1
Please
by Peter Darbyshire
2002
I COULDN'T LIVE LIKE THAT
I WALKED EVERYWHERE in those days. I had a car but I couldn't always afford gas. Sometimes, at night, I went up to the windows of houses and looked inside. In the dark, you can stand right on the other side of the glass, and no one ever knows you're there. From the street, these places always seem like the kind of homes you see in magazine ads, all red walls and leather furniture. Close up, though, it's mostly just people watching television or doing the dishes. Although once I saw a woman feeding soup to a man with two broken legs. There was nothing wrong with his arms but she fed him soup anyway, kneeling beside him on the couch and carefully lifting the spoon to his lips.
Another time I saw a man putting on eyeliner. I was standing deep in a driveway between houses and looking into a bedroom. I could see him through the cracks between the blinds. He was sitting at a vanity with lights around the mirror. When he was done with the eyeliner he put on eye shadow and lipstick. Then he cleaned his face with a tissue and blew himself a kiss. After that, he walked out of the room and didn't come back. I wondered whose makeup it was. His wife's? His roommate's?
And once I came across another man doing the same thing as me. I started down a driveway and saw him kneeling on the ground at the other end, his face shining from the light of the basement window in front of him. He never looked away from it, not even when I went back up the driveway. I don't think he ever knew I was there. I never went back to that house again.
I was twenty-three or twenty-four at the time, I can't really remember anymo