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helicopter in the background,
but it was faint.  An hour in, I switched over to my own music, turning it up
loud to drown out everything else.
    I don’t know if it was just that I was in a slightly better
mood today, or if the writing gods were smiling on me, but I managed to finish
my story.  I got it edited, and then emailed—yes, courtesy of satellite, I even
had internet in my little corner of the woods—by my deadline.
    It was 8 p.m., and I’d eaten, and now that my story was done,
it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  I went out on my deck
with a beer and the binoculars, determined to relax by watching the silly antics
of stick-legged sandpipers.
    Just a few minutes later, the Devil flew overhead again.  The
wind of his passing made my hair fly everywhere, and scared the birds I’d been
watching.  I lowered the binoculars to watch him pick up what looked like the
last of his guests.
    Having cooled off a bit from last night, I was starting to
wonder what his deal was.  Most cabin owners in these parts showed up
occasionally on weekends, or for whatever week or two they could get off.  My
new neighbor had said he was staying the summer, which seemed an odd amount of
time, unless he was a schoolteacher.  Somehow, I didn’t think he was a
schoolteacher.
    So what did he do for a living that let him afford the cabin,
and the helicopter, and huge parties, but at the same time, let him hide out in
bumfuck for a couple months?  Was he running from something?  That
seemed like it was often the case around these parts; people who lived out here
were trying to avoid the law, or grow pot (see avoid the law), or just be
alone.  With Gary’s party last night, he’d proven he wasn’t a loner.  And he
didn’t look like a stoner.  Which left trouble with the law.
    I mulled that over a bit, and finally decided I didn’t know,
and I wasn’t going to ask.  I wasn’t going to talk to my neighbor at all, if I
could help it.  He was way too hot to have a normal relationship with
any-which-way, and I was going to do my level best to avoid him.

 
     
    Chapter Three
     
    “I ’m
gonna kill him,” I growled into the phone.  It had been five days since my
neighbor moved in, and he hadn’t failed to disturb my peace on a single damn
one of them.
    “Who’re you gonna kill?” my friend Suzy asked.   “Brett?”
    “No, not Brett.  My new neighbor!”  I was pacing around, and
the glares I cast through my big picture window should have set something on
fire.
    “Oh, so he moved in then?”
    “You knew about this?”  My voice was rising.
    “Well, sure, he’s the son of one of my dad’s old friends. 
Dad actually was the one to pass along that the place was for sale.”  I could
hear her smile through the phone.  “Why do you want to kill him?”
    I didn’t even know where to begin, but the biggest thing: 
“He is loud .  He’s got a helicopter, and he’s doing some construction
over there, and Manny’s drilling him a well.  There’s pounding going on day and
night.  He actually woke me up yesterday and today with his sawing and
hammering.  He comes and goes with his helicopter, he’s decided the airspace
above my cabin is an acceptable flight path, and he’s had Rob with the flight
service make several trips in carrying building materials, and it’s just been
non-stop noise .”
    Suzy was making all the right sympathetic sounds, so I
continued.
    “The day he moved in, that very first day, he made a dozen
trips with the helicopter, he had a huge party that went well into the wee
hours of the morning, blaring their speakers and littering on my beach . 
And a couple of his friends tried to steal my canoe, and then they woke me up
with fireworks, and, Suzy…he set my blueberry patch on fire.”
    “What?!  On fire?”  See?  I knew she’d understand.
    “One of his damn fireworks landed in my blueberry patch, and
the woods were burning, and we barely got it out.  He