Lake View Court Living

Barry and Jeanette pulled into the driveway precisely at noon on a Wednesday in April. It was beautiful out, eighty degrees and light wispy clouds seemingly etched into the bright blue sky. The breeze from the lake two blocks away brought a touch of coolness that kept the sun from feeling too hot. They got out and looked around the cul-de-sac that would be their immediate neighborhood for the next six months as they housesat for their friends Julio and Kathy who would be spending those months with Julio’s parents in Sevilla, Spain. Julio and Kathy didn’t want the house to be empty and Barry and Jeanette felt they needed a change of pace after spending so much time at home over the past two years. They had been there twice since Julio and Kathy moved there three years earlier and while it was a little large for two people, there were gardeners for the outside and a property manager who would be able to help them with any serious issues.

           “I’d kind of forgotten how cool all these houses are,” Barry said.

           “I know, me too. Do we really belong here?” she said only half-jokingly.

           “Probably not, so let’s enjoy it while we’re here. Let’s make sure to grab the wine and vodka now, I’m not planning on getting any work done today.”

           “Me neither. Actually, I should check email, but I won’t be on for more than an hour and I won’t wait until I’m done to have some wine. That was a long drive, we earned it.”

           Barry nodded and they grabbed their bags out of the back of their Subaru and walked up the entryway to the front door of the Spanish style bungalow, which was the style of most of ten of the homes on Lake View Court. The front door opened right as they were about to knock and they were welcomed inside by the property manager Kevin Milligan.

           “Welcome, you are right on time,” he said with smile, his tanned and pudgy body framed by the doorway.

           Barry and Jeanette carefully planned that, making sure to get on the road on time and minimizing stops along the way. They would have been early, but they decided to stop for a coffee a few blocks away and then arrived exactly at the agreed upon time to make a good first impression. Kevin gave them the keys and took them on a tour of the house as if he were a realtor, though a realtor with a real eye for home maintenance and making sure to mention all the people to call for any repairs they felt they couldn’t do themselves. At the end he sat them down at the dining room table near a sliding glass door that looked out on to the deck, which overlooked the neighborhood. That was the part of the house that they both remembered more than anything else. After going over a few last items, Kevin spoke to them on a more personal level.

           “The people in this neighborhood, and I mean the cul-de-sac right here, are perfectly nice people and people you’ll probably have fun with. Block parties, wine Wednesdays; that sort of thing. They can be horrible gossips though, so you may want to be careful of what you say to them until you get to know them a little better.”  

           Barry and Jeanette looked at each other, each with a curious expression.

           “Sorry, Kevin, I’ve just never had that warning about a neighborhood before,” Jeanette said, “How bad can it be?”

           “OK, I may have come across a little too strong. From everything I hear it isn’t malicious, it is more that there is a lot of it, enough that people outside of this corner of the neighborhood are aware of it and I wanted you to be too.”

           Over the next couple of weeks, Barry and Jeanette settled in and got into a routine. After nearly two years of working from home, that part was easy and they both liked having a new set up, a new view, and just something different about the daily routine. They went for a walk after lunch and worked in some time each day for themselves as well. As they walked around the neighborhood, they started meeting some of the other Lake View Court residents, a few they had met briefly during their visits. The first to invite them over were their immediate neighbors Anton and Lucy, who told them about the gay couple across the street, Michael and Jermaine. Jermaine, an African-American, they made sure to point out, owned the local kitchen design and supply store called Stove & Pantry. Jermaine had put a lot of hours into the store to make it through the bleakest business months of the pandemic and he still put in more hours than he had before, but according to Anton and Lucy, Michael was actually bi-sexual and had been spending a lot of time with Maribel, the much younger Guatemalan wife of Wallace who lived in the house at the end of the cul-de-sac that looked like an old hippie hangout. Lucy mentioned Maribel’s beautiful long black hair and then claimed Michael and Maribel were making porn videos and posting them on OnlyFans, mainly because Maribel had lost her job a couple of months before and still hadn’t told Wallace and she needed to have some money coming in. On a sadder note, Anton and Lucy were both concerned about their neighbor Doreen’s drinking and opiate use with her husband George out of town so much for work. She didn’t have to work and had no desire to, but she had a lot of time on her hands. They added that Doreen was a good person to go to any time one needed suggestions for new shows on NetFlix though.

           “Who lives in that house over there?” Barry asked, pointing to one directly across the street.

           “Oh, that’s Darren Simmons’s house. Hardly anyone sees him very much anymore,” Anton replied, and he quickly changed the topic and began talking about some of their favorite restaurants in the area.

           When they got home, Barry and Jeanette’s heads swam with the all the information they’d been given to absorb, while also wondering how much of it was actually true. And did all of the neighbors talk like Anton and Lucy? Did they all talk about each other like that? If they did, Barry and Jeanette would need to tone a few things down and stay quiet about themselves to avoid being somebody else’s topic of conversation. This became clearer over the next couple of weeks after their invitations to a wine Wednesday over at the house of Josh and Peggy the following week as well as a Saturday night barbecue and get together over Wallace and Maribel’s where they couldn’t help but wonder if and where Michael and Maribel shot their videos. It barely came up at either event, but they both were becoming curious about Darren Simmons and why he either wasn’t included in these gatherings or chose to stay away from them.

           Before long, Barry and Jeanette started hearing about each other when they bumped into a neighbor in town or when they got into conversations with someone while out on one of their walks. Before long this became one of the features of their conversations. One Tuesday afternoon they each came back from separate outings with some new information about the other they shared while making a snack in the kitchen.  

           “I hear from Mike Chun that you like to have the occasional clove cigarette when you sit by the lake,” Jeanette teased him. “I thought you totally quit those.”

           “I did for a while, but I’m back to having a couple a week,” he confessed, “that’s it, really. I know they’re terrible for me, but I still like that buzz once in a while.”

           “I’m more worried about you reverting into being a teenage girl from 1983.”

           “You can get worried when I’m drinking a couple of wine coolers at the same time,” Barry replied.

           “If only somebody still made those.”

           “Oh, who’s the really tall woman with the long silver hair? Charlotte?”

           “No, I know who you mean. Cheryl.”

           “Yes, her. I saw her and Peggy when I went to the lake today and there was something about you all trying to find Michael and Maribel’s videos online. How did that happen?”

           Jeanette sat down and shook her head.

           “That was so awkward. I went to Peggy’s for coffee and somehow it ended up with that. I wanted no part of it, but they kept on looking. I think they both wanted to watch some porn and that was their excuse. I made up a reason to get out of there.”

           Barry laughed and sat next to her.

           “Most of this is pretty fun and all, and it is beautiful around here, but I think I’ll be ready to go when the time comes. Everyone seems to be having a good time, but this could become completely toxic.”

           Jeanette nodded emphatically.

           “I completely agree.”

           They also agreed that the most interesting person there was probably the one that hardly anybody ever saw. Darren Simmons was seen by people very irregularly. He’d once been a part of the group, and a well-liked, if somewhat quieter member of it. He’d been a successful animator, working on several films and creating a few graphic novels that were published in his spare time. One night four years earlier his wife suddenly died of a stroke in her sleep, leaving Darren devastated. Their two children visited from time to time, but for the most part he became a bit of a recluse. He looked well, if a little unkempt when people saw him, and word was that Jermaine would go over and visit with him from time to time. While he professed that he didn’t have anything against any of the others, he simply still didn’t want any other visitors coming to his home. He would let people know when he was ready and four years later that time had not yet come. The rumor was that he was being consoled in his home by a series of talking animals. First it was his dog Roscoe who he had to put down about a year and a half after his wife’s death. Others were said to have followed, including a hamster, an Angelfish, and most recently a garter snake that had gotten out of its habitat and had gone missing a few weeks earlier.

           This all made people very concerned about him and they would send questions and messages to him through Jermaine. Collectively, their feelings were very mixed. For Darren’s sake, they wanted it all to be real, but of course, how could it possibly be? Was he slowly going crazy? Jermaine dutifully brought back Darren’s replies and they were nearly always the same: he appreciated the concern, but that he was OK with the help of this series of friends and that he had recently started working again.

           “Yes, it sounds completely nuts,” Jermaine said at recent block party, “But he thinks it is real and it seems to be helping him. He even has a guy he says helps him to find new animals.”

           This only made Barry and Jeanette all the more curious about him, but now knowing more of his backstory and the sadness that he was still working through, they knew they shouldn’t just show up at his house unannounced. A couple of weeks later though, the opportunity presented itself when two packages meant for Darren were delivered to their house along with a couple meant for them. Barry and Jeanette wondered when something like that was going to happen because they were convinced that their local delivery driver has high most of the time. They looked at the two slim packages, each most likely a book, and knew that they had their reason to go over to Darren’s and knock on his door.

           “Let’s go,” Jeanette said, “Why wait?”

           A moment later they were out the door with the packages and headed over to Darren’s while hoping that none of their neighbors would see them. Two cars were parked in the driveway and just past that, a winding entry way through a slightly overgrown front yard brought them to the front door, which had been left open. They looked for the doorbell but couldn’t find one and they started knocking on the door. When no one responded, they looked at each other and with a slight nod, they walked into the entryway, and they could hear voices just off of the hallway to their left.

           “Hello?” Jeanette called out, “Is anybody home?”

           After just a few more steps they reached the hallway where they were greeted by a raccoon standing on its hind legs.

           “Oh my God,” the raccoon called out, “Who left the front door open? I thought we talked about this. Darren, you need to be here.”

           Seconds later a man with graying shaggy hair wearing a long floral swimsuit and a navy blue Nirvana t-shirt stepped into the hallway while brushing the hair out of his eyes. An anxious look came over his face as soon as he saw Barry and Jeanette in his home staring down at the raccoon.

           “You’re the ones house sitting across the street, aren’t you?”

           Barry and Jeanette nodded, but didn’t say anything.

           “Please, do not tell anybody about this,” he pleaded, “Not a single one of the people in this neighborhood. Most of them are nice enough, but you know that they’ll tell everybody they know and this will become a shit-show.”

           “We’re so sorry,” Barry said, “The front door was open. We just wanted to give you these packages, they were delivered to our house.”

           Barry held them out and them placed them on a narrow shelf that ran part way down the hallway.

           “And we were really curious,” Jeanette added, “We’d heard stories. We didn’t think it could be real, but we still kind of wanted to see for ourselves.”

           “Jeanette, please,” Barry said.

           “We need to be completely honest,” she stressed.

           “Can we trust you not to tell anybody? That’s what we need to know,” the raccoon said in a demanding voice.

           “Easy, Rocky,” Darren said.

           “Yes,” Barry and Jeanette answered simultaneously.

           “Thank you,” Darren replied, “Rocky, we are going to need to trust them, OK?”

           Rocky looked back and forth between Barry and Jeanette, looking them both in the eyes, but not saying another word. He then went to all fours and walked back into one of the rooms, stomping as much as a raccoon can.

           “Thank you for bringing the packages.”

           Barry and Jeanette nodded and slowly backed down the hallway and turned and headed for the door.

           “Jeanette,” Barry whispered to her as they headed for home, “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. That was real, right?”

           Jeanette could only nod in reply.

           “And we aren’t telling anybody. Not here, not anywhere”

           “No,” Jeanette managed to reply, “These people would ruin it. I’m not sure how exactly, but they totally would.”

           They slowed the pace of their walking back to what they thought was how they usually walked, feeling the need to look as normal as possible.

           “Barry, that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen too. I can’t believe it.”

           “And we are never telling anybody.”

           “No, never.”