He was, after all, a neighbor.
Something flashed in the headlights up ahead. Something yellow, sheetlike and nearly translucent.
Captain Gecko.
Along the roadside, hidden by the evening darkness, there flew a mustard-yellow bedsheet without head, eyes, limbs or any anger, a sheet with a taste for practical jokes.
Dipping, it curved down, touched the roadside with something not like fingers, then soared up on the evening wind, maintaining a glide-path about five feet off the ground, searching carefully.
Litter patrol.
As he passed Captain Gecko, he recognized a squashed pop can gripped tightly in translucent flesh, destined for some distant garbage bin.
Davy. And him. That was all that was left of his family. But… but maybe Emma’s daughter would like Davy’s rangy good nature. Maybe Davy would like a place without the gangs and the drugs that had taken his sister. And maybe he and Emma…
He grinned. “Bullshit.”
He was too old for romance.
Especially around aliens who could read your emotions.
But a good neighbor who served home-made, fresh-baked apple pie to snotty strangers and still managed to find the promise in each of them, hey, that kind of neighbor he could like. Maybe she would like him. Maybe not. He’d taken chances before.
Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he fumbled in the darkness, found the camera, popped the film spool lock, opened the back, and pulled out the exposed film. It fluttered in the sultry fall wind, whispering unknown messages to pine scent, squirrel chatter and mountain dreams. He didn’t care. A little mystery never hurt the world.
He tossed the film out of the car window, aiming for the roadside.
Where Captain Gecko would soon pass.
Couldn’t be a litter bug, could he, without trashing the countryside? Maybe, when he returned, the litter patrol would arrest him for littering.
He hoped so.