Peek-a-boo

Remember that guy that lived down the street in your old neighborhood? He'd lived there for as long as you could remember, but was still an outsider. He mostly kept to himself except for that time when your parents were having a yard sale and he showed up and talked to them for an unprecedented hour before buying an ugly old lamp. You only ever saw him in his rattletrap car, driving away in a cloud of blue smoke or pulling into his oil-stained driveway. On Halloween he gave out full-size candy bars. The good ones. He always bought raffle tickets or whatever you were hawking for fundraising. And you wondered what the rest of the inside of his house looked like, beyond the bit of room you could see from his front doorway.

And then one day, a "For Sale" sign went up. And surprisingly quickly, "SOLD" appeared. And you came home from school one day and he was gone.

But then on Saturday, you saw his car driving by. And wonder of wonders, he pulled into a driveway up the street. That old place that had been empty for a long, long time. He got out, walked up to the door and went inside just like he lived there. Son of a bitch! He bought another house just a few doors away from where he used to live. Who the fuck does that? Weird.

Heh. I'm back.