当我是一个少年时，我的家人搬进了城市 - 在路易斯维尔的高地的邮票中，在路易斯维尔的高地，我们的新隔壁邻居游行，喊“番茄国王”，并放了十几个成熟入口垫上的牛排。他撕掉了他的黄杨木，并放入番茄植物;他的后院没有花园的空间，因为它被衬有破碎的弹球机。

The Tomato King was a pinball-machine repairman. That summer, the tomatoes he didn’t give to us he ate like apples on his front stoop, throwing the cores into the grass. When it rained, one of his rotating live-in girlfriends (one for weekdays, one for weekends) helped him pull tarps over the backyard repair station.

在我们的老房子里，除非我们走过一片森林和院子，否则我们无法窥探邻居，然后在一些日子里遮住窗户下面遮住了自己。此外，我们知道我们的邻居。他们的生命没有举行谜团。

在城市，我们的窗户距离番茄王的10英尺。房屋是相同的，由同一年建筑师建造。窗户排队。更重要的是，番茄王的角色恳求填补空白，一个休闲的窃听，一个友好的间谍活动。看着他从房间移动到房间，听着他的弹球机在半夜玩疯狂的歌曲，我发现了陌生人 - 邻居的喜悦，让你建立自己的故事。

我都是为了建立社区并参与互助。我喜欢在长大后知道孩子，我从住在附近的人的恩惠中受益。我并不反对邻居的友谊。然而，有一个陌生人邻居保持你的好奇心。这是一个难题，你永远不会完成，因为它只变得更大，更复杂和乐趣。神秘邻居是你所爱的孩子的文学 -Harriet the Spy那掖永恒那去了湖泊-对自己的大街上。

In Park Slope, my mystery neighbor was the extremely ripped guy on the second floor who taught physical education for the CUNY system so he could keep earning master’s degrees. He loved an M.B.A., an M.F.A., an M.P.A. He told me this when we were both staring at a pile of dog poop left in the middle of our entry hall. I hurried off, because this man’s charming contradiction was the perfect beginning of a portrait. I wanted to draw the rest on my own, so in the months after, I lurked, cataloguing more things about him. He rigged fake deliveries with dye packs to try to catch our mail thief. He posted flyers educating residents on the abuses of our new management company. He was a vigilante, an advocate for the disenfranchised. I was living with a terrible boyfriend, and I needed a hero in my life.

也许一个神秘邻居的真正目的是让我们成为一个轨道的轨道，象征着一种象征着我们非凡的痛苦的方式。番茄王是我遇到过的最智慧的人。我的家人已成为他的下门邻居，因为我们无法支付抵押贷款。我们破产了。我害怕真正的贫困。我即将毕业高中，我感到巨大的压力来熄灭，做一些大事，让金钱恢复父母的所有牺牲。番茄国王的电力已被切断，但他的屋顶发电机意味着生存总是可能的。

During 2020, The Year at Home, I lay under my jacaranda tree in Los Angeles and listened to the family across the street play badminton at dusk. The Belgian paced on his deck, exasperated, rolling calls. The composer and the retiree discussed where the heck these feral chickens came from. Being unable to move through the world, these neighbors became all the people I might watch in an airport or across a café or in the park. After a few months of lockdown, I was poor in life experiences but rich in stranger-neighbors.

Six months later, after the annual fires subsided and LA was resigning itself to an oppressively unknown length of additional shutdown, the guy who was born on the street, way up at the top of the dead end, started a phone tree. He wanted to be able to communicate in case “things got worse.” We were all entrenched in our loneliness, but the feral chickens were still running around. They brought people outside, which led to more introductions. Now, of course, the new text chain is planning a block party for fall 2021.

但倾听我：我发誓要保持其中一个邻居是一个神秘的人。有一个有趣的前院的人，散步奇怪的时间。有人会让我建立一个故事，我可以告诉自己，当所有其他故事比石头更重。我们已经开始了一个新的章节，但我们永远不会完全撼动我们刚刚生活的那个。有一天，也许每天，我需要这个人，我永远不想完全了解。