When I first saw him standing out there on the sidewalk, I thought nothing of it. I certainly didn't think he'd still be out there come September. I lingered at the window for just a moment, decided that the night-bound silhouette across the street was just some guy out for a walk, and went to my room and hit the hay.
As I stood blearily over the coffee maker the next morning, my eyes strayed up to the window over the sink, and a little shock of adrenaline removed the need for caffeine. He was still there, and still standing on the opposite sidewalk looking at my house. My roommates had all gone to work long ago, so I waited for my coffee, got dressed, and then approached the front door and peered through the peephole.
He was still there.
I took a deep breath, readied myself for whatever nonsense this was going to entail, and opened the door.
His gaze shifted to me as soon as I stepped out onto the porch, and he watched me as I walked across the grass. He tensed when I stepped onto my sidewalk, but then looked relieved when I crossed it and reached the curb. Stopping there, I kept the pavement between us. I didn't know exactly how to ask him what the hell he was doing. "Hey, uh, what's up?"
He looked a little bit nervous. "Nothing. Just hanging out."
From where I was standing, he didn't appear to be homeless or crazy. He was a man of about forty dressed in a dark blue robe, and I vaguely recognized him. "Don't you live in that house?" I pointed up the driveway behind him.
He nodded. "Yep, that's mine. Just came out to get the newspaper."
I glanced down at his hand, where he held an orange bag with the newspaper rolled up inside it. "Well, looks like you got it." I paused. Another orange bag was lying further up the driveway, as if the one he was holding was actually yesterday's.
He didn't say anything. He just stood there with a masked nervous expression.
"Did I see you out here last night, too?" I asked.
"Yep, that was me."
I looked down further, and saw that his feet were bare. "You weren't out here all night, were you?"
I expected him to laugh off the idea, but instead he replied, "I was."
"You've been out here all night in bare feet?"
Panic was oozing out from under his mask of calm politeness in a dozen different ways. "Yes."
Now I was starting to feel more than a little weird. "Are you going to stand out here all day, too?"
"I—" He strained to speak, but then seemed to change his reply. "I might. It's beautiful weather out."
Well, that much was true. It was a warm summer day, bright and beautiful. "Well, could you at least not stare at my house then?"
He began to give an apologetic shrug, but stopped halfway through the motion and tried to turn. His bare feet never lifted from the sidewalk; the attempted turn was more of a twist from the thighs up. That, too, stopped rather quickly, and then he said, "Um." His gaze moved in a circle before he finally looked directly at me. "Your house is nice. I like looking at it."
By then I was getting rather annoyed. "What's your name?"
"Russ."
"Russ? Nice to meet you." I shook my head. I'd never had to do this before. "If you don't stop being weird and staring at our house, I'm going to call the police."
His eyes lit up. "Yes, please do that."
That was a weird enough reaction that I actually got out my phone. I'd been raised to never involve the police for any reason, but this was abnormal enough that I felt I had to. I told the dispatcher we had a strange man standing outside our house and that he'd been there literally all night—yes, all night. She said two officers would be with us shortly.
