Dance of the Voyeurs

Dance of the Voyeurs
February 13, 2017


There’s no good explanation for why she had acted the way she did. She had slept soundly through the night. She couldn’t recall having moved from her starting sleep position, lying flat on her back with hands folded across her lower stomach, wrists resting in place to warm her hip joints. Her early arthritis pose, she always tells herself when settling just so in bed and later becomes aware her body could be arranged the same way in a coffin one day. Generally then she tosses to her side. She couldn’t recall tossing last night or sensing her husband’s presence next to her in bed. It’s not like she was over stimulated from lack of sleep.

“What time is he coming?” she asked as she sipped her Saturday morning cup of coffee.

“Around noon time,” her husband replied. “We need to clear off the counter top and cover it with a tarp,” he said and helped himself to coffee.

“The parts are in the hardware box,” she reminded him and started clearing the counter.

Sure enough, the doorbell rang at 12:15. Stylishly late, she thought, as her husband went to answer the door. The two men engaged in small talk as they made their way up the stairs and into the kitchen.

“You watching the game?”

“O’yeah. I’ll be watching. Both games.”

“In the man cave?” her husband asked. One of the neighbors, the one who had given them this man’s name, had converted his two-car garage into an extra room of sorts, complete with recliner chair, brown corduroy couch, ceiling fan, a 52-inch flat-screen TV, fully stocked bar, and a refrigerator always topped off with beer. Domestic beer. The only thing it lacked was a sign: Women by invitation only.

“I don’t know. Maybe the first one. Might be too cold in there to watch the night game.”

“Have you heard the line on the Patriots game?”

“Pats and 5.”

“Really? I’m surprised,” her husband countered. “I thought it’d be a lot closer than that.”

“That’s what I heard driving over,” the man said firmly and planted both palms down on the counter top as he steadied himself onto a stool.

“Can I offer you a cup of coffee. Something to drink?” she asked him.

“Well…what have you got?”

She opened the refrigerator door. “I’ve got OJ. Pomegranate juice. Seltzer water. I’m making iced tea,” she threw in that last one to have something plainer to offer.

“How about water? Do you have a bottled water?”

“I have this,” she said and pointed cheerfully to a chilled bottle of Pelegrino.

“O’that’s too fancy for me,” he blurted. “I’ve got me a bottled water in the truck. I’ll just go get it.”


The man returned to the kitchen carrying a bottled water and a soft black bag of tools. As he placed the bag on the tarp-covered counter, she was aware that she was looking hard at him. Studying him, really. Looking for clues as to the kind of man he might be. He was tall and decidedly disheveled. His faded jeans were just baggy enough to show a hundred scattered wrinkles. Probably from lying in a heap on the floor, she imagined. A flannel shirt tail hung below his sweatshirt on one side. The worn baseball cap tilted forward barely showed his eyes.

“Why is this here?” he asked.

“The tarp? We thought you’d want it there for your workspace,” she answered.

He turned and faced her square to get a clean look at her answer. “Why? Are you afraid the counter will get damaged?”

“The counter? It’s granite. No, I guess not. Do you not need it?”

“If you want it to be there, it can be there,” he shrugged. “I mean, if it makes you feel better.”

“If you’d rather not have it there, I can move it.”

“How about if we just fold it up like this for me to set my tools on? would that be okay.”

“Sure,” she heard herself chirp. Watching him pull a narrow saw out of his tool bag, she couldn’t help noticing that his hands shook. Trembled really.

“Do you need us to shut off the electricity?”

“No,” her husband volunteered from the grey upholstered armchair across the room. “You don’t need to do anything.”
Her husband had removed himself from the activity. Giving the appearance of not listening, she thought. Not hearing the awkward exchange between her and the man. Only she knew better.

“Let the man do his job, dear,” her husband said, never lifting his head from the newspaper.

She turned her back to the counter and began emptying the dishwasher. It was an odd arrangement, having this man in their kitchen. Having the man and her husband and her all jumbled together. A dynamic none of them could readily escape. Anything she said to her husband—or that her husband said to her—the man could hear. Conversation echoed. It’s funny how you never hear yourself talk, she thought, until a stranger or new acquaintance is listening and then every word, every gesture, hangs in the air.

After the man snipped the wires and removed the light fixture hanging over the counter, he continued to line up his tools. Power drill. Flashlight. Tape measure. A small box-like contraption for marking a point with a tiny dot of laser light. Needle nose pliers. Orange plastic wire caps. Three electrical boxes and plates for the replacement fixtures. An image of a tray of neatly organized, sterilized equipment in a dentist office flashed through her mind and she wondered if this procedure would be as precise? or would it make her suddenly wince from a nerve being struck.

“Are you hungry?” she asked the man. “Can I make you a sandwich?” It was, after all, past noontime.

“Maybe later,” the man replied. “I’m not really hungry right now.”

“I have roast beef and roasted chicken. I was getting ready to make us a sandwich.”

“You guys go ahead. Don’t wait for me.”

“I have cheddar cheese and blue cheese coleslaw and potato buns. Are you sure?”

“No. I want to finish this first.”

“Well, I’m happy to make one for you. It doesn’t feel right…us eating and you not.”

“No. You guys go ahead.”

As she turned toward the stove to preheat the oven, she could see her husband waving his arms to get her attention and then briskly slicing a flattened hand across his throat, twice. “I’ll take roast beef,” he said.

“I’m going to make brownies for dessert,” she continued. “So if you won’t let me make you a sandwich, maybe you’ll have some brownies?” Again, the ‘cut it off’ signal from her husband, stiffer and quicker this time.


Standing on the counter, the man leaned his weight heavily into the sawing motion to cut out the first round opening in the ceiling. He spread his legs wide to brace himself against the struggle he was having. Something was getting in the way. He switched to making small, straight cuts with the saw and began chipping away pieces with a screwdriver and hammer. Chunks of drywall plunked onto the counter top.

“Can I ask you a question?” she started as she halved the two sandwiches. “We never talked about money. How do you want to be paid? Should we write you a check? Pay you cash?”

The man stopped what he was doing and looked down at her. He lifted his baseball cap, smoothed back thick waves of straw-blond hair and readjusted the cap. “Well, I prefer cash,” he said. “So there’s no paper trail and my wife doesn’t know I have it. That way, I get to pocket the money for myself.” It was the most he had revealed about himself.

While the man went back to working, she and her husband ate roast beef sandwiches out on the screened-in porch. Out of earshot, she could feel herself becoming more at ease. Two bird feeders hung high up in the oak trees in their back yard. The wire mesh porch screen between them and nature created just enough privacy—or maybe for the birds, security—so they could easily come and go and she could observe their behavior. As if no one were watching.

“Stop asking the man fifty questions,” her husband shot. “Just let him do his work.” She stiffened only a little and shifted the conversation.

“How much cash do you have on you?” she asked. “I have about thirty dollars.”

“Not much. I spent most of it at the hardware store this morning.”

“We need to pay him in cash. Do you mind running to the store to pick up milk and get some cash back?”

“No,” he said, “I can do that.”


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly. Add sugar and two beaten eggs. Add vanilla. Stir until well mixed. Sift together flour and baking powder and add salt. Add dry ingredients to the chocolate mix. Batter will be thick and fudge-like. Pour batter into a baking dish lined with buttered wax paper. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Something in her won’t let her just follow a recipe, just do what it says. She always adds some ingredient—some dash of this or that—of her own invention. She couldn’t say why, really. Some misplaced rebellion, she supposed. Maybe it’s the artist in her. Maybe having a rebellious streak is the curse of having an artist living in you. Maybe it’s the surprise ending, she thought, the not knowing exactly what you’ll get when it’s done. She unwrapped the dark chocolate bar she found in the drawer, buried underneath the dish towels. She chopped the bar into small chunks and folded the irregular bits of chocolate into the brownie batter.

“Are you ready for a lunch break, yet?”

“Not quite,” the man answered. “Whatever you make me, it has to be on thin thin slices of bread. Because of my choppers. I have trouble chewing. “I’m waiting for two more teeth to fall out on their own,…save me 200 bucks. Then I’m getting them all replaced.”

She didn’t look up. She was distracted by the oven not preheating; it had been 20 minutes, maybe longer, and the digital numbers hadn’t moved past 100 degrees. “I can make you a sandwich with regular bread, too. It doesn’t have to be the potato buns. I just bought them…I don’t know…in case somebody wanted something…different.” She heard the apologetic tone in her voice and wondered why it was there. Was she sorry for the bread choice? or for this man with his rotting teeth.

“This damn oven,” she groaned. She pushed the oven’s cancel button and re-pushed start. The default temperature flashed across the display panel in fluorescent blue: 350 degrees.

“My sister had a problem with her oven,” the man volunteered.

“Listen,” she said and looked up at the man. “You can hear it try to start.”

“She lives in Minnesota.”

“Hear that?…click, click…click, click. It’s trying.”

“Last time I talked to her I asked her if she knew any available women. Not too young.”

“But no swoosh.”

“The kind of woman who might take a liking to a guy like me.”

The man’s last words jarred her, almost as if he had slapped her in the face. They felt like they were meant for her now as much as they may have been meant for his sister then. The way he said it was more like a question, like he was asking her if she knew anyone who might be interested. She wondered if he even had a sister. Like he was asking her if she would be interested. She wondered about the man’s wife, the reason her husband had gone to the store in the first place to get cash.

From here, all that was left was screwing in the fixture mounting plates and poles and attaching the blown glass globes. This was the finish work, she thought as she heard the oven beep. “Finally,” she said out loud and placed the brownies in the oven. She was eager for the pent up anticipation to leave the room. How the man and her husband would get along. How she would act with the two men hovering around her. How her husband would behave toward her with the man in the room. How the brownies might help to ease the tension between them all.

“Just let me know when you’re ready,” she said to the man and wished she would hear the sound of her husband getting back from the store. “Roast beef or roasted chicken?”

2017 Copyright, Denise Lynn