What Your Wife Will Never Know

Cloud, oak, robin, the cool spring evening wind in the leaves, the sorts of things one expects to see out a window; not, certainly, the smeared face of Mr. Wellington pressed hard and flat against the window pane, leering inside, leering in at you through the glass. His fat cheeks plumped flat. His hand reaching through the open window, his smooshed lips splayed flat in a grimaced grin, the solid tick of his left front tooth tapping the window. His hand reaching in at you. His incredibly long arm unfurling through the kitchen and now the dining room, upsetting a vase of flowers from a shelf, tulips, probably, and now reaching up the stairs leading to the bedrooms, the kids’, yours and your wife’s. And now the distending hand is opening your bedside table’s top drawer and removing the birds, dead birds, you keep there in silence. The hand recedes back through the room, snaking back down the stairs, back through the dining room, back through the kitchen window. Of course, your wife will believe none of this. Mr. Wellington peels himself off your window and walks away. You rush to the window leaning out into the evening air, watching the fat backside of Mr. Wellington waddle down the lane, whistling, and right before he turns the corner onto Green Street, he turns back to you and winks, and the birds explode into life soaring up, up, up into the deepening sky.