Suspicious Minds

At 7:10 AM, Mr. Gasvoda leered through the kitchen window, one eye peeking out from behind the lime green curtains Mrs. Gasvoda purchased at Merle Davis’s yard sale last year. Across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Gasvoda’s home, a craftsman house with forest green trim and jade green panels, stood the new neighbor with one hand on his hip, and the other clasping a mug with something steaming in it. The new neighbor idly stood by, supervising the installation of a brand new, pristine white, steel-skinned, sixteen-foot garage door; complete with a one-and-a-half horsepower motor, all-new tracks and springs (freshly lubricated), a little clicker for the up and down motion, and eight little windows for leering through. 

“New neighbor’s installing a new garage door, Mrs. Gasvoda,” said Mr. Gasvoda, returning his eyes to his coffee, shaking his head in apparent disapproval. He sipped coffee from his green and white striped mug but wasn’t able to savor the flavor of his Dark Roast Delite, the coffee Mrs. Gasvoda buys because it has half the calories, as he thought about what the hell the thoughtless new neighbor was up to replacing a piece of history on his first day in Hillsboro. 

“What the hell does he think he’s doing replacing a piece of Hillsboro History?”

“Honey you are so right, that man is a menace! You ought to go over there and tell him so,” said Mrs. Gasvoda, turning away from the soaped up dishes in the sink, and scrunching her face from eyes to lips with a smile mocking her husband’s overreaction. Mrs. Gasvoda wore avocado green leggings with a white tank top and black and green running shoes. She took a moment to admire the way Mr. Gasvoda’s asparagus green button-up shirt matched her leggings while her husband peeked out the window again. 

“You know I won’t say anything, but if he keeps this up someone in town will. I’m not the type, but I could name a few folks offhand who are. I just don’t want things getting ugly.”

“To be fair, that was an old garage door, and that white door looks good with the jade trim.”

“OLD GARAGE DOOR!” said Mr. Gasvoda as he pulled the lime green shade all the way shut, and he turned to face his wife with an incredulous look that could have stopped a bullet train in its tracks. “You know I used to ride my bike down this street five days a week on my way to school. I always admired that house. It was built right after World War II when the soldiers came home and made good on their G.I. Bill. Everybody left those filthy city sprawls for good, clean suburban living. They practically made the middle class and shaped the world we live in today. Old garage door? Historical garage door.”

“I’m not entirely sure that makes the garage door historical, Mr. Gasvoda.” 

“Well then, what makes something historical, Mrs. Gasvoda?”

“Something that shows a change in the way we act and think is historical. Especially if the change in actions and thoughts occur simultaneously in groups of people. And the bigger the group, the more historically significant.” 

Mr. Gasvoda took a long, decisive draw from his mug, set it down on the sea-green tablecloth with finality, and said “Well, Mrs. Gasvoda, I should thank you for proving my point.” He waited for his wife to beg for details with a grin on his lips. 

“Enlighten me, Mr. Gasvoda.”

“The emergence and spread of the garage door industry is proof of the age of mass production, and helped to propagate suburbia, and, therefore, the middle class. As cars became widely available and affordable, thanks to improvements in manufacturing, people began to spread out, commute to work, commute to family, commute to restaurants, to grocery stores, and so on. It was an age of commuters much like the age we are in now. The American people living the suburban life became completely reliant on the automobile to sustain their way of living. Lo and behold, Americans needed a place to maintain, and protect the thing their very livelihoods depended upon.”

“Thus, the invention of the garage door.”

“Thus, the invention of the garage door,” repeated Mr. Gasvoda with vigorous head nodding. “The garage door is a reflection of a shift in the way people live and interact with their environment.”

“Well, Mr. Gasvoda, I must say I am thoroughly convinced of the historical significance of the garage door.” 

This was a rare moment for Mr. Gasvoda. He smiled as he peeked out the window once more, not wanting Mrs. Gasvoda to mistake his prideful demeanor for a coup, and let the sweet sense of victory soak in. He remembered the last time he was right about something. Mr. Gasvoda slept alongside his wife’s collection of twenty-three iguanas on the pullout couch in the basement for a week after that. But it was worth it. 

“I suppose that’s why the old neighbors never replaced it. What were their names again?” asked Mrs. Gasvoda.

“Beats me,” said Mr. Gasvoda. Both of them had known their previous neighbors' names a month prior but erased them from their memories since then. “But I hope I never have to learn this new guy’s name. Historical significance aside, hasn’t he ever heard the old saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

“Some people are hopeless, honey. Do you think you could throw the tablecloth in the laundry on your way out, Mr. Gasvoda?”

“Love to, Mrs. Gasvoda.” 

Mr. Gasvoda stood up from the antique, stained cherrywood table with a pedestal featuring a variety of intricately hand-carved fruits, and took the floor-length tablecloth with him. His empty coffee mug blended in with the tablecloth, and Mr. Gasvoda was too busy basking in the glorious victory of the garage door to remember he even had coffee. The mug fell off the table, did a flip, crashed on the grass green linoleum floor, cracked the bottom of the mug, and rendered it broken. 

At that moment, Mrs. Gasvoda finished putting away the last of the clean, green and white striped dishes, and turned around to shoot Mr. Gasvoda a look of admonishment. “You’ve got to be more careful, Mr. Gasvoda,” she said. 

Mr. Gasvoda apologized, picked up the broken mug, and chucked it in the trash under the kitchen sink. “I guess that coffee’s to go,” said Mr. Gasvoda laughing at his bad joke. Mrs. Gasvoda laughed too. She adored her husband’s sense of humor and loved to share a laugh. “Well, I’m off to work then dear.”

Mrs. Gasvoda approached her husband for a goodbye kiss and stared deeply into his blue eyes. She couldn’t hold back a wry smile, and the disappointment that accompanied as she swam out into the lonely blue ocean of Mr. Gasvoda’s eyes. When a look of confusion crossed his face, Mrs. Gasvoda smiled ear to ear, slapped Mr. Gasvoda on his barrel chest with both hands, and ran his tie through her slim fingers. “I just love this tie on you! Green Eggs and Ham was always my favorite when I was a girl.” 

Mr. Gasvoda smiled, pecked his wife on the cheek, and left for work through the garage, tossing the tablecloth in with the laundry. 

The new neighbor waved his entire arm back and forth in big, obnoxious motions as Mr. Gasvoda got into his car. Mr. Gasvoda gave the new neighbor a single nod and departed his driveway. Rolling by the new neighbor’s garage he couldn’t help but notice big glass jugs, propane tanks, and some sort of machinery he wasn’t familiar with. He tried not to think about what he saw, but for the rest of the day, he could not help wondering about what the new neighbor was up to.

Mrs. Gasvoda watched from the kitchen window as her husband drove away, and the new neighbor opened up paint cans. Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped as the new neighbor dipped his dry brush in the can, and it came out red.

Around 10:00 AM, Rose Peddler meandered down the cereal aisle of the Hillsboro Stop-And-Shop. Rose preferred hot cereal over dry, but the dry cereal aisle was a fresh spring of inspiration. Hydrangea blues, poinsettia reds, salvia purples, sunflower yellows, California poppy oranges, burst off the shelf in an explosion of color enriched cardboard. Staring at a box of Rice Krispies, Rose couldn’t help wondering how to get her blue snapdragons to pop like Crackle.  

Reverie interrupted, Rose glanced up when she heard “Pardon me,” and she saw a cart being pushed by an unfamiliar person with an unfamiliar face. Rose’s eyes bloomed as he passed, and she stared a hole through his back while he rolled to the end of the aisle, and stopped by the endcap. Plowing down the aisle behind him was Gabby Gardener, with a look that said she had something to say. 

“Rose!” said Gabby with hushed urgency, “Did you see the spoon in the new guy’s cart? It’s the length of my husband’s arm! I didn't know they made spoons that long, and you know Rick, he’s a tall one with arms to match, but that spoon put my husband’s arms to shame! I didn’t even know they sold that kind of thing here, I wonder where he found it? You know it looked more like a shovel than a spoon, you’d think we were in Morty’s Hardware! Speaking of Morty…”

Rose tuned Gabby out as she thought about the spoon-in-question’s ability to shovel earth. Rose had noticed the spoon in the unfamiliar man’s cart but never would have assumed it could be used as a shovel. The long, thin metal handle would have folded under the weight of soil with any clay in it. And the bowled, ovular head could not have been more or equally as effective for troweling. Rose wondered how Gabby ended up with a name like “Gardener” when she didn’t know the first thing about displacing soil and had a mental chuckle while she smiled, and nodded at Gabby. Still, the seeds of suspicion were planted, and she couldn’t help wondering what anyone needed a spoon to rival Rick’s arms for. 

“... she was hauling in a GREEN stand mixer! That woman is so tacky.”

Gabby stopped talking and covered her gaping mouth with a box of raisins she’d been flailing around. She pointed to the end of the aisle, and said, “Look!”

Rose turned and saw the unfamiliar man pushing his basket, heaping with gallons of water, up to the checkstands. Of course, water is a vital component to the health, and upkeep for anyone or any flowerbed thought Rose. But why did he need so much? And why did he need it all right now? He was new in town, but he had a faucet or at least a hose didn’t he? The unfamiliar man had started to bug her with his strange antics, and, truth be told, he’d begun to gnaw at her petals. 

“Let’s go see what he does next,” said Rose.

“Oh yeah, I bet he tries to make a run for it!”

The pair powered down the aisle. Gabby accidentally bumped a cereal display from the weekly ad, scattering the boxes across the aisle in a rainbow pattern, saying, “They really shouldn’t leave things on the floor,” and kept on walking. 

The unfamiliar man just finished checking out as they arrived, and walked out the automatic, sliding glass door. 

“Looks like he paid for his stuff, after all. I bet he thought about running out though. Let’s go see what he said to Bobby,” said Gabby. Bobby was the owner of the Stop-And-Shop, and today he was the head checker because the scheduled checker called out sick that morning. 

Rose and Gabby abandoned their carts by the depleted gallon-water end cap, and approached Bobby side by side, walking with the radial symmetry of the common primrose. Gabby spoke first, as usual. 

“Bobby, did you meet the new guy? What was he like? What did he say? Why was he buying all that water? Did you know your nose hairs are sticking out? Where did you get those huge spoons from?”

“He didn’t say much. He did ask me something kinda strange though,” offered Bobby. 

“What did he ask you Bobby?” said Rose. 

“Well, he asked me if there were any ‘local coffee roasters’ in town. I told him, ‘Fella, we boil our coffee around here.’”

At 10:36 AM, Jimmy Hitchens, local barista, strummed a tune on his boss’s door. Jimmy just had a strange encounter with a stranger asking to buy twenty pounds of organic, fair trade, single-origin, recently roasted, dark roast, arabica coffee beans. And the stranger added that he preferred ‘they were not boiled’. Jimmy told the stranger that shouldn’t be a problem, but he’d have to get permission from his boss first, and his boss was going to ask why he needed twenty pounds of beans. 

“Come on in, Jimmy!” said Dirk Brewer from the other side of the door. Jimmy opened the door to the boss’s office and was surprised to see nobody sitting at Mr. Brewer’s desk. 

“Mr. Brewer?” chimed Jimmy.

“Down here, Jimmy. I’m clipping my toenails,” rang a voice from beneath the desk. 

Jimmy got down on his hands and knees to look under the desk with one ear flat against the spotless floor. Sure enough, Mr. Brewer was clipping his toenails, bent over in his rolling chair, feet flat on the floor, behind the desk.

“I recently read that timely toenail maintenance is the foundation of exceptional foot health. I’m trimming my toenails twice a day now. Hope you don’t mind if I keep clipping. What can I do for you, Jimmy?”

“There’s a guy out there asking to buy twenty pounds of coffee beans, sir. Can we sell it to him?”

“Is he asking for a discount?”

“No.”

“Then you sure can Jimmy, but what’s he need all that coffee for?”

“He said it's for a recipe he’s developing…” Jimmy looked down at the note he had the stranger write the name of the recipe on. Jimmy had a hard time remembering how to pronounce words he wasn’t very tuned into. He still recalls the time in history class he was asked to read aloud, and instead of saying “Virginia Plan” he said ‘Ver-jine-a.’ That struck a chord with his classmates, who burst into a fit of laughter that still sings in Jimmy’s mind. 

Jimmy looked down at the note and tried his best to pronounce the word he’d never seen or heard. He could read “Black” just fine, but the stranger wrote the second word in all caps like he knew Jimmy was going to mess it up. Something didn’t sit right with Jimmy about that stranger as he stared at the unfamiliar word with a look of utter consternation. After a while, Mr. Brewer became concerned. 

“You ok Jimmy?”

“Yeah I’m fine,” Jimmy snapped out of his trepidation and decided to go with his gut. “The recipe is for a black eepa. You ever hear of an ‘eepa’ boss?”

“Can’t say that I have, but I can say this: I already don’t like this guy. But you can sell the beans anyway Jimmy. Because that’s what customer service is all about. Let that be a lesson for you: It doesn’t matter how you feel about somebody, as long as you’re making a sale at full market value.”

Jimmy took his face off the floor, pulled a rogue toenail off his cheek, and walked out of the office to a symphony of clipping. 

Hillsboro Herald

June 23, 2017

“Panicked Homeowner Shoots Neighbor Armed with a Spoon”

By: Harrold Valens

A concerned Hillsboro resident was killed in self-defense last night after breaking into his neighbor's home.

Glass, bubbling yeast, and blood litter the garage floor on a quiet Hillsboro street. A hobbyist beer brewer and homeowner explains to the police exactly what happened at 1:00 AM in his garage. 

Surveillance cameras, installed that morning, show the victim breaking into his neighbor’s home through a garage door, and inspecting propane tanks, burners, copper coils, carboys, and kegs. The victim is seen picking up a long spoon. He holds the spoon in his right hand as he measures it against his left arm, held perpendicular to his body.

The homeowner says he “ . . . heard a commotion in the garage . . . ” and thought it might be an intruder. He brought his legally registered handgun with him to inspect the scene. In the video, we can see the homeowner panic as he is confronted with an intruder who is in the universally known position of holding a rifle, which we now know to be the homeowners’ long spoon used to stir ingredients in massive pots of wort (precursor to beer). In a knee-jerk reaction, the homeowner fires one round through the victim’s head. He died immediately. 

The homeowner recently moved to Hillsboro hoping to save money, and work on opening up a local microbrewery largely featuring his favorite style of beer: black IPA. Now he sits on the sidewalk in front of his home, ridden with guilt, tears streaming down his face. The homeowner says while “ . . . [he’d] love a beer right now . . . ” his brewery dreams are the last thing on his mind. His thoughts go out to the wife, the victim left behind. 

The victim’s wife had this to say through sobs and tears: “The new neighbor was acting so strange this morning, and my husband went on and on saying ‘what’s he hiding in that garage!’ He just wouldn’t let it go. He didn’t even eat the spinach quiche with tomatillo sauce I made for dinner. I told him not to go over there.”

The police are not pressing charges at this time, but the investigation is ongoing.