Chris made his way up the neatly manicured driveway. Sheets of slate and the extended arm of a summer-stung butterfly bush occupied the northern side. It's in bad taste, but commonplace, to peek through your neighbor's window - but he seemed to wear bad taste like a neon badge of courage. Her sickly dog was laying within eyeshot of the window.
He knocked. Then rang.
After another 45 seconds of window gazing and nonchalant poses, he turned to leave. The sound of the pneumatic cylinder from the screen door interrupted his gate.
"Oh hey!" said Linda.
"I was beginning to think you were still asleep."
Linda had a sheepish look. She exuded "I wasn't expecting company and haven't expected company for years".
"What's going on, Chris?"
Chris had planned on how to tell Linda they would be having a party while remaining from offering an invitation - nothing personal, she just wouldn't have a good time.
"Soooooooooo. I know you're selling you house..."
"Uh, huh", said Linda.
"Well if you need any help, you know, with the trees and branches or whatever-"
"I don't need any help". Linda was painfully independent.
"Okay", said Chris. "Not a problem. I just figured everybody could use an extra set of hands."
He looked through the living room window and noticed her aging Pomeranian sleeping in a dog bed just below the windowsill.
Linda slowly crept towards him.
"I've been force feeding the dog for about a month. I just don't have the heart to put her down. And shortly after the other dog died off this one started going down hill."
Chris felt it. That long, sweeping, involved, depressing one-way conversation about an old lady and her sickly canines. The sensation was on par with that guttural urge to run when Jehovah's Witnesses mosey up your driveway. There was no way to cleanly diffuse this exchange. It didn't matter how diplomatically
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