Tritia woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Doug was asleep next to her, breathing regularly and half-snoring, and she quietly, carefully, pushed the sheet from her body and swung her legs off the bed, glancing at the digital clock on the dresser. The blue liquid quartz numbers said it was three-fifteen. She had put on her panties and nightdress after they’d made love, but she still slipped on a robe before padding across the hall to the bathroom. She’d never felt comfortable walking around the house undressed. The full moon shone through the opaque window above the bathtub like a streetlight, partially illuminating the small room. She pulled up her robe and nightdress, pulled down her panties, and sat down on the toilet to pee. When she was through, she pulled up her panties, flushed the toilet, and went into the kitchen to get a drink.

The night was quiet, but not as quiet as it should have been. Below the melodic chirping cricket music and the occasional cry of a nocturnal bird was another, less natural, noise. A low even rumbling that started and stopped and grew ever closer.

A car engine.

Tritia moved into the living room and bent forward to peek through a slit in the closed curtains. Who would be driving around here at this hour? Certainly not the Nelsons or the Tuckers or any of the other people who lived around them. She pulled the curtain opening wider.

The red car of the mailman pulled up on the road in front of the house.

Tritia sucked in her breath. She could hear the faint sound of a rock-‘n’-roll song from the car’s stereo. As she watched, a thin pale hand reached out from the driver’s window and pulled open the gate of the mailbox, the other hand depositing several envelopes. The mailman’s face appeared at the car window, white against the black background. He looked in her direction, seeming to know right where she was, though he could not possibly have seen the thin crack between the curtain halves in this darkness. He smiled, a slow sly corrupt smile that promised things she did not want to think about, things that made her blood run cold.

She wanted to look away, to move out of his sight, but she was afraid to let him see the curtains fall, and she remained completely still, unmoving. Although only one eye and a portion of her right cheek was next to the narrow opening, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was almost naked, that her nightdress had ridden up above her panties as she bent forward, and she felt as embarrassed and humiliated, as if she had been caught masturbating.

The mailman waved once, smiling broadly at her, then pulled away, into the darkness, the sound of his engine fading.