The Next Voice You Hear
Spent the last week of July this year down in Belmar, New Jersey in the bottom half of my ex-sister-in-law’s two family house. Its a great house, equidistant between the beach and the center-of-town. However, my favorite thing to do is, at the end of the day, after the sun goes, is plant myself on the front section of her wrap around porch. I pour a scotch, sit on the couch, and watch a movie or show from NETFLIX or PRIME on my iPad, along with the evening breeze.
The porch is dark, but there are lights in the lawn that go on, once the sun goes down, that partially illuminates the front of the house.
A group of four young women (probably early to mid-twenties) rented the upstairs portion of the house. When I saw one of the women carry a bag from around the corner, I told her and one other woman that they could park their cars in the driveway.
“Oh,” she replied, “We’re from New York, none of us have cars.”
Chatted a bit more, found out they picked this house because it was close to the train. After a few more minutes, we all went our separate ways.
For the next few days, Ubers would pull up, and some or all of the women would get in, or out, depending of the time of day (or night).
Jump to Friday night. An Uber pulls up, early evening, and five woman (guess a friend came to visit) get in and drives away.
A little after eleven (my group had a very late dinner), I settle in on the porch couch with my scotch and PRIME playing on my iPad.
A little after midnight, Uber pulls up and one woman emerges. She walks to the side of the house (entrance to upstairs) and passes me without notice since she never took her eyes off her phone.
Around 1:30 a.m. an Uber pulls up across the street, and four very drunk, giggling women step out of the car and onto the street.
Three head to the side entrance of the house, but one of them headed directly to the steps to the front entrance. This is fine, except for one thing.
Those automatic lights that come on at sundown, they go off around 1:00 a.m., so I am invisible from the street.
As this drunk young woman gets closer to me, I realize there is very little room for her to get by me, and I don’t want her to be startled when she steps and the porch and sees me suddenly appear.
So I said before she reached me, “I don’t want to scare you, but I am sitting on the porch.”
However, by me saying ‘I don’t want to scare you, but I am sitting on the porch’ probably scared her as this disembodied voice drifted from the empty porch in the middle of the night.
She stopped for a second, then brushed passed me on the porch. I heard a faint ‘good night’ as she faded into the dark.
Maybe next year they can bell me, you know, like a cat so I don’t scare drunk people in the dark.
