I glance at my neighbors out the rear window of my New York apartment building. The view across the inner courtyard is so tempting, it might as well be a Hollywood movie set.
And don’t feel sorry for me with my cast; my leg isn’t really broken. Don’t tell my boss.
Also, it’s perfectly natural for me to have powerful binoculars. I need them for my job at the grocery store. Sometimes senior citizens ask me to read labels for them. With my binoculars I can read fine print several aisles away.
So here I sit, wearing the cast that comes off easily in case my leg itches, watching my neighbors. There’s the dancer across the courtyard. I’ve nicknamed her Miss Naked Dancer. I’ve never actually seen her dance naked, but I check in every hour with my fingers crossed.
There’s an old person. I can’t tell if it’s a man or woman, even with my powerful binoculars. Whichever kind they are I didn’t bother giving them a nickname, because they’re so old.
There’s a family, who I call Dad Family, Mom Family, and Brother and Sister Family. Should that be Family Dad, Family Mom, and so on? I don’t know, I wasted too much time already thinking up their nicknames. They’re boring.
The neighbor I watch the most, after Miss Naked Dancer, is Wife Murderer Bill.
I began to suspect he was a wife murderer when I saw him murder his wife. (I don’t really know if his name is Bill.)
It was a quiet night. Most everybody had their shades down. There was a rumor flying around that a creepy voyeur was spying on people with powerful binoculars.
Bill didn’t pull his shades down. I could see him sitting at his dining room table, being served dinner by Mrs. Bill.
There was something he didn’t like about his dinner — too much salt on his chicken, maybe — and I saw him shouting at Mrs. Bill. Then he grabbed a big knife and drove it through Mrs. Bill’s hand and into the tabletop.
I hate it when there’s too much salt on my chicken, so in a way it’s understandable. But what I didn’t get was why he kept chasing her around the table, stabbing her. Maybe she put too much salt on the vegetables too.
She was screaming for help. It was really loud. It almost distracted me from watching Miss Naked Dancer who had lifted her window shade and looked like she might take her top off.
She did take her top off! She was wearing a sports bra. Oh well, better luck next time.
I looked back at Bill’s apartment. It had grown quiet. Nobody was in the dining room. I looked around the courtyard and saw him burying a severed arm in the garden.
I zoomed in with my binoculars, and looked at the hand on the severed arm he was holding. It was a left hand and there was no ring on the ring finger.
That’s odd, I thought. Did her remove the ring before he cut off her arm? Did he —
Miss Naked Dancer had changed into a pair of sweat pants.
And I missed it, all because I was distracted by a severed arm.
When I looked back at Bill’s dining room, he was there with another woman. She had an armload of body parts. She was helping Bill dismember the first woman. And she was wearing a wedding band.
So that was his real wife. He didn’t murder her after all. He murdered a cook or a mistress or a friend. I had jumped to an erroneous conclusion. It just shows how wrong you can be about people.
“I witnessed a murder,” I said to my girlfriend who I call Grace Kelly. She doesn’t look anything like Grace Kelly, I just call her that to make fun of her, like how people call a dumb guy Einstein, or how people call me Mr. Rogers because I’m a creepy voyeur.
“It happened the other day,” I said.
“Then you should call the police.”
“Let’s not be hasty. We need conclusive evidence. The body parts buried in the garden could belong to anybody.”
“You shouldn’t be obsessing about murder.” She fondled my cast. “Let’s share an intimate moment, as a sort of respite from the violence to come.”
“Okay. You want to watch the video I made of the murder? I put music to it and everything.”
“No, I’d rather — “
“Wow! Look at that!”
Miss Naked Dancer had removed her sports bra and was jumping up and down to Classic Rock.
“Look at what?” said Grace.
“Oops,” I said.
I turned my attention to Bill’s dining room, where he was murdering his wife, the real one this time. Earlier I had abandoned the nickname Wife Murderer Bill. Now I reinstated it.
“He’s murdering his wife.”
“Where?!”
“Right over there — oh, he’s done.”
Bill had murdered his real wife really fast.
By the time Grace spotted Bill’s window he was clearing the table and washing the dishes.
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Maybe you can watch him cut her into pieces, when he’s done with the dishes.”
“I think this is an unhealthy obsession. It may not even have happened.”
“What?” I was deeply offended. “I told you I have video.”
I made Grace watch the video on my phone. Unfortunately, I had mistakenly erased the murder video. All I had was Miss Naked Dancer doing calisthenics to “American Pie.”
“I don’t have time for this,” said Grace. “I’m going downtown. I’m a contestant in a Grace Kelly lookalike contest.”
I snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“What? But you always say I look — “
“Right. I’m sure you’ll win. Bye, Grace.”
“Bye, Mr. Rogers.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe this was an unhealthy obsession. I decided to cultivate a healthier obsession and spy on my other neighbors for a while.
I looked at the old person. They were still old. Nothing to see there.
Miss Naked Dancer went on vacation, so I had to make do with the “American Pie” video.
After a couple days I couldn’t help myself. I had to look through Bill’s window again. Bill had remarried. I wasn’t invited to the wedding. I can’t say exactly why that hurt my feelings, but it did. I would have liked to have kissed the bride before he murdered her, because that’s what he was doing now, chopping up his new bride who was still wearing her wedding dress.
Bill paused to have a slice of wedding cake — red velvet, not my favorite, so no big deal my missing the reception — and then he carried the body parts down to the garden.
The mound in the garden was getting pretty tall. The Family enjoyed having picnics on top of it, and Brother and Sister would roll down the sides, laughing.
Family picnics, old person, Miss Naked Dancer on vacation — ho hum. I began to get bored watching my neighbors, including Bill, who hadn’t murdered anybody for a week or more.
I grew restless. I kept waiting for Bill to bring home a new wife. But he never went out. He just stayed at home sharpening his knife and eating wedding cake — it was a really big cake.
I told Grace I was bored.
“Why don’t you go out dancing with me?” she said.
“Come on, a guy with a cast on his leg can’t go out dancing. You know what they’d call me?”
“Fred Astaire?” she said.
“Exactly. If you really want to go out dancing,” I said, “you should ask Bill.”
“The guy you think is a murderer?”
“Yes. Get him out of his apartment. Take him to a club where he can meet somebody, and bring her home, and... “
“And what?”
I stopped short of saying, “and marry her and murder her so I can watch.”
To my surprise Grace said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Really?”
“You’re boring, you know? I
can’t wait until your phony cast comes off your phony broken leg and you pretend you’re healed. I’m going to have some fun.”
And with that she put on a ballroom gown and heels she kept in my closet, and walked across the courtyard to Bill’s apartment.
They were gone a long time. I think they went dancing in Miami.
I passed the time by betting against myself on how many times the old person would get up at night to pee. Somehow I lost a lot of money.
After three days they came back, and they were still dancing. I grabbed my binoculars and zoomed in on Grace’s left hand.
She was wearing a ring!
I took a closer look. It was only an engagement ring. Whew, what a relief.
They stopped dancing and began a heated argument. Bill kept pointing at Grace’s ring finger. As near as I could make out, he didn’t really understand the difference between an engagement ring and a wedding ring. In his mind they were married. He picked up his knife because, also in his mind, that gave him permission to murder her.
(I recalled that the first woman I saw him kill wasn’t wearing a ring. Bill was an inconsistent murderer. That made him dangerous.)
Damn this fake cast. If I could only take if off and save Grace. But I’d made a promise to myself.
At that point Grace pointed out the window... at me!
Bill turned and looked. He glared at me with murder in his eyes. He pointed his knife at me.
It was terrifying. Good thing he was so far away.
No, wait. I was holding my binoculars backwards. I turned them around the other way and looked.
He was right here in my apartment!
He slowly advanced on me. I think he wanted to torture me before he killed me. He pounded on my cast.
“How does that feel on your broken leg?”
“Ow, ow, ow. That hurts so much on my broken leg!”
My mind was racing, trying to think of a weapon I could use against Bill.
I threw a salt shaker at him, because I knew he hated salt. It was a futile gesture.
“I see you forgot your knife, Bill. Too bad for you.” I laughed, knowing that all the knives in my kitchen were dull. Then I realized he could still kill me with a dull knife, and I stopped laughing.
Bill had no time for dull knives. He picked me up and carried me to the balcony. I guess his plan was to drop me, run back to his apartment, get his own sharp knife, then run back across the courtyard before I hit the ground. He was strong, but was he fast? I’d find out soon enough.
Just then Grace burst through the door with half a dozen policemen. They shoved Bill aside and grabbed me.
“You’re under arrest for voyeurism,” they said as they dragged me away.
“Who’s pressing charges?”
“Your neighbor, the old person.”
“Man or woman?”
The policemen shrugged.
***
I was released on probation and confined to my apartment with my fake broken leg which is still fake broken. The police confiscated my binoculars and all my cocktail glasses because they thought if you hold two glasses up to your eyes they work almost as good as binoculars, but I tried that and believe me, it doesn’t work.
Bill was sentenced to life. They dug up the mound and found plenty of evidence to convict him. Then Brother Family and Sister Family cried so hard that the police put all the body parts back in the mound so the kids would have a nice place to play.
Miss Naked Dancer returned from vacation. I wondered about her tan lines so I sent away for a spy drone.
The old person might have died. Who knows?
Grace comes to see me a lot.
And I sure have learned my lesson. I’m eating less salt. And I can’t wait for the day when my probation is lifted and I can buy new binoculars and get back to spying on my neighbors, old and new.
Why, what lesson do you think I learned?
The Inconvenience Of The Undersea City
“Come with me, David,” she pleaded. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said. “But it will never work out. I’m human and you’re a mermaid.”
Even now, as we dangled our legs over the edge of the pier, I could see the transformation taking place. Soon Oola’s legs would fuse together.
“I must return home. And you can come with me.”
“You’re being silly, darling.”
“You’ll see. You’ll see.”
And there it was. A big fin where her legs used to be. She took my hand and pushed off into the water, pulling me with her.
I was swimming, underwater. I turned to her and she was smiling. It was glorious, for about thirty seconds. Then I panicked.
I shook her hand loose and swam upward. I surfaced and gasped for air. She surfaced next to me.
“I was drowning,” I said.
“Of course you were. You’re human and you were underwater.”
She grabbed my hand.
“Come with me to my undersea city.”
And she pulled me under again.
She became more sensitive to my need for air. We’d swim for thirty or forty seconds, then surface so I could take another breath. We traveled like this for an hour.
And then I saw it: The undersea city. It was magnificent. It had tall spires and domes and castle walls and cathedrals and no dicey areas unless they were hidden behind the nice parts.
“This is my home,” said Oola.
I wanted to say, it’s beautiful, but I was running out of air, so Oola took my hand and we swam to the surface again.
Then I noticed a curious thing. There were thousands of other people doing exactly what we were doing: swimming to the surface, taking deep breaths, and then diving back down to the undersea city, which was called New Aqua Town.
“What gives?” I said, when our heads were out of the water.
“This is what I meant when I said, ‘you’ll see,’” said Oola. “You’re like everyone else in New Aqua Town. You have human lungs and no fins. You’ll fit right in.”
“Isn’t there anyone here who can breathe underwater?”
“Only me.”
I was ecstatic. I hugged Oola, then we dove back down to the city. I wanted to see more of New Aqua Town. I had so many questions, like: can you find a good plumber down here? And, if you find a good plumber, will they be expensive? Because it seemed like they would be.
We were both hungry so we went to a sidewalk cafe. The host swam down from the surface to meet us, then showed us to our table.
It was a long lunch. There was an extensive wine list and pages of seafood dishes on the menu. If that made Oola uncomfortable she didn’t show it. I surfaced and swam back down five times before I could decide what to order.
The food was delicious and well worth the wait. Oola and I took our time and enjoyed watching the street life swimming by.
But after a while I got tired of all that swimming up and down. I felt like calling it a day.
“How do human people sleep down here?” I asked Oola.
“I don’t know. It’s never been a problem for me.”
That’s when it dawned on me that day-to-day life in New Aqua City could be challenging.
She took me back to her apartment, and it wasn’t restful at all, at least not for me. Oola lie on her back snoring. I kept getting up to either breathe or go to the bathroom.
It was during a restless pre-dawn moment that I had my brilliant idea.
“Oola, wake up!”
“Huh?” she said, removing some strands of wet hair that had floated into her mouth.
“I think you can tell I’m not happy here.”
“You’ve only been here a day.”
“Yes, and it’s been — “
I swam to the surface, took a deep breath, sw
am back down, and continued.
“ — awkward. But I thought of a way we can both be happy. We move New Aqua City up onto dry land!”
“It’s too early for this,” she said, and rolled over onto her side.
“No, listen,” I said, coming back from the surface again. “We don’t have to move the entire city, just a few structures. We’ll put them up on the beach. I can live there, and we can visit each other.”
Oola was asleep again, which I took as a sign she was on board.
We found a few empty mobile homes in a trailer park on the outskirts of New Aqua City. Oola dipped into her savings, we bought the mobile homes, and pulled them up onto the beach. There were also some semi-trailers that were used as pop-up shops around Christmas, and we got a short-term lease on those.
I wanted to call our new town New Aqua City II, but the city council threatened legal action, so instead we called it Beachville Town.
Right from the start it was a hit. Turns out a lot of people in New Aqua City were tired of swimming up and down, just like me.
In fact everybody in New Aqua City felt that way. They all abandoned their beautiful undersea city and moved into the trailers and mobile homes on the beach. Beachville Town became an ugly sprawl that stretched for miles.
They made me the mayor because Beachville Town was my idea, and also because I charged rent to live on the beach while making empty promises about civic improvements.
Life was good and I had never been happier. But I missed Oola. She hadn’t swam up to visit for months. I decided to check up on her.
New Aqua City was a ghost town. I swam by the empty sidewalk cafe where we had our first date.
I found Oola wandering around the open-air aquarium.
“Hello, David,” she said.
“It’s good to see you, Oola. I miss you.”
“I wish I could say I missed you too. But sadly I don’t... “
She politely paused while I swam up for air.
“There was always something not quite right about this city,” she continued. “Now I know it was the people. I’m glad they cleared out. I like being alone. I have you to thank for that.”