Epitaph

PROLOGUE

Mrs. Simpson finally noticed him on the third day. He'd been there before; standing in the amber shadows where the wooden overhang of a Cape Cod roof met the milkweed and thistle of the local lot. That it was milkweed and thistle she was sure of-gardening was her passion and it had taught her the virtues of careful observation. But her powers of observation had proved lacking-after all, she'd noticed him now, but he'd been there before. He smacked of familiarity, of something already seen, if not already noted.

She pointed him out to her husband, who peered at him through the kitchen window, then went back to the refrigerator with all deliberate speed.

"So?" was all he said, almost out of the corner of his mouth, a characteristic he'd inherited from his latest and most severe stroke, which had laid him up over half a year and left him sluggish, apathetic, and irritable.

Yes. So? It was a sound question, one she pondered on and off for the rest of the day and a good part into the night.

That he'd been there before? Well, maybe. After all, what was he doing there, hidden in the undergrowth like a greenhouse cat? Weed-watching? Or was he merely getting some air, getting it in a place that suited him-in a place with a view perhaps, though she couldn't imagine exactly what view that was.

It was when she noticed him the next day, back in the shadows like a reluctant suitor, and then again the day after that, that she slowly began to understand what it was that bothered her. Why it was that looking at him made her feel guilty as a voyeur-something she'd never felt with plants, or, for that matter, with sex-may it rest in peace-either.

What it was, was a mirror image. She was peeking on someone who was peeking on someone else-it was that simple. He was watching someone, someone or something, and she'd stumbled onto it and compounded it all by committing the very same indiscretion. It was, in a sense, mortifying.

But mortifying as it was, she didn't stop.

She tried, really tried, puttering with this and that, busying herself with one thing or another, but the problem was she kept passing that window, and every time she passed it she had the overwhelming desire to look through it. So much for trying. Soon she found herself right back at the kitchen window. Watching the watcher.

And he was an artist at it, really-a professional, she might have said. For he didn't flinch, he didn't blink, he didn't seem to move a muscle. He just stood. And watched.

What or who he was watching was, however, a mystery. She couldn't tell-he was simply too far back into the shadows. He might've been looking left, or he might've been looking right; he might've, in fact, been looking at her. Yet even the possibility that this might be the case didn't deter her an iota. She was, in a way, too fond of him now.

For she'd begun to think of him as hers, the way birdwatchers tend to think of a returning cardinal or blue jay as theirs-their little bird. He was her little watcher, and the more she watched, the more cognizant she became of a certain feeling she had about him, a feeling she might have termed maternal. Though he was (even half obscured by weeds she was sure of this) quite as old as her, give or take a decade. Yet this only endeared him that much more to her.

She began to think of herself as his rear. His accomplice, if you will. And as this feeling intensified, she grew bolder, bold enough to actually consider going outside to talk to him. What she would say once she got there, she hadn't a clue-but it was her experience that these things tended to sort themselves out. A simple hello might do for starters-then, they'd see.

By this time, his visits had taken on the sameness of routine. He was always there when she woke; he always left for the better part of an hour just after noon (for lunch perhaps?); he always returned in time for the single bell struck at St. Catherine's across the road. By four he was gone. Give or take a minute, he stuck to that schedule as faithfully as a crossing guard.

It was well into the second week A.N.H. (After Noticing Him) that Mrs. Simpson decided to take the plunge. She waited till mid-morning, then, taking a deep breath the way her mother had taught her to when she was about to do something daringly out of character, she pushed open the kitchen latch and ventured outside.

If he'd noticed her, he didn't show it. He stood rigid as ever, still half obscured by shoots of milkweed and thistle, shoots grown thick and hoary in the early summer heat. She set her sights for his side of the street.

When she reached it, she turned right and began to walk straight toward him. She could see some details now: flat brown shoes with air holes in the tongue, the kind worn for comfort and nothing else; well-creased pants that fell just a bit long down the heel; a gray cotton shirt in need of ironing. A definite widower, was her off-the-cuff guess.

When she drew alongside him-and the ten or so yards needed to accomplish that feat seemed, at least to her, to take forever, she glanced, casually as she could, up to his face and said, "Nice morning, isn't it?"

But if he felt it was a nice morning too, he didn't say so. He didn't, in fact, do anything. He kept his face turned away-toward Mecca maybe?-and continued to act as if a woman had not decided (foolishly decided, she now believed) to pass him and reflect on the weather. One thing she wasn't, however, was a quitter. And she was about to try again, almost, in fact, had the words out, when something she saw made her stop, stop dead, as if someone had just clapped their hand around her mouth. She continued on down the block without looking back.

The next day he was there again, and he was there again the day after that. But the next day, two and one half weeks After Noticing Him, he didn't show. And he didn't show the day after, or the day after that.

And she knew, in the way she knew most things, not with her head, but with her heart-that that was it. He was never coming back.

In the weeks that followed she found herself glancing out the window less and less, till she finally stopped looking out at all. She immersed herself in her plants again, and though she found them staid and rather lifeless after him, she was grateful for them, for they passed the time and left her pleasantly fatigued. Gardening, after all, was a harmless hobby, and she knew it was that, above all else, that gave her comfort.

Several weeks later, snuggled up in bed, her husband suddenly asked about him.

"That guy? Whatever happened to him?"

She didn't know, she said. Just gone, that's all.

But then, she suddenly felt the need to tell more, felt it as strong as she'd ever felt anything.

"He had a gun," she said. "I walked by him and he had a gun. I saw it."

And she began to tell her husband more, more of what she felt and what she thought and what she theorized. But halfway through, she gave up.

For he was fast asleep, turned to the wall like the class dunce, and certainly just as oblivious.