Desperately insecure, with a deep-seated anger that lay dormant, one could tell. He'd often say others were angry, when they weren't, and he wore a smile that was suspicious, if only for its constant presence. Mike1811 had a terrible sense of humor, and you found yourself using a different laugh around him. The one laugh that placates and accepts, but is dishonest in its own right, for its lack of pleasure. What was scary was you could tell Mike1811 knew this, and then was insulted, but he'd keep smiling. At block parties, someone would make an honest joke, and get an honest laugh, and Mike1811 would follow with a cliche'd turnabout, the group laugh would suddenly change pitch, shuffle its feet, and eyes would cast to the side and down, until someone saved the moment, with real humor. Mike1811 resented it, clearly, every single time.

Sample joke: you are mowing the front lawn on a hot day, trying to get the task done, tired anyway from the work week. You don't really want to be mowing the grass, but it's got to get done, when a car pulls up. It's Mike, in sunglasses, rolling down the window and smiling from the interior. He calls out, "Hey! When you're done there, can you do mine?!" and you can't hear him over the mower. You try to ignore it. He honks. You shut off the mower, stop, look up, and he says it again: HEY WHEN YOU'RE DONE THERE CAN YOU COME OVER AND DO MINE?!

How would you respond? You kind of feel sorry for the guy, and you don't want to set him off. And it would be handy to have a perfect retort, and as well you should, since he used this same line on you last year. But you just stand there like a dope, sweating in the sun, trying not to take it personally. You laugh along. And then you fire up the mower as he begins to say something else, and give it a little gas to drown out any excessive blather.

Jake got the line recently: "HEY, WHEN YOU'RE DONE THERE..." and he immediately pivoted the whole mower and pushed it across the street, blades spinning. He rocked it right up the curb, and one could hear metal on concrete as the mower blades nicked the edge of the sidewalk, and the sweat beaded and fell from his nose as he just started mowing Mike1811's lawn. Back and forth, front to back, and with fervor and zeal. Mike 1811 was startled and began to shake, not knowing how to handle it. He couldn't get out of his car, and had to drive down and whip it around in the cul-de-sac, since he'd been facing the wrong way. By the time he made it to his driveway, Jake was about halfway finished with the grass. Mike1811 got out and waved his arms, "Whoa! Hold on! I was just joking!" and Jake looked up and smiled, "oh! Sorry!" and he turned and forcefully pushed his mower back across the street. Went back to mowing his own lawn, with a delicate touch, keen on the edging. And he saw Mike1811 out of the corner of his eye, standing in the middle of his half-mown lawn, shocked, and wondering who to blame, or if someone should be.

It's hard to keep the desperation at bay, sometimes, in the suburbs. And if there is a consistent trait among neighbors, its the existence of it. The difference is in how it manifests, how it presents itself, and if it can withstand the daily battle. Jake thought about his own desperation, and how he kept it in a box. And then he supposed that the other Mikes kept theirs in boxes, too. And Mike1811 looked like he was paying a steep price for it. Jake was gonna have to do something before it was too late. Something more than, say, get a bigger box. 

~

There was an earthquake. Water was shaking out of the aquarium, and there was nothing Jake could do about it. He felt it was about to burst, as walls in his living room clearly cracked, drywall dust shimmering down from the ceiling. The kids were screaming upstairs. No, it wasn't upstairs. They were in the 4Runner, and his wife was peeling out of the driveway and racing off with them. The asphalt was cracking, and telephone poles were swinging, back and forth, sparks flying from their wired tops.

Then Jake heard a loud noise, it was Phil in his helicopter, landing there in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Phil, calm and hidden behind his sunglasses, put the craft down and waved for Jake to come get in. Jake did, and threw on the passenger headset, though the wires hung everywhere, and he could hear nothing. Phil leaned over him and slammed the door, then lifted off and flew over the valley.

The earth was still quaking, and Jake could make out some crashed cars, a fire, and a broken fire hydrant shooting water into the air. Phil seemed to be in a hurry, and flew like a rocket over the homes, out across the suburbs. Then he said something and Jake couldn't hear him. They couldn't communicate, and Phil pointed off to the horizon. Jake didn't understand at  first, but then he saw it. It was The Sleeping Giant, and he was awakening. 

The Giant lifted its huge head, and boulders came tumbling off it, in slow motion. He lifted one knee, and then the other, and then sat up, leaning back on his right elbow, and as he did this, homes went crashing down the hillside, off of him. The aluminum lattice cover that Sean had built, undulated over the Giant's crotch like a patterned loincloth, and the Giant reached up and grabbed the corner of the nearby Guajome golf course, sliding the entire swath of greenery up and over his thigh, and then he gently lay himself back down. Slightly askew. And then, as it had started, with wonder and awe and terror, the quakes subsided, and the Giant went back to sleep. 

But Jake had woken up, and the day was gonna start early. There was no more going back to sleep after that.

At the end of the day, Jake saw the Sleeping Giant out there, from the freeway. The Giant looked different somehow. Farmland around the leg area must have been re-worked. Tilled to a new color, with varied striations in the hillside. But Jake was certain it was something else, The Sleeping Giant was uneasy.

~

And then there's Mike1889. No one had ever met him, and he is only discussed. He lives, or so we think, in the house at the bottom of the street, the one near the entry. The one with the perfectly manicured lawn and meticulously squared-off hedges. The shades are drawn, the exterior lights are on timers. There is rarely a trash can out front on Tuesday mornings, and no paper is ever delivered. Jim, down the way, has been asked -via email- if he didn't mind parking his car in Mike1889's driveway three nights a week. Any three nights, he said. "Want to make it look like someone is home." 

But there was never anyone home. And Mike1889 was a cypher of a neighbor. Jim, who lived across the street said he couldn't complain. No dogs, no trash. No wild parties. One time a sprinkler broke -probably sheered off by a gardener- and water shot up into the air a good eight feet, at precisely 5AM every other morning, Jim sent Mike1889 an email regarding the episode and offered to fix it, since he was a handy guy. Mike said thanks, and Jim found a blank envelope stuck in his doorjamb the next day, with a crisp $100 bill in it.

Mike1889 is a thing of discussion at every block party. He's an easy target, like the weather, or the street sweeper. Who is the guy? Where is the guy? Jim says he doesn't care, as long as the street is safe. But Jake imagines the guy is an international traveler, with properties in the suburbs on every continent. He keeps the one on Highlander court as an extreme cover, since no one would ever look here for him. You can disappear in the suburbs, Jake says. Think about it: every house looks the same.

Or perhaps there is no Mike1889, as Pleather says. Perhaps the place is owned by the NSA or DARPA or some dark government agency, and Mike is a made-up man, to draw in the bait, whatever it may be. "I've seen the black helicopters flying over his house!" exclaims Pleather, and every laughs, because it seems like a joke. But when Pleather goes to get another beer, Phil leans in to all of us. "My helicopter is black. I fly it over the cul-de-sac all the time. Just for fun." We crack up.

Just for fun, we decide to change the name of our WiFi networks, and see if anyone will notice. Jim sets his to "COUNTYSURVEILLANCE" and Jake sets his to "FBI_CUSTOMER". They spend the rest of the night laughing over other ones.

~

Pleather is smarter than all that, which is why no one knows his real name and we just call him Pleather, because someone called him that once. Pleather is a smart man, tall. Lives alone at the top of the street in one of the bigger 1700 square foot models. He's got a lot of computer equipment in there, which he uses to design and manage websites. We worry about him. He's a nice guy, but he works at home and never gets out. He needs a tan. Needs to exercise. He spends a lot of time in his head, unfortunately, and -though he obviously doesn't believe in them- is an authority on end-of-the-world doctrines. Give him enough beer and he'll spout out about Niburu for ten miutes (Niburu is the exo-planet that is in another dimension but is on a collision course with earth.) He'll explain why the Y2K disaster was narrowly averted by a group of outlayers in Montana, friends of his. He knows when every eclipse is coming, when every  scheduled meteor shower is, and from time to time will tell you the news at night when you're taking out the trash, even though you didn't ask, but it will be tomorrow's news. And you'll see it on your Home Page when you click on in the morning.

Pleather makes his own beer, and everyone loves it. Every third Sunday or so he is out there in the garage with the pimped out Turkey fryer, brewing a new batch. You can smell it over the lawn clippings, while you're doing yardwork, and you can't help but go across the street and ask him what's up, because you just know he'll pour you a pint of his last batch. (It's not always good, but it's always beer.)

Inevitably, other neighbors will happen by and join in. He'll be stirring the 5 gallon pot, tossing in handfuls of flowered hops, and pouring himself home brew, all the while talking us up about the latest global fears, earth-shattering revelations about an intrusive government, and the one-off Mayan revelation that disturbs (and humors) us all. He's Pleather. There's no one else like him. You've got to have one on your street. Because when the Apocalypse hits, you-know-who-is going to have the survival gear handy. Including, and especially, the beer.