“Good afternoon,” the crisp, young voice said over her shoulder. Starting violently, Mrs. Prattle dropped the small pile of letters, her spectacles, and small pink handkerchief. She coughed and leaned forward against the mailbox, gasping as if unable to draw breath. The young voice spoke again:

“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to startle you!”

Out of her excellent peripheral-vision Mrs. Prattle watched as a tall male form knelt and quickly gathered up the fallen items. Gingerly his long fingers handled her spectacles and kerchief.

“No harm, no harm,” she gasped, turning around to get a full view of him, but still leaning heavily on his mailbox, “I’ll be all right, just soon as I sit down. This old heart isn’t what it used to be. Just walking down this way to get my spectacles has me all wore out,” she glanced mournfully at her house one door down.

“Your spectacles?” the young man asked, standing. He returned them to her, wrapped neatly in the little pink kerchief.

“Yes! Oh, my poor brains are all a-tizzy, and it’s that silly mailman’s fault! Luther or Louis or something like that. Not that I didn’t put my spectacles there in the first place, but he should have been paying closer attention. Mailmen are supposed to pick up only letters, so why doesn’t he do just that?” she complained and blithered and exclaimed, while all that time the young man continued to look at her very sympathetically, though with confusion.

“I am certain he had his reasons,” he offered, “It’s not every day that-”

“Well, of course he did,” Mrs. Prattle laughed, taking his arm, “And as my spectacles ended up in your mailbox, I think it only fair to give you the whole story. But not in this sun. How my heart flutters. I really must sit down soon or I’ll have a stroke! And goodness knows what Mr. Prattle would do without me were I to go off a-sudden like that. Now, mind, I’m sure he would make up a lovely funerary-poem and pick me some flowers – daffodils are what I like – but what he’d do with himself after he got home from all that I’m sure I don’t know!”

And so she went on and on, guiding the young man up his driveway, porch-steps and over the threshold of his front-door. If she must sit down, then she must sit down, and no one could gainsay Mrs. Prattle once she had decided her next stop would be their living-room.

As for Mr. Prattle, he watched from the front parlor window and shook his old grey head with a wry smile. He was an austere, quiet man with a bright sense of humor which, because of his wife, had become permanently ironic. More than twenty years ago he had served as an urban-design architect, and Chesterton neighborhood had been his final, crowning work before he retired to read and write poetry. This fact is probably a great deal of what gave Mrs. Prattle such confidence in treading wherever she wished within the neighborhood’s confines: after all, her husband built it, so he practically owned it all, didn’t he? Hers was a convenient mindset, and Mr. Prattle made no attempt to change it. If her meddlesome ways kept the neighbors on their toes and caused more than a few short-lived and harmless scandals, that was all right. It gave Mr. Prattle something to laugh about, and the neighbors were all good-natured folks, though none so naïve as the young man next-door.

“Ah, she’ll have fun with him, poor boy. He’ll soon find himself with more family secrets and mysterious relatives than he ever knew,” he chuckled softly, “She’ll tell him he really must call that old college sweet-heart he broke up with. She’ll find out which girls have eyed him and which ones he’s eyed since he came. In the end, he’ll give her his phone-number, then wonder why he ever did that when she’s gone,” again he laughed, “Poor boy, but she’ll have fun.”

Little did Mr. Prattle know how right he was.

“And so I sealed the letter – not the one for my sister, the one for Ms. Anna Smith from Arkansas – and took my spectacles off, leaving them on the mail-pile. I know, it was very silly, but the taste of those seals! The envelopes today aren’t nothing like they were when I was your age. Someone got it into the post-office peoples’ heads that if they flavor their seals with sugar, people will like them more! I mean the envelopes, not the post-office people, ‘cause no one ever likes them anyway. But whoever heard such nonsense? And- oh, thank you dearie, you’re too kind,” a long, quiet slurp interrupted Ms. Prattle streaming narrative, succeeded by an even longer sigh, “Ahhh, you make good tea, young man. Is it chamomile?”

“Ah, no it’s Earl Gray Crème,” Christopher Ashton replied, then seeing Mrs. Prattle’s disgruntled frown, he amended, “But I made chamomile yesterday, which you doubtless detect the essence of.” He didn’t mention that he had used a different tea-ball.

She smiled to herself, shaking her head with a superior sigh, “Young man, it is no wonder you don’t wash your dishes very thoroughly, as you are a bachelor, but a body must take care of himself more carefully! Think, if I had not noticed the essness of chamomile in this cup, you might have drunk it days from now and got sick! No, you should hire a maid,” she glanced around the exquisitely neat living-room with a shrewd eye, “That’ll keep you from harms way. Make sure she’s pretty.”

Mr. Ashton nodded meekly, “I am in your debt, Mrs. Prattle. Do you have any suggestions?”

Tilting her head back and to the side in what she considered a very sage manner, Mrs. Prattle took her time to think through which of the neighborhood girls would be most suitable for a position at Mr. Ashton’s.

“Lisa Gordon,” she finally pronounced, “She’s a good girl, very smart, though not too book-washed,” Mrs. Prattle snorted, “Not like her sister. That Lila Gordon would read through a house burning down, and rescue her library before the bedding and clothes!” Indignation bristled through the air around the catty old lady, and in such a thick fog that she did not notice the faint, far-off smile which passed over Christopher Ashton’s face.

“That is a most unfortunate complex,” he commented softly.

“Indeed it is!” Mrs. Prattle exclaimed, sitting up straight as her eyes widened, “Why, she’s so wrapped-up in her little book world, I’ve seen as many as four lovely young men from the neighborhood walk up to her, stand there looking so pathetically charming, and then stumble away without having said a thing. And she never notice them! Four! Shameful,” she huffed, slumping back down and pouting into her cup like a child, “Even worse, she brings her dusty old books into my house no less than twice a month – often more! – and talks with my Harold about poetry and Shakespeare, and goodness knows what, for hours on end. He never used to do that sort of stuff before settling here, and I’ve an idea I know why,” she cast a dour glance out the front window and across the road.

Observing her look, Mr. Ashton leaned forward: “It must be very trying for you, but, pardon my interjecting a question: where did you say this Gordon family lives? And did I hear ‘Lisa’ and ‘Lila’?”

“Oh, yes, they’re just across the road from you,” Mrs. Prattle replied, waving a hand, “And all that family’s names are full of ‘l’s. First names with ‘l’ for the girls and middle names with ‘l’ for the boys. The parents are Laurie and James Gordon, then their kids: Jeremiah Logan, Lila Annalee, Lisa – or Elizabeth – Joy, Benjamin Luther, Lara Cadence and Toby Lionel. I did once ask Laurie why she and her husband are so obsessed with ‘l’ and you know what she told me?”

Of course, Mr. Ashton couldn’t know, so she told him.

“She said it’s ‘because the letter ‘l’ begins so many great words like ‘love’, ‘liberty’, ‘loyalty’, and ‘life’.’ at which I said ‘Why not just call them those?’ then she gave me this strange smile, and said ‘We like names with more hidden meanings’ – she and her husband are very strange, but they’re good, kind folks. He teaches God-science, I can’t remember the word . . .”

“Theology?” Mr. Ashton offered.

“Yes, that’s it! So he teaches theelegy at the Gibraltar Seminary, and she homeschools their kids. Imagine! Homeschooling six children? Now, when I was their age I would never have done anything so crazy as that. But anyhow – and so that family loves to talk about scholarly things, which my husband likes, and I think it’s quite silly. I have nothing against Mr. Gordon liking those sorts of things – it’s his job after all! – but filling his kids’ heads with all that termolegy so they can’t talk plain and simple like honest folks is really a shame,” she shook her head with a sigh, “Such a shame,” and took another long sip from her room-temperature cup of tea.

It took a good four hours, from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon, for Mrs. Prattle to tell Mr. Ashton half the things in the Chesterton neighborhood which were ‘really such a shame’. After this, she also took it upon her ‘poor, unheeded self’ to reveal to him all the things in his own life which were ‘really such shame’ and then inform him on how he ought to make them ‘that much better’. She did indeed insist that he call that old college sweetheart of his whom he had broken up with (not that he ever named a sweetheart, but Mrs. Prattle assumed that every young man has one), and get her to visit, and then marry her, and have kids of their own, and send those kids over to her and Mr. Prattle’s place when they were older to help her in her garden. Of course, she would spare them for school and working in their own garden, not to mention chores like mowing the lawn – would he let his kids mow her lawn when Mr. Prattle grew too old to manage it? He and his would always be at her service. Oh, that’s lovely – but Mr. Ashton and his wife – Could she call him Mr. Topher? It would remind her of her old Uncle Topher so dearly, even if he had been a rascally drunk who at last got himself sick of pneumonia and died of starvation because he wouldn’t take anything that didn’t have spirits in it, but still, could she call him Mr. Topher? Certainly. Oh, he really was a dear . . .

And on. As she talked, Mrs. Prattle decided that she liked this new young man, and that he had excellent manners, was very thoughtful, not to mention so genteelly soft-spoken, but he was perhaps too kindly in his views and could at least have been a little upset at Mr. Swalinsky for spraying grass-clippings all over his beautiful lawn. But what did Mr. Swalinsky matter anyhow? It was enough satisfaction for Mrs. Prattle to have an attentive listener who knew nothing, so she could tell him everything – and some.

Only as the little golden anniversary clock struck four and a quarter did Mrs. Prattle pause for longer than a breath or slurp. With a self-scolding exclamation she declared that she really must be off, as Mr. Prattle would be wanting his afternoon chai soon (Mr. Prattle never drank tea of any sort), and that if she didn’t get back and make it for him, he would be all at a loss, and then she would be at a loss how to make it up to him, then the whole neighborhood – and ‘really, the world!’ – must be at a loss how to recover without five extra doses of hot chai and whipped-cream per person.

Rushing out the door, down the drive-way, and all the way back to her house, Mrs. Prattle never did stop talking as Mr. Ashton stood under his porch-roof, nodding at every new statement she made, and smiling agreeably until she at last disappeared through her own door with a final:

“Lovely talk, Mr. Ashtopher, and thank you for the delicious earl-omile tea, and perhaps later you shall tell me the story behind that beautiful anniversary-clock?”

Again he nodded, the door shut, and the very sky seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

The smile on Ashton’s face did not change as he stepped back into his house, and yet the meaning of it was wholly different. His grey-blue eyes, before so warm and mild, now glittered with a keen, sharp light, so piercing that it seemed like pain. His smile was a grimace, and as he glanced up to heaven, the whites of his eyes were tinged with red.

Walking contemplatively back into the living room, he stood for a moment surveying the dimpled easy-chair where Mrs. Prattle had been sitting. Then a convulsive shudder shook through him and he collapsed onto the couch. He sat, leant forward with his head buried in his hands, and shoulders shaking as strained gasps broke through his fingers at spasmodic intervals. Anyone who did not know him would have thought he was crying, but when Christopher B. Ashton cried, he never hid his face.

At last the hands fell away, the head flew back, and a long, silent chuckle again shuddered through Ashton’s frame. A low moan, and he reached up to wipe away the tears which were streaming down his face.

The doorbell rang. Instantly, Ashton stopped laughing. Leaping over the couch, he snatched up his phone, sprinted silently upstairs, then came thundering back down, wiping his eyes and murmuring hardly intelligible apologies and promises into the phone.

As expected, Mrs. Prattle’s face appeared through the door window. Ashton’s eyes widened, he whispered into the phone, then opened the door.

“So sorry to come again, Ashtopher, but I couldn’t wait till morning, or even this evening. You’ve no idea how troublesome it is to walk around in the dark, and with my eyesight! But never mind that. I must endure what I must endure. The fact is, I left my spectacles here – I know, perfectly silly, but you were talking so much it quite drove the thought from my mind!” Mrs. Prattle steamed ahead, then stopped sharply. Bending forward she scrutinized Ashton’s face closely, “Why, Ashtopher, you’re crying! Whatever happened . . .” her eyes fell on the phone and narrowed.

“Yes, ma’am – my friend from college . . . well, you see I thought about what you said, and . . . well, I’m so glad and-” Ashton spluttered between teary gasps, before trailing away with a helplessly bewildered and happy look.

“Oh, Oh!” Mrs. Prattle gasped, adjusting to a shout-whisper, “Well tell her I said hi, and don’t you mind me! I’ll just-” she moved to stepped through the doorway.

“Ah, beg pardon,” Ashton interjected, blinking owlishly as he pointed at the top of her head. There, suspended in her curly gray hair, as on a cloud, were a pair of silver-blue spectacles. Mrs. Prattle’s eyes rolled up so far they seemed to be going back into her head; she gasped, and with a chortle, untangled the spectacles before settling them firmly on her nose.

“Why, thank you Ashtopher,” she shout-whispered, “But never mind that! You just talk to your sweetie, and tell me all about it next time, all right?” and she was gone, diagonally across the road to tell her friend Evelyn all about the new young man next door, and his sweet-heart, of course. Mr. Prattle would just have to do without his imaginary chai tea today.

A long, exhausted sigh winded the silence as Ashton wandered, once more, into his living room and eased himself onto the couch. Sitting there, he shook his head, smiling thinly and trembling with his silent laughter. Again the chuckle mounted, but taking a few deep breaths, Ashton forced his mood to relax. One last shudder of hilarity and he sighed with relief.

Quickly tapping his phone screen, Ashton saved the 6 1/2-hour recording.

“When life’s so hilarious, it’s actually painful,” he titled it, but after a second frowned.

“We are not saying you can’t have fun during a mission, but you must always take the mission seriously.”

Glancing into the past, Ashton nodded. Deftly his fingers deleted the title, replacing it with: “First contact and general briefing of Chesterton neighborhood, with numerous exaggerations and little context.”

Step 2: place call.

“Hey, Will? Yeah,” he said into the phone and standing slowly, stepped over to the window, “I have a contact. Adjacent. Mmhmm. I’ll brief you tonight. Yes, I’m forwarding it now. All right, see you then.”

The phone resumed its place in his pocket. This warm, hand-sized gadget: his electric link to another world. Gazing absently out the window and across the road, Christopher B. Ashton watched as a young woman with a book wandered out onto the lawn, and sitting under a tree, began to read.

Again the phone came out, and Ashton snapped a photo.

Title: “Lila Gordon, first sighting.”