Inappropriate Behavior: Stories by Murray Farish

after a trip to the store, “that this has been genetically ingrained in these people somehow? Loose lips sink ships?”
    â€œYou should have seen me, Tom,” she said one morning after walking the dog. “This random woman comes up, she looks like a normal fiftyish woman, and I say good morning and I say I’m sorry about the dog jumping up , and I can tell the whole way she’s not going to respond. I say nice weather and I say getting cooler and the next thing you know I’m following this woman up the block, screaming at her, Good morning! Good morning! She actually put her hands over her ears and ran away.”
    The next-door neighbors, for example, hadn’t said a dozen words to either of them as the weeks went by that they’d lived there, so it wasn’t like Tom or Patty could go next door and . . . how would they even approach such a subject? Hi, Commander, Mrs. Waller, how are you? We’re your new next-door neighbors. We brought over a Bundt cake, and do you know for the last month we’ve been watching your daughter naked through her bathroom window? It was sad even for Tom, who really didn’t know until he moved to Norfolk that he did need friends. He’d always had his books and his work, but even in his program atschool he’d made no friends—it was sad, but true, that the nicest anyone in Norfolk had been to him was the boy downstairs, who more and more was out front in the mornings, waiting for Tom to come down with the dog.
    â€œThere’s old pup pup,” the boy would say every morning.
    â€œThere he is,” Tom would say, and the two of them would have an amiable conversation like any two other men in America, except that one of the men was twelve and kept asking peculiar questions about the dog. Tom wondered if maybe the boy had one of those autisms that render you incapable of normal social interaction.
    How do you cut his toenails, the boy would ask. Have you ever tried one of those vacuum brushes they do on the TV? What kind of treats does he like? How high can he jump? Haw hi kinnee jump? And when Tom would answer, the boy’s response would be a sound it is very hard to replicate in words, a kind of appraising hmmm sound, but one that also sounded sort of sarcastic, like the boy was not appraising the dog but appraising Tom, and finding him, or his answers, wanting. But Tom was also nervous during these morning conversations that the mother would come out and confront him face-to-face about the dog, which, in all the time of leaving notes, she had never done. How often do his ears need cleaning? Did you ever think about bobbing his tail? Has he ever bit anybody? It was almost like the boy thought about nothing but the dog all day long, formulating a new list of questions for the next time he and Tom would meet. Sad, but no one else in Norfolk put this kind of energy into talking to Tom.
    Then there was this: One night, during an especially intense bathroom show, Patty dropped to her knees in front of Tom and sucked him while he watched the child across the way. Just as Tom was about to come, the girl flipped off the lights and left the bathroom, and Patty, as if on cue, rose to her feet and took Tom’s hand between her legs. “I’m so wet I can’t even walk,”Patty said, and Tom raised her skirt and fucked her there against the kitchen counter while the dog watched from the doorway.
    Almost immediately after what was unquestionably the single greatest sexual experience of their three years together, Patty felt incredibly guilty. They sat on the bed and Patty cried. Tom tried to console her, but failed.
    â€œWe won’t do it again.”
    â€œBut we did it.”
    â€œWhat’s the big deal? It’s just a little kinky. It’s not like we’re child pornographers or something.”
    â€œWhat are we like?” Patty said.
    â€œIt’s not like the girl is eight or