Bill Campbell eased his eighty-year-old bones into the Victorian wingback chair just as someone began knocking on his front door. His favorite tobacco pipe rested just outside his reach on a side table. It was pledge drive month on Minnesota Public Radio–no pipe, no Beethoven, it would require an act of God’s divine mercy to hoist himself out of the chair and reverse the deviations to his morning liturgy. He patted the side pocket of his Harris Tweed, hoping to find a stowaway pipe, but it was empty.

All week construction crews had been jackhammering across the street at the state hospital. His windows rattled from the concussion and the noise jarred his serenity.  According to the newspaper, the hospital planned to move the patients closest to the construction site to another wing of the facility because of the noise. If there were any order and decency in the world, he’d find one of the construction workers on the other side of the door, ready with an apology for all the disturbance.

Campbell gripped the chair’s arms and rocked forward until he was upright, catching his balance before shuffling toward the knocking, now in its second wave of attack. Sharp autumn sunlight pierced the walls through a large picture window in the living room. Outside, leaves stippled the lawn in mustard yellows, antique reds, and russet browns. The neighborhood kid he’d hired to rake the leaves had formed one pile and quit. Campbell grumbled as he tallied the grievances. Before descending one slim step into the three-season porch, he rested his hand on the cold glass of the French door to gauge the distance. The porch, lined with bookcases, smelled of antique paper and pipe tobacco.

He opened the front door and found a large woman, naked as Eve, standing at the base of the stairs. Her face was broad, slack, and cloistered. Behind her, a powder blue hospital gown hung like a parachute from a white spruce bough. She resembled a squat, ancient statuette–the Venus of Willendorf, Campbell thought–her breasts dangling against her protruding stomach. This latest assault on his sense of decency struck its target and Campbell turned from the shocking tableau when he heard the woman mutter a name. Ruth, perhaps?

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. He pointed across the street at the state hospital. “You’re supposed to be over there. Well, what do you want?”        

“I need a ride to Bemidji,” she said.

“No rides to Bemidji.” He closed the door on her with as much force as he could muster and shuffled back to the picture window, where he spotted one of his neighbors, Joyce Jensen, cutting across his lawn. She walked with the aid of a cane, a branch, or a rake–Campbell couldn’t tell.

“Damn nosy neighbors,” he said. “Waltzing across my lawn.” At 78, Joyce Jensen could hardly waltz, yet she closed the distance to the naked woman with stunning alacrity. The front door opened, letting in a gust of autumn air, along with Joyce and the woman.

“Close the damn door,” Campbell said.

“Bill, were you going to leave this poor woman outside?” Joyce projected her constant displeasure with forward-sweeping motions of her arms as if swinging a censer. “She could have died of hypothermia.”

“I was just about to call the state hospital, as a matter of fact, before you barged in here. Hypothermia, bah. I didn’t tell her to escape. Didn’t tell her to remove her gown and hang it in my spruce tree, either.” He averted his eyes from the woman’s drooping breasts and focused on the mottled skin along her flabby arms where the capillaries had constricted and turned the flesh pink.

“We have to get her warm.”

“There’s an overcoat hanging on the back of the bedroom door and an extra blanket folded on the bed–not the tartan one. Don’t use that. The bedroom’s through there and on the right.” Joyce escorted the woman while Campbell searched for the telephone directory on his desk. He cracked it open just as another neighbor, Delores Ramsey, opened the front door, bringing with her a cluster of leaves that danced across the cold porch tile.

“I just saw Joyce bring that woman in here. She must have escaped. Everything alright?”

“Just rosy.”

“Did anyone call the state hospital?

 “I was just about to do that when–”

“That poor woman could have frozen to death.”

Joyce returned with the tartan blanket, and the woman, now partially covered in a scarlet bathrobe, the belt barely circumnavigating her waist. 

“For God’s sake, no,” Campbell protested. Joyce and Delores guided her over to the couch, where they placed the blanket over the woman’s lap. “You march her right back in there and take that off. That was my Elizabeth’s robe. The blanket too. I told you not to use that one.  No, you find something else for her to wear. The overcoat. I told you the overcoat was hanging on the back of the damn door. She’ll ruin that robe.”

They tucked the blanket underneath the woman’s thighs. “Now you wait here, dear. Wait here with Bill while we go find you something that fits a little better.”

“Take her with you, for God’s sake,” Campbell said, but the two disappeared into the kitchen, and he heard them milling around in his bedroom. Campbell sat down in his armchair, forgetting about the call to the hospital. He felt an ache in his chest for rich cavendish tobacco, but the pipe laid just out of reach.

“You there,” he said to the woman. “Come over here and hand me that pipe. You could use the exercise.” He realized how unsuited he was for disorder. Had Elizabeth been alive, she would have swooped in and taken care of the woman like a Red Cross nurse. She had always put the needs of others before her own. She always knew the right thing to say when someone needed help. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just meant moving around will warm you up more than sitting on the sofa.” She began rocking back and forth, moaning as she gathered speed.

“I need a ride to Bemidji,” she said.

“Now we’ve already settled that nonsense. No rides to Bemidji.” Her moaning swelled in volume until it turned into a chant.

“Ruth. Ruthieeeeeeeeeeeee. Ruthieeeeeeeee.”

 “Stop that nonsense now. That’s enough. No one here named Ruth.” Campbell, transfixed by the absurd gargoyle in Elizabeth’s scarlet bathrobe, remembered that he’d bought it as a gift one Christmas. Now, the woman’s arms stretched the seams to their breaking point, and her rocking caused the belt to loosen, revealing a flap of pink skin along her breastbone. Elizabeth, a coffee-dark brunette, had a slender grace and eyes sharp with life. The gargoyle’s eyes were dead as a shark’s as she gawked at the picture window, where three red vases sat on the desk. Now long devoid of the red roses Elizabeth had once filled them with, they looked like three large votive candles.

The pledge drive appeals paused, and the radio host introduced Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major.

“Thank you for listening and supporting Minnesota Public Radio,” the host said. “Beethoven wrote this symphony during his days of despair and deafness. Yet, its beauty–especially in the slow movement–caused one critic to imagine the maestro having a conversation with a beautiful lady.” Campbell’s movement from the desk to the chair had made him dizzy, and he found a handkerchief in a pocket of his tweed and dabbed his bald head. The woman continued rocking, her flat eyes now fixed on him. Despite the incongruity, she had green eyes like Elizabeth’s. 

Joyce and Delores returned from the bedroom with more of Elizabeth’s clothing draped over their arms.

“No. No. No,” Campbell said. “The overcoat. The overcoat. It’s hanging right on the back of the damn door.” He rocked himself out of the chair and shuffled toward the kitchen.

“I have some clothes that my Jim used to wear that might fit her,” Joyce said. “I’ll just run over and get them.”

Campbell reached the bedroom, only to find that the overcoat on the back of the door wasn’t there. He felt a draft of cold air and supposed that Joyce had left the front door open when she left to fetch her Jim’s clothes. For a moment, he considered retreating into the adjoining bathroom and locking himself in there until the whole ordeal passed. He stopped to catch his breath and leaned against the dresser where a solitary framed picture of Elizabeth rested. She was dressed as Carmen Miranda for a costume party they attended and wore a snug-fitting drop waist dress that featured her slender, ivory arms. The assorted fruit on top of her head drew attention to her oval face and the smile lines that formed angle brackets on the sides of her mouth. He took the frame and dusted it with his handkerchief. The passes he made to clear the glass had a hypnotic effect, sending him back to the memory of the photograph. Did he dress as Spencer Tracy? Was it a murder mystery? Had they traveled far to get there?

The sound of the front door opening and closing broke the trance. Campbell heard a third voice–a baritone that belonged to yet another neighbor, Ronnie Strangeways.

“The whole damn neighborhood has invaded my house,” he said as he passed Joyce, Delores, and the woman in the kitchen.

“Found some of my Jim’s clothing,” Joyce said.

In the living room, leaves had danced their way up from the porch, and he saw muddy shoe prints on his Persian rug.

“Good lordy, Billy,” Ronnie said. He talked out of the corner of his mouth as if each word held a conspiracy. “Nothing but top shelf scotch you’re squirreling away over here. I could use a pick me up.”

“It isn’t even noon,” Campbell said.

“Of course, Shelly rolls over in her grave every time I look at the stuff, but she’s too busy nagging St. Peter now. All this excitement.” The word “excitement” whistled through his dentures. He lifted a bottle of twenty-five year-old single malt and held it to the light, inspecting it.

“No. No. Not that one. I got that as a present from –.”

“Some say the glass is half full, but do you know what I say?” He poured three fingers of scotch into a rocks glass.

“That was a –.”

“Drink! That’s what I say. Cheers, old bean.”

“Look, I wouldn’t go over to your house and –.”

“Well, you’re always welcome if you do. And when you do, bring one of these babies with you.” He pointed at the drinks table next to the bookshelf, where three crystal decanters held brandy and two other scotches. “Where’s your john, Billy? I gotta wiz.”

Delores and Joyce entered the living room with the woman in tow, dressed in the late Jim Jensen’s work clothes: overalls and a quilted flannel with Midwest Telephone Company monogrammed above the left breast pocket. Campbell remembered the call he intended to make to the state hospital, first to have the woman removed from his sanctuary, and secondly to give them a piece of his mind for not watching their charges more carefully.

“I need to call the state hospital,” he said, more of a reminder to himself than anything, but his announcement was drowned out by his neighbors who cooed and doted on the woman. Joyce planted the woman in the middle cushion of the sofa again, where the crater-shaped dent she’d made from her previous sitting remained. Campbell edged toward the armchair, this time remembering to grab his pipe and lighter before sitting down. He puffed until the bowl crackled and glowed orange, and clouds of blue smoke rose and hung just above his neighbors’ heads.

Joyce rolled the cuffs and sleeves of her late husband’s uniform until they fit the woman. When she stepped away, Campbell saw that the woman bore–in body and dress–an absurd resemblance to the late Jim Jensen. Only her gravy-colored hair and limp face didn’t match the comparison. 

Ronnie returned from the bathroom and drained the scotch from his glass. Campbell motioned him over and asked him to call the state hospital.

“Already done, Billy,” he said. “Looks like they’re here.” He walked into the porch and peered out the window. “Hell, they do come in a white van. That’s good to know.”

The volume of conversation increased at his announcement. Joyce and Delores ushered the woman past Campbell and into the porch. He heard the door open. The sound of two unfamiliar voices greeted the lot.

“She’s been talking a lot about Bemidji,” Joyce said.

“I need a ride to Bemidji,” the woman echoed.

“Does she have relatives there?”

“Dunno,” one orderly answered.

“A relative named Ruth?”

“Now Jeanie,” the second orderly scolded, “You know you’re not supposed to go running off like that.”

Campbell hoped they would follow the woman and the orderlies outside and leave him the hell alone, but when the door closed, the party made their way back into the living room. Campbell threw back his head.

“Torture.”

Ronnie poured another helping of scotch. With the woman gone, all of their charity now turned to Campbell.

“This has been quite an ordeal for you, Bill,” Joyce said. “You look very pale.”

“Yeah, Billy,” Ronnie said, “Not every day a filly shows up at your door wearing her birthday suit.”

“You should go lie down and rest,” Delores said.

In the bedroom, Joyce removed his slippers while Delores covered him with the same tartan blanket they used to warm the naked woman.

“You rest now, Bill.”

The commotion left him feeling alert but he soon drifted into a deep sleep. He dreamed that he and Elizabeth were window-shopping at Christmastime. They entered the warmth of one department store after she’d spotted the scarlet bathrobe. Elizabeth removed it from the rack and held it up. Campbell could see her do this in the dream, even though he stood several rows over examining flannel scarves, his back turned to her.

“How do you like it?” he heard her ask. “How does it look, Ruth? Ruthieeeeeee, Ruthieeeeeeee.” He turned to find the naked woman’s gargoyle face transposed onto Elizabeth’s beautiful one.

He slept until late afternoon. The house was quiet. He struggled into his slippers and made his way into the living room, where all evidence of their invasion had been erased. No muddy footprints on the Persian rug. No leaves scattered on the porch tile. Outside, his leaf-littered lawn had been raked clean. An unopened bottle of The Macallan joined the decanters on the drinks table. He read the note from Ronnie: “Don’t drink this all at once, Billy. And don’t be a stranger.”

In the kitchen, his breakfast dishes had been cleaned and set in the drying rack, and in the refrigerator, he discovered a rectangular baking pan that contained homemade lasagna. Joyce had taped a note to the plastic wrap: “My Jim’s favorite dish.”

Campbell removed the lasagna pan and set it on the kitchen table. He fished a fork and knife out of the drawer and sat down.

“Neighbors,” he said flatly, then slid the fork through generous layers of pasta, tomato sauce, Italian sausage, and ricotta.

– Matthew Fort