The Nightshift Key

The boxes were still stacked everywhere when I noticed the light on the patio next door.

I'd been in the house two weeks. Divorce final last year, transfer to the small precinct in the spring, and here I was at thirty-eight eating off paper plates and digging through cardboard for the coffee maker. It was maybe ten at night when I glanced out the kitchen window and saw her.

She was at a patio table under a clip-on work light, unrolling a big sheet of blueprints. Thirty-four, I'd learned. Her name was Clarissa. She'd moved in six months before I did, and her place was mid-renovation, plastic sheeting over half the windows, a pile of reclaimed brick by the driveway.

I watched her pin the corners of the blueprint with a coffee mug and a hammer. She caught me looking and raised one hand. I raised mine back, feeling like an idiot at my own kitchen sink.

The next morning she caught me carrying groceries up the driveway.

"You're the detective, right?" she said. "Mark?"

"That's me."

"Clarissa. Brighton." She shook my hand. Her palm was rough from work. "Sorry about the brick pile. It's going to be a patio eventually."

"Looks better than my garage full of boxes."

"You should come for coffee sometime. Evening works best, that's when I plan the next day's work."

So the next evening I walked over. Her kitchen was torn down to the studs on one wall, exposed beams overhead, a plastic drop cloth taped over the doorway. She poured coffee into two mugs that didn't match.

"Fair warning, the counter is the only finished surface in here," she said. "Don't lean on anything else."

"I'm impressed you're doing this yourself."

"I'm not. I'm designing it, contractor does the heavy stuff. I'm an architectural designer." She hopped up to sit on the counter, heels knocking the cabinet. "I moved here six months ago after my divorce. Needed a project."

"Divorced too," I said. "Last year. Five years married."

"It gets less weird, everyone tells me." She sipped. "So anyway. Since we're doing the awkward personal stuff."

She nodded at the counter behind her. There was a wooden box sitting next to the tape measure and the tile samples.

"My stress relief kit," she said. "My sister bought it for me as a joke when the reno started. Three vibrators. Turns out it wasn't a joke, turns out I use them."

I almost dropped my coffee. "Okay."

"Here's the thing." She swung her feet a little. "I work late every night. You've probably noticed the light. And it gets kind of lonely, doing everything alone in a house that's half gutted. Even the... relaxing part."

"Even that part," I repeated.

"I thought maybe, some nights, you could come inside and watch me. No touching. Windows open. Just to feel less alone while I work." She said it like she was proposing a carpool. "You don't have to. I'm not looking to date anyone. This is just neighbors being neighborly."

"That is the strangest offer I've gotten in two weeks of living here."

"Which is what, two weeks of you actually living here?" She grinned. "Think about it. No pressure. If it's weird one night, we just go back to waving."

I went home and thought about it for about four hours.

* * *

The first night, I stood at my counter with the window open, listening to her move around next door. I almost bailed twice. Then her work light came on and I heard her voice carry across the yard.

"Mark? You up for it or not?"

I cleared my throat. "Up for it."

"Great. Don't feel obligated to perform or anything. This isn't a competition."

"Good, because I'd lose."

I heard her laugh, then the scrape of a stool at her counter. She sat facing the window for a second, then turned her back to me, which somehow made it easier. I heard the box lid open. A low hum started, muffled by the wall between us.

I was hard before I even touched myself. I unzipped and took myself in hand, slow at first, listening to the hum change pitch every so often. Once I heard her breath catch through the open window.

"God, that's better," she said, mostly to herself.

"Yeah," I managed.

I came in a paper towel, quietly, and heard her finish a minute later with a sound I'd only ever imagined through two walls and ten feet of yard. We both sat there breathing for a moment.

"Goodnight, Mark," she called.

"Goodnight, Clarissa."

* * *

The second night was different. She didn't wait for me to signal. Her work light was already on when I got home, and when I came into my kitchen she called over, "I'm turning this off tonight. The light. But the window stays open. If that's all right."

"If you want."

The light clicked off and the patio went dark except for the spill from her kitchen. She'd moved the stool. She was sitting sideways to the window now, and I could see her, clearly, in the low light from inside her house.

She'd changed into shorts. She slid one hand down the front of them and I watched the fabric shift and bunch. The hum started again, lower than before, and I saw the shape of it working under the cotton, a slow pressure moving over her.

I pulled my cock out and started stroking, watching. She knew I could see. That was the point. She leaned her head back against the cabinet and her mouth came open, and the hum stuttered when her hips lifted off the stool.

"You're watching," she said. Not a question. Her voice had gone loose.

"Yeah."

"Good. That's... that's good." She pushed the shorts down