Tom Hanks - Uncommon Type - Some Stories

She scanned the branches of the trees for a sign of the bird but found none. Klock klock klock klock klock.

“Persistent fives,” Bette said, counting the klock s.

She looked at the exterior of the house, happy she didn’t see the bird damaging the siding by digging for insects, then came again klock klock klock klock klock.

The sound was coming from over the fence, from Paul Legaris’s backyard. The tall fence—which even on Greene Street made for good neighbors—blocked any view of next door, save the higher tree branches. There were no signs of Mr. Peckerhead up in them, but the klock klock klock klock klock sounds kept coming, which made Bette curious. She wanted to see how big this woody-bird was, so she moved her chair to the fence and stood on it, hoping to see the bird in action.

Klock klock klock klock klock .

Paul Legaris kept his backyard neat and organized, with a vegetable garden with drip irrigation and beanpoles. An antique plow, rusted and in need of a horse, sat in the center of a patch of grass beside, incongruously, an array of solar panels. Toward the back of the yard, distant from the patio, was a massive brick BBQ and one of those freestanding, mail-order-catalog hammocks.

Klock klock klock klock klock .

Paul himself was sitting at a picnic table on a redwood deck under a sloping canopy, already dressed in his uniform of baggy shorts, polo shirt, and those flip-flops. His too-cool eyeglasses were set on the top of his head, and he was bent in concentration over a hunk of machinery that looked like it had been made in the 1800s.

Klock klock klock klock klock.

The machine was a typewriter, though it looked like no typewriter Bette had ever seen. The thing was ancient, something out of the Victorian era, a mechanical printing apparatus with hammers arcing onto paper rolled into the carriage. Paul hit a key five times— klock klock klock klock klock— added a touch of oil to the inner levers of the typewriter, and repeated.

Klock klock klock klock klock .

This was how Paul Legaris could ruin a peaceful morning on Greene Street, servicing a writing gimcrack straight out of Jules Verne.

Klock klock klock klock klock.

“Yowza,” Bette mumbled. She went back inside for another jolt of caffeine and stayed there, reading her iPad in the relative quiet at her kitchen table, still hearing the muffled klock ing of her neighbor’s ironclad word processor.

That afternoon, when the sun was turning Greene Street into both the frying pan and the fire, Bette was on the phone with Maggie.

“So he’s got telescopes and typewriters laying around his house. I wonder what else,” Maggie wondered.

“Old toasters. Dial telephones. Washtubs with wringers. Who knows?”

“I checked some of the dating sites on the Web. Couldn’t find him.”

“CreepyNeighbor.com? SadSacks4U?” Bette was looking out the front window when an unfamiliar car pulled up across the street—one made in Korea the color of red nail polish. A young man, the driver, got out along with a girl a few years younger, no doubt his sister. As they walked across the street, angling toward Paul Legaris’s front door, Bette recognized the Legaris gait in the boy.

“Kid alert,” Bette told Maggie. “Guess who just showed up.”

“Who?” Maggie asked.

“Pretty sure it’s the offspring of Professor Lonesome next door. Son and daughter.”

“They showing tattoos or Birkenstocks?”

“Nah.” Bette eyed the kids for signs of youthful rebellion or oddity. “They look normal.”

“Normal is a setting on a washing machine.”

The girl let out a squeal and ran toward the front door of the house. Paul Legaris was heading for her when they intersected on the lawn. She took him in a headlock and bulldogged him into the turf, laughing. The son joined the fracas, two kids dog-piling on the father they had clearly not seen in a while.

“I may have to call 911 soon. I think a separated shoulder is due,” Bette opined.

That night Bette, Maggie, and the Ordinand sisters met for dinner at a Mexican cafe made of cinder block and with paper shades over the lights, a place so authentic they were afraid to drink the water, but not the margaritas. The night filled with laughter and stories about former husbands, lousy ex-boyfriends, and men who lacked both common sense and sanity. The talk was fun and saucy, much of it about Paul Legaris, none of it flattering.

When her Lyft driver dropped her off at Greene Street, the sky had been dark for two hours and once again the telescope had been wheeled out onto Paul’s front yard. His car was not in the driveway; his kids were manning the search of the heavens. Bette was making straight for her door when the son’s voice reached across the driveway.

“Good evening” was all he said.

Bette gave a nod and made a sound like g’deve but didn’t slow.

“Wanna see the moons of Jupiter?” This was the girl asking. “Smack in the middle of the sky and cool as hell?”

“No, thank you,” Bette said.

“You’re missing one gorgeous show!” The girl had a voice like Dale’s, open and friendly, prone to enthusiasm over the smallest things.

“No eclipse tonight?” Bette was getting her front door keys from her purse.

“Those are infrequent. Jupiter is out all summer long,” the girl said. “I’m Nora Legaris.”

“Hi. Bette Monk.”

“Mother of Dale and Sharri and Eddie? Dad said your kids are a hoot.” The girl headed Bette’s way, stepping onto the driveway. “You bought the Schneiders’ house. They moved to Austin, the lucky punks. That’s my brother.” Nora pointed to the telescope. “Tell Ms. Monk your name!”

“Lawrence Altwell-Chance Delagordo Legaris the Seventh,” he said. “You can call me Chick.”

Bette looked confused, like a woman with three margaritas in her, which she was. “Chick?”

“Or Larry. Long story. You want to see what Galileo saw centuries ago? Changed the course of human history.”

To wave off such an invitation, to flee into her house, would have been rude, very un–Greene Street. Nora and Chick were charming kids. So Bette said, “Put that way, guess I better.”

Bette crossed the boundary of her house into Legaris territory, her first ever visit. Chick stepped back from the telescope, offering Bette access. “Behold Jupiter,” he said.

Bette put her eye up to the lens at the open end of the carpet tube.

“Try not to bump the telescope. It should be lined up right.”

Bette blinked. The glass of the lens brushed her eyelash. She couldn’t make any sense of what she was looking at. “I don’t see a thing.”

“Chick,” Nora sighed. “You can’t say ‘behold Jupiter’ and fail to have Jupiter beholdable.”

“Sorry, Ms. Monk. Let me see.” Chick looked through a much smaller telescope mounted on the huge carpet tube and made adjustments up and down and left and right. “Bang solid fat as a goose!”

“I sure hope you behold Jupiter now,” said Nora.

With her eye again so close to the lens her mascara could have marred it, Bette saw, at first, nothing, and then a brilliant pinhole of light. Jupiter. Not only Jupiter but four of its moons in a straight line, a single moon to its left, and three to its right, as clear as could be.

“Yowza!” Bette cried. “It’s as clear as can be! That’s Jupiter ?”

“King of the planets and the Jovian moons,” Chick said. “How many can you see?”

“Four.”

“Just like Galileo,” Nora said. “He put two bits of glass in a brass pipe, pointed it at the brightest object in the Italian sky, and saw just what you are looking at. Slammed the door on the Ptolemaic theory of the universe. Got him in some hot water.”