6/22/15
“What’s happened to Leon?” This was the question that everyone was asking. And as his best friend I wanted to know the answer. So after work I drove to his place on the outskirts of town.
Leon was in his early thirties and made a good living as an electronic repair technician. He was renting a small house in one of those fifty-year-old neighborhoods which had sprung up during a market boom but which had slowly decayed as tastes changed.
He was still unmarried. A high school sweetheart had broken his heart and he’d been gun shy ever since. A few of us tried several times to fix him up, but he soon asked us to quit. He could socialize okay with his buddies, and could talk without too much difficulty with people he knew. But he’d freeze up around strangers, and couldn’t squeak out as much as a greeting when introduced to a girl.
I warned him if he didn’t make more effort to break out of his shell, he’d continue to regress until one day he’d find he couldn’t interact with other humans at all. He acknowledged I was probably right, but he just couldn’t seem to work up the nerve to open up. And he was opposed to seeing a professional about it.
As I approached the entrance to his housing development I had to slam on the brakes to avoid a rabbit darting across the road. I assumed it had wandered out of the large wooded area opposite Leon’s community. A short time later I was parked in Leon’s driveway and walking toward his front door when a loud cawing caught my attention. Two large crows were perched atop a street light and seemed to be directing their angry screeching at me. I dismissed them with a smile and rang the doorbell.
A moment later Leon opened the door. “Hey, Brian. What brings you by? Come in. Want a beer?”
“The guys have been asking about you,” I said. “You missed the pool game last Saturday and bowling on Wednesday, and you haven’t come to the Tap Room all week. What gives? You sick or something?”
“Nah. I’ve just been busy. I’ve got a, it’s, I’ve met someone. And I think it’s starting to go somewhere.”
“Great!” I said. “It’s about time. Well, don’t just stand there blushing, tell me about her.” I flopped down in his easy chair and popped the top on the drink he’d handed me.
Leon held his drink without opening it and gazed into space smiling. “Her name’s Argent. Argent Vulpes. Yeah, weird, huh? I think she’s an immigrant or something. Plus she doesn’t speak English very well. But she’s really good looking!”
“Cool. Where’d you meet her?”
“Right here in the neighborhood. One evening last week I was standing outside and saw her walking down the sidewalk. I took a chance and said hello, and we hit it off.”
“Wow. That’s convenient. And your personality hasn’t scared her off yet?”
“Yeah, right. No, she thinks I’m sweet. She says she saw what kind of person I am when I helped an injured animal.”
“What do you mean?”
Leon took a long drink before answering. “Last weekend I was coming home late and I hit a wild animal in the road. I guess it had been going through the trash cans around here, and I clipped it as it was running back to the woods.
“I stopped and got out, then saw it was a little fox. It was whining and licking its hind leg. I walked over slowly and held out my hand. It sniffed me and nudged my palm with its nose. I picked it up and put it in the back seat, then took it home and bandaged its leg. I kept it in the garage with the door open. Then after a few days it was better, so I took the bandage off and it left. I guess Argent must have seen me caring for it and that got her interested.”
“Quite a story, Leon,” I said, then took a long swig. I didn’t say how foolish he had been to touch a wild animal, especially an injured one. I just put it down as one of his idiosyncrasies. But his having kept a fox in the house explained the strong musty smell I’d noticed when I first walked in.
By the end of the second beer he’d told me they’d met twice more, each time just spending the evening walking the sidewalks around the neighborhood.
“I asked her if she’d go out to dinner with me but she said no,” Leon continued. “She must have seen how disappointed I was because she grabbed my hands and begged me to give her a little more time. Then she leaned in and gave me a little lick on the cheek.”
“A what?! She licked you?” My eyebrows shot up.
“It was just once, a small one,” he protested. “I guess it’s a custom where she’s from.”
I knew then that Leon was already head over heels. He’d been alone too long and now he was falling fast, and falling hard. I asked if she had any other weird customs. He said she wouldn’t yet tell him where she lives and that it was driving him nuts.
After their second evening together he’d asked her about it but she got all mysterious. So then once she left to walk home he followed her at a distance. She went out the front entrance of the neighborhood, but by the time he got to the gates there was no one either direction. I suggested that perhaps she had driven away, but he wasn’t convinced. He felt sure he’d have seen the lights if there had been a car.
“The next morning I walked back to the entrance,” Leon continued. “I figured that if she hadn’t gone down the road, then perhaps she’d walked into the woods across the street. But as I tried to find a trail I got chased out by a ferret.”
“A ferret?” I asked.
“Yeah. A ferret or a weasel. I didn’t know we had those around here. Maybe it’s just an escaped pet that turned feral. And maybe I was close to its nest, or burrow, or whatever they have. But it charged at me and I wasn’t able to get to the woods.”
“So, can I meet this girlfriend of yours?” I asked. I was thinking there must be a more plausible explanation for these events than the way Leon was telling them.
“Yeah, I guess,” he answered. “But I don’t expect her to show up for several more hours. She doesn’t ever come by before it’s dark. She must have to work late at her job.”
“Sorry. I can’t stick around that long,” I said. “But I’ll check back with you tomorrow and we’ll figure out something then. Let her know I’d really like to meet her.”
The next evening I went back to Leon’s house but couldn’t find him. His car was in the driveway and the lights were on inside the house, but he wasn’t answering the door or the phone. After I’d been banging the door and calling through the windows for a while his neighbor came out and said he hadn’t seen Leon around since the night before.
I decided to try again in a day or two. Turning to get in my car I saw the two crows were back. Only this time their calls sounded like cackles of amusement. Then as I was waiting to pull out of his neighborhood I looked across the road at the woods on the other side. A flash of movement caught my eye, and right at the edge of the foliage I saw a large fox.
The animal just stood there staring at me. I watched it more than a full minute, but it didn’t leave. Perhaps it was just imagination, but I got the impression it was looking at me like it recognized me. A moment later a second fox came out of the woods, a good bit smaller, and stood beside the first one. The second fox gave me a quick glance then began to nuzzle the bigger one. They then turned and disappeared into the woods.
I checked back the next day but Leon still hadn’t come home. I didn’t hear anything more about him after that. The place where he worked said he quit without notice; just stopped coming in. A couple of months later his landlord filed for eviction and threw away all his stuff, and the bank came and took his car. I don’t know where he went or why he left so suddenly and without saying goodbye. Maybe he and that girl decided to run off and start a new life together somewhere else.
Wherever he is I hope he’s happy. But I never got an answer to the question of what happened to Leon.
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