Picking up a plump tomato from a vendor’s stall, he sniffed the musky tang of its aroma and recalled the backyard tomatoes his dad used to grow.  

“Buying all your food at the farmer’s market now, Jason?”

Jason turned to see his shapely next-door neighbor, Lisa, and her husband, Jeff.  With them stood Paul, their older neighbor from down the block.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to be that virtuous,” he replied with a self-deprecating shrug. “But I’m checking stuff out.”

Lisa grinned knowingly.  “Seen anything interesting?”

As Jason considered the question , a faint smile came to his lips.  “Actually, the most interesting thing I’ve seen so far this morning wasn’t here, it was while I was getting my coffee.  I watched a lizard do pushups.”  A twinkle came into his eye.  “See, this little guy apparently decided he was going to show me how…”

“Gee,” said Lisa, “I see so many lizards when I’m out gardening that I don’t pay much attention to them anymore.  But we had a rattlesnake last week…”

She smiled and put a slender hand on her husband’s arm.  “I had to run into the house and drag Paul away from his game to deal with it.”

Jeff adopted an aw-shucks manner, but rolled his massive shoulders impressively.  “Actually, most of the rattlesnakes we get are pretty slow-moving. A good whack to the head with a long-handled shovel usually takes care of them.”  

He scuffed his sneaker along the worn asphalt.   “It was a different story the other night, though.  A couple of raccoons came up while I was cleaning the pool.”  He stood up a little straighter, possibly unaware he was also puffing out his chest.   “They didn’t seem real interested in being shooed, and the closest thing I had to a weapon was a twelve-foot pool vacuum pole—not too useful against quick-moving critters.  So I decided I’d …”

“I just wish you guys could have seen that bear that came into my yard!” interjected Paul, extending himself to his full height and raising his chin slightly.  His eyes darted, birdlike, from Jeff to Lisa to Jason and back around again.   

Jason was struck by how much the loose skin dangling from Paul’s jaw resembled the necks of his brother’s chameleons.  

—Come to think of it, was there also something reptilian about the other people he had come into contact with this morning?  Jason furrowed his brow.

His thoughts returned to the lizard that had scurried behind his neck—the one that treated him as nothing more than an object to be climbed over.  As before, a small shudder washed over him.

This time, it was followed by a wave of aching loneliness.