Part 1 of a fictional series

Henry and Gretchen lived across the courtyard from us. They didn't say much, really. Henry's hair was white and thinning and I know he was only 23. I wonder why his hair was like that. Gretchen wasn't fat, like you'd imagine someone named Gretchen to be; she looked like Donatella Versace, only pretty. So I guess she looked like Daryl Hannah, only younger and tan. They were both so Nordic it was disorienting. I always expected them to have thick, painful accents when they spoke, which wasn't often. But they were from Wisconsin, a state famous for cheese.

I think they really must have been related. Two people can't look so similar without being related in some way. Unless their families both attended the same Wisconsin Swedish church or Wisconsin Swiss kayaking club or something. I think it was the impression they gave off of being brother and sister that made their nonstop sex and nuzzling so grotesque to us all. Partly, it was also Henry's hair.

We became intrigued one night while smoking on our stoop. Our courtyard technically has two lights, which should illuminate the path from the street to each of our doors, but neither light has ever functioned, as far as I know. I take great pleasure in sitting outside my front door during the wee hours of the morning, smoking in the darkness, watching my cigarette burn.

Henry and Gretchen's lights were on - we could see silhouettes projected onto their sheer, lime green curtains. Furniture flickered in the light of the TV. Joe and I were discussing the recent influx of crime dramas on network TV.

Then Gretchen's silhouette appeared in the window; she must have been very close to the curtain. The lines were sharp; she wasn't clothed.

We put our cigarettes out without speaking. I felt Joe's elbow nudge my side and I grunted a little, to let him know that I saw it too. That night we watched them press each other against the window; they did it standing. We saw everything; we couldn't look away.

This happened many times. Many times a week. Almost every night.

In the mornings part of me felt dirty. The way you feel when you drive by an animal that's been run over in the road. Even though it's already dead, there's still this guilt about seeing it, and not doing something, not helping. This guilt that you're in a car and they're dead.

I don't know what I wanted to do. Stop them? Stop them from necking in their doorway before Henry left each day, Gretchen standing there in only a large T-shirt, touching her fingers to his ridiculous hair? Stop their filthy lovemaking that Joe and I gathered to watch so many times a week, on our stoop, smoking our cigarettes now inside, afterward?

Stop myself from thinking about them, inside, maybe related, but probably not, every night behind the lime green curtains?