So on those long summer afternoons, she wore her "secret" clothes, and toiled away in the dirt for hours, working on her flowers, and polishing the little statues that her mother collected, and laying in the grass and letting the sun wash over her. The only person who may have seen her was the man next door, but he seemed to have secrets of his own. Nancy's parents said that he was some kind of businessman, and while he did go about in a smart suit, he always seemed to come home in the middle of the day, if he came home at all. He looked normal enough, maybe thirty-five or forty years old, with neat hair and handsome but not-too-handsome features, but whenever he wandered back to his house at one in the afternoon, he would stroll down the path between his and Nancy's house and give her a knowing smile, as if he knew that they were both revealing something that no one else knew.
It made her feel a little funny. As far as she could tell, she was like everyone else, just a plain, freckled eighteen year-old just barely becoming too big for her childhood home. That's how it went with everyone, right? But when he gave her that little smile, it made her feel... adult. Or something like that. But he never spoke, and it made her think that there was something about him that was unique in that characterless suburban landscape, whether it was a paradise or not.
She began to wonder about the man, even going so far as to ask about him at the dinner table. Her mother brushed the topic away, which only made Nancy more curious. So she began to keep a close eye out for him, both in the afternoons when he would arrive home (in which case she would do her best to smile politely, as if to convince him to say something) and at night, when she might catch a glimpse of him through an open window.
It didn't strike her as odd - it was curiosity, that was all. But over the course of a week or so she began to spend more time in her bedroom, gazing through the blinds of the window that overlooked his house. It was a strange pastime, sure, but as she went longer and longer without seeing her old friends, she became more fixated on the idea of this strange person next door. Before long, she was creating narratives in her head. Was she reading too many mystery novels, or was this man some kind of government agent? It would make sense - the strange working hours, the polite silence. It would make sense, too, that a secret agent would lay low in a plain-jane neighborhood like theirs, to avoid suspicion. Every now and then, she would get a tantalizing look at him through the window, either eating dinner, drinking casually, or watching television. But none of it satisfied her.
Then one night, at the end of July, she was in her billowy pink negligee, reading in bed with the windows open. A strange smell came wafting in, and she was surprised to see the man next door, outside on his patio, laying back in a lounge chair. He was smoking something - it was not a cigarette, and the smell wasn't tobacco. He had a portable record player by his side, and if she focused her hearing just right, she could catch the faintest sound of jazz music playing. Jazz music! She had heard it a few times before, but only in snippets. The man was something else, something else entirely. But what could it be?
She got as close to the window as possible. The neighbor's yard was just a few dozen feet away. As carefully and quietly as she could, she slid the window open further, to try and identify that smell, and to try and hear some more of the music playing. She even sat on the broad windowsill to get as close as possible. She held her breath - but she forgot to turn her light off. And when she slipped and rattled the blinds, the man next door turned his head in surprise and got a full glimpse of Nancy, staring at him through the open window.
