The Outside
The flowers stopped him on the way to the park.
They grew behind a low brick wall topped with white rails, their stems reaching through toward the pavement. Behind them stood a red-brick corner house with a projecting bay window. He walked past, then came back.
Someone had taken care with the colours. He could see that much without knowing the names.
He leaned slightly toward a flower among the leaves, then glanced toward the window.
A pleated blind covered the middle of the glass. Through the gap below it he could see part of a sofa and a woman sitting in light brown trousers, her blouse a paler shade. Her hands rested in her lap.
Perhaps she was watching television. Perhaps she had seen him walk back to look at the flowers.
He smiled toward the window, although he could not see her face. He walked on, turned the corner and continued to the park.
Along the side of the house, the brickwork met the pavement. A dark door stood beneath a narrow fanlight, with a pot of posies beside its step.
For a little while he wondered whether his stopping had conveyed the compliment. Then a cyclist rang a bell behind him, and he stepped back onto the pavement.
The next morning he took the same route.
He had meant to walk briskly, but there was no particular time he needed to return. At the park he followed a path he had passed the day before. It brought him around a pond and eventually back to the gate.
On his way back, he was passing the side of the corner house when the dark door opened.
A man leaned out, one hand against the doorframe, half of him still indoors. He wore a blue T-shirt. His hair was tousled. His newspaper lay on the paving beside the threshold.
He noticed the walker.
They smiled.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
The man reached down for his paper. The walker continued toward the corner.
Behind him, the latch clicked.
The man carried the newspaper past the kitchen counter and put it on the table.
“Anything happening outside?” his wife asked.
She was waiting for the kettle.
“Someone enjoying the morning.”
He went through to the front room for his phone. It lay on the little shelf beside the bay window, where he had left it after checking the weather.
Through the glass he saw the walker come around the corner and stop at the flowers.
“That might be yesterday’s man,” his wife said from behind him.
“What man?”
“The one looking at the garden.”
She returned to the kitchen. Picked up the kettle. Poured the hot water into two mugs. She felt the steam rise against her hands.
“I guess he came back for a second look,” she said from the kitchen.
“That man? He came to the doorway.”
“I was sitting on the sofa.”
“You saw him?”
“The window was closed. I saw his shadow. I assumed he stopped for the flowers.”
He sat down at the table and unfolded the newspaper. The crease ran through a photograph, dividing a man at a lectern neatly across the chest. He smoothed it with his palm.
His wife brought the mugs over.
“I should do something with those pots,” she said.
There were three beside their front step. One contained an evergreen shrub. Another held dry stalks she had intended to cut back, their seed heads still faintly coloured at the tips. The third had been empty since spring.
“You said that last Sunday.”
“I know.”
She sat down opposite him and reached for the section he had put aside.
For a few minutes they read. A bus passed. Somewhere upstairs a pipe knocked as the heating came on.
Then he lowered the paper.
“Which flowers was he looking at?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go and look.”
She glanced at her shoes by the door, then got up and went to the window.
Outside, the walker had reached the next junction. He started across the road, then stopped halfway. A bicycle was coming toward him.
He stood still.
The rider motioned him to the right. The man stepped out of the way as the bicycle passed to his left. He finished crossing the street.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
