The Man in the Window

by Jon Cohen

am as harmless as the wind on your cheek, he’d whisper from behind his window shade to the little girl who feared to chase the red ball that had rolled into his yard. I am as harmless as the smell of leaves, he’d say, the words leaving a vapor on the windowpane, when the paperboy on his bicycle gave the house a wide berth.

Last week, instead of his Polident tablets, he’d dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets into his denture cup. His dentures turned a light green, which Iris had not failed to notice.

“You’re going to kill yourself, running around in the dark like that,” he’d say to her. “If I do,” she whispered, her words mushy and toothless, “don’t you dare look at me until they get my dentures in.” “Hell, LuLu. What you so sensitive about your teeth for? I got a hook! I’m missing my entire hand! I’m the one who should be sensitive.” “But you’re a man, Arnie. It doesn’t matter to you in the same way. I was pretty once,” she said softly. Arnie reached out to touch her, with his hook he realized at the last moment, so he shifted around and reached again with his good hand. “Not once. Still. You’re pretty, still.” “Sure. In the dark.” “In the dark I got my hand again, you got your teeth. There’s nothing wrong with the dark. You’re pretty, I’m handsome. We get to do it all over again.” “I’d like to do it all over again, Arnie.” “All of it?” “Most of it,” said LuLu. “The parts with you. The parts with you when my teeth were good.”

“Aid,” he said triumphantly, and loud enough to cause Duke to hop up out of his sleep. “See? I heard you. You health people are always trying to push some goddamn device. Bifocals, and pacemakers, and super wee-wee pads for dribblers.”

THE WIDOW Gracie Malone. Widow Malone. Old Widow Malone. Gracie walked alone in her yard on a late December day, trying on names like hats.