This was about a couple of neighbors, a man and a woman, who lived in a small Florida town, about fifty miles from the Gulf Coast, who’s ranch houses were less than half a mile from each other.

The two of them were suffering terrible insomnia.

The man, in his early 50s, a well-built, a ex-military man who’d served in the Iraq war was still deeply and actively mourning the loss of his beautiful wife who’d died a year ago.  She was one of those women who was perfect. She made love perfectly, kept house immaculately and cooked wonderful meals and took excellent care of their only son–going so far as to leave special snacks in his lunchbox that surprised and delighted not only the son but the father who always peaked in the lunchbox before the son did.

A great woman.

And somehow she managed to die perfectly, if you can imagine such a thing. One of those blood diseases that no chemo can correct, in which her beautiful long black hair didn’t fall out. The kind of disease where you keep conversing with her until the very end, unmarred by fever or nausea or coma. She did it all so well.

And he missed her terribly.

Now the other neighbor. She wasn’t as complicated. Unless you counted her menopause. Which she was not willing to do at that time. She wanted to believe that her sleeplessness was something more substantive. Something supernatural. Not as in ghostly…just, maybe more special than was necessary.

And see, this is what kept her up all hours; trying to explain something that was could not be, quite yet.

She stood on the porch, during one of her sleepless nights, in those wee hours, staring off across hat vacant orange grove that separated her house from the man’s house. Through one of those branch-rows she could see his porch light bleeding through. He was standing there too, like her, sleepless and wondering. His silhouette paced back and forth.

She wanted to call out to him. Or at least phone him.  She could, you know, since they were neighbors and since their two sons were best friends.

But it was so late. It would be inappropriate.

But she knew he was hurting, in that strange, quiet but interesting way that men did. But neither did she call out to him or phone him (of course knowing his number for those carpooling emergencies). Nor did she just walk over to his front porch.

That was something she thought and thought and thought about. She imagined walking very quietly and sometimes she would imagine that he’d expected her all this time. He would turn to her and smile and say something really profound like “I’ve waiting for you.”

She told herself to shut up.

And that’s all that happened that first night. Just two people who couldn’t sleep and thought they were the only ones in that small Florida hick town who were awake.

But there was someone else awake.  Someone watching them.