We sleep in shifts, to guard the house and to make sure no one steals our large drowsy dog. Our neighborhood has suffered a flurry (3) of artless smash-and-grab burglaries, presumably the work of meth-addicted losers with sickening brown nubs for teeth and slutty girlfriends named Deena. Sometimes on my watch the tension is high, mostly due to the simple fact of my involvement. I might hear a twig snap, someone tramping through the yard (?), or what sounds like a sluggish individual mounting the porch steps very, very slowly. A zombie? Or a scurrying, which usually turns out to be squirrels on the roof. Someone is always awake, someone is always asleep, and usually the third person inhabits a twilight state, a stupor in which rational thought is not possible but in which cookies can be eaten with all the pleasure of full consciousness, maybe even more.

A homeowner a block away left flyers all around to announce that he was hosting a neighborhood meeting to address the crime wave and to quell the panic. We didn't go. We don't want to meet our neighbors and we failed to see what such a meeting could accomplish. Besides, we've got it covered, we sleep in shifts. I go around turning some lights on and others off, to simulate normal domestic activity, even though we're all at home. Who could stand to meet their neighbors? All that nodding hello and smiling, eternally, once you've made their acquaintance. Once you say hello you're stuck saying hello forever. Now if they form a vigilante mob we'll be looked upon as suspect, part of the problem not the solution. Not good neighbors but bad neighbors. That house of weirdos that never sleeps, with the yard overgrown with weeds, where women are never seen coming or going, the men-only club of civic irresponsibility and who knows what else. Suspicious activities, possibly criminal, almost certainly depraved. A meth lab in the basement? I wouldn't be surprised!