Hard Beat

I shove up off the couch, toss my beer bottle in the trash, and get an unsatisfactory clink as it hits the others inside before I look out the kitchen window to the neighborhood beyond. “Anything new? Well, Wendy had her baby while I was gone, cute little boy named Timothy,” I say, referring to my next-door neighbor. “And what else? It seems that William down the street bought some black eyesore of an SUV that he won’t park in his damn driveway, so it sits on the curb over there blocking the view some. And then there’s Mike on the other side who —”