Talk To Me

12-I || The Paper and The Doggie

It was Sunday afternoon and I was right where I needed to be: well hidden behind a huge oak, eyes trained on the pretty suburban house a couple hundred yards ahead. The same house I'd followed Adrian to. The house that he'd moved in to with his wife and kids, two months ago.

I obviously had to go in from the back; going in through the front door in broad daylight was out of the question. And the suburbs had the type of neighbors that loved spying in on their surroundings for no good reason. The backyard was easy to get in to, and no neighbor had a thoroughly clear view of it, exactly. And fate was on my side; I only had one neighbor to worry about. The Wallersteins were right at the end of the lane.

At 11.57 PM, a woman in a purple tracksuit that heavily accentuated all her hideous curves came up the Wallersteins' driveway, a pudgy toddler perched on her arm and another one waddling by her side, holding onto her knee. Monique. A man stepped out of the Prada by the sidewalk in front, most probably her husband. Seconds after she rang the doorbell, the front door opened and out stepped Adrian's picturesque wife, in a sundress and a cardigan, holding a tiny baby wrapped in a blue blanket to her chest. Adrian came out next, in expensive golf gear, two toddlers clinging to his hands. Pleasantries were exchanged; Monique's hair-raising laugh was so loud a sparrow seated on a branch atop my head squawked and flew off in alarm. Within minutes, Adrian and Monique's husband got in the Prada to drive off while Monique and Chelsea began walking with their kids in the other direction, eager for their day of Fun and Relaxation.

Alrighty then.

The backyard had a white-picket fence boarding it. How adorable. What wasn't so adorable was the stupid fence being in direct view of the neighbor's window. Flicking a glance at it, I saw that it was curtained. It was the best I could hope for. In a few running steps and one quick leap, I was in the Wallersteins' backyard.

Maybe Adrian was someone who didn't install a security system in his house, maybe he was someone who did but hadn't had time to do so in two months, or maybe he was someone who took the protection of his family seriously and had installed a system the first thing he moved in.

All those possible scenarios considered, I put the jammer I'd brought along with me to good use. But sometimes jammers were useless if the security system was too advanced. It didn't pick up on anything, which meant it wasn't going to be a bad-day for me technology-wise. But something else was there to greet me by the back-door: a motion detector bulb. Was pretty useless in the daylight, but I wasn't taking any chances. Elaborate security system aside, they obviously had to have something; they had a helpless newborn and two toddlers, for fuck's sake. And they clearly loved the hell out of them, regardless of the iciness between themselves.

Loosening the bulb off its socket was easy. I curled my grip around the knob of the backdoor, praying that it wasn't locked. It wasn't. I went inside and shut it behind me, my hands leaving no print on the glossy brass paint, thanks to my latex gloves.

The jammer still didn't pick up on anything. There were no CCTVs to be scared of. But, three tiny kids, which meant there were definitely two or three baby monitors lying around. And one of them might have accidentally been left on. I was proved right as I walked into the gleaming, spotless kitchen, and saw a stray monitor lying right next to the towering black refrigerator. I walked over to it. It was off.

The house was stylish; modern. It flaunted Adrian's hefty salary pretty well. There were antique pieces of art hanging on the walls, somber and tonal, and nearly every piece of furniture was a deep, hard mahogany. Amongst the hardwood floors, glossy wainscotting, IKEA furniture and sleek TV screens hung on the walls, there were signs of three very energetic toddlers living here.

Crayon marks on the creamy walls, pacifiers lying atop couch cushions, dolls and little cars and helicopters scattered around, threatening to trip me up. Tip-toeing and teetering around them was nerve-wracking. My head was already a little hazy; I hadn't slept at all last night. Not because I hadn't been able to, but because I'd willingly stayed awake the entire night. More on that later.