Leavings

We throw the leavings of our evening meals out the back door so as not to smell up the house. The raccoons and possums appreciate this, and they've grown accustomed to the nightly delivery. Our neighbor Mr. Tinglov is less appreciative, though. Once the raccoons and possums have eaten our fish guts and chicken innards, our pork ribs and turkey gizzards, they typically proceed to his house next door, expecting more of the same. But we don't care. We don't like Mr. Tinglov. We don't like the car he drives so slowly, the way he keeps his yard so neat and tidy, we don't even like the colors he had his eaves painted. Late at night, long after everything that we've thrown out has been gnawed down or dragged away, sometimes we'll peer out the window and see the beady shining eyes of a raccoon or possum that thinks in that little wordless mind of his, If I'm patient, I'll be rewarded with a meal all my own. "Well, what do you know, there's Mr. Tinglov," we'll say, not because Mr. Tinglov looks like a raccoon or a possum so much, but because we know how mean it is to imagine him as one. "He looks mighty hungry," we'll say, and we'll forage through our refrigerator for something to throw to him. And then we'll see Mr. Tinglov, the real Mr. Tinglov with his poofy hair and his stretched-out sweaters, picking up his newspaper the next day while we're out smoking and walking up and down the sidewalk, like we like to do. When he sees us, he'll wave us over, "My charming, charming neighbors," to ask us the latest news, and aiming to outdo each other, we'll tell him about trips to Bratislava, books written in Urdu, aerial photographs of nimbostratus clouds, the only places to order osso bucco.

"Oh, your lives," he'll say, shaking his poofy-haired head in awe and disbelief. "Your lives, your lives. Today, I watered the lawn and trimmed the hedges."

When we walk off, we'll laugh . . . and wonder how he liked the moldy bread heel, the flaccid carrot, the cottage cheese way past its expiration date.