When No One Is Watching(19)

“What’s up with this?” I grit out.

“Don’t be upset, we’re all friends here,” Josie says. “We saw the party-planning post on OurHood and our private group decided to have a meeting of our own.”

“There are private groups in OurHood?” I ask.

Josie gives me a look and continues. “We started wondering what exactly they were getting up to. We need to know whether there’s anything to worry about. Safety-wise.”

“You think a bunch of people sitting around planning activities to enrich their neighbors’ lives is a safety threat.” I laugh a little but no one else does. I know I probably have a somewhat different view of safety than these three, given my background, but this is so comical I need to know more. “Are you actually worried that our totally harmless neighbors are plotting against you?”

“They’re not totally harmless,” Kim says. “One of them tried to attack me at the corner store. You saw that. I don’t know what she would’ve done if you hadn’t stepped in.”

She squeezes my arm.

I don’t say anything.

“Come on, buddy,” Terry says. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how they look at us. Felt it. Like we’re the ones who don’t belong here.”

“If you were in our private group, you’d see that some of the other emerging neighborhoods around us have been dealing with . . . unpleasantness.” Josie presses her lips together and lets the word settle, as if unpleasantness is the worst thing ever.

Terry makes a weird sound in his throat. “There have been package robberies from doorsteps. Expensive items. Two homes that were featured on Boomtown were broken into and had jewelry stolen, family heirlooms that had been passed down for generations.”

“And?” I hold his gaze. “People get robbed all the time. This is Brooklyn.”

“A couple was mugged five blocks over by some thugs last week, too,” Josie continues. “A couple like you two. Like Terry and me. They were told that it was ‘reparations.’”

Sydney had said something similar to me, but we’d laughed afterward because it was a joke.

“Well, I’m sure that wasn’t funny for the people being robbed, but it clearly wasn’t a mission statement.”

I wait for them to acknowledge how ridiculous this is, but no one does.

Terry shakes his head. “There have been a lot of issues popping up since the VerenTech deal was floated for this neighborhood. Troublemakers having meetings, planning things, trying to make sure the deal doesn’t go through by any means necessary, as they say. Now that it’s been approved, we’re worried about . . . escalations, especially because Josie works there.”

Kim rests her hand on my leg again, and the weight feels cloying now. “They see the VerenTech deal, and us, as a way of, I don’t know, taking what’s theirs or something. So we thought—”

“Wait. Wait, wait. You guys are serious?” I look around the room and see that they are. “Christ, Kim. It was literally a bunch of neighbors hanging out and planning something fun for everyone, and you’re acting like it’s leading up to Harpers Ferry.” I place my glass on the table and stand up. “All three of you might consider deleting the OurHood app because it’s clearly making you paranoid. This is—”

“This is what?” Terry’s voice is low and angry, following the typical drunk-bastard cycle. “Ridiculous? You think because you went to one meeting with those people that you’re down now?”

“You keep saying ‘them’ and ‘those people’ when you mean our neighbors who were just now nefariously choosing time slots for who was going to oversee the bouncy castle,” I say slowly. “So, yes. It is ridiculous.”

Terry smirks at me, a mean and familiar curve of his mouth upward, and I realize he doesn’t mean “our neighbors.” He’s thinking something much worse. “Calm down, Theo. We’re just looking out for you. Kim told us you’ve been having problems and we thought maybe—”

“You told them we’ve been having problems?” I ask Kim.

“I told them you’ve been having problems,” she clarifies. “I have a job and pull my weight around the house.”

I haven’t missed any mortgage payments, thanks to the gigs I’ve picked up here and there over the last few months, but I wonder what she’s told these people.

“VerenTech will be hiring soon, and—” Jodie says.

“We’re just trying to help,” Terry cuts in. “We have to look out for each other. We’re just trying to foster good neighborly relations because we need to depend on each other. To know we have each other’s backs.”

I look down at Kim and think of the day she came home upset. “There’s just so few of us.”

“When you’re depressed and jobless, it’s easy to fall in with the wrong kind of people—” Josie adds, but they’re all talking to my back now because I’m heading out the living room door.

I consider going upstairs, but the thought of being boxed in by Kim and those weirdo neighbors makes me pivot out the front door. I’m agitated and annoyed and I really shouldn’t be, because everything they said was ridiculous. Still, while they’d been worried I was attending some kind of anarchists’ meeting, they’d been having their own kaffeeklatsch about what a loser I was.