Our house in Las Vegas has a very small lot, and all the houses are very close together, making for a sort of intimacy between the neighbors that nobody wants. We never met the ones behind us, but we knew quite a bit about them because they were so noisy and spent too much time out in the yard.

The house was owned by an older woman who owned two dogs: a hunting hound named Abby that bayed loudly when they let it out to poop or pee, and what sounded like a smaller dog that I don't think we knew the name of. The owner was out there several times a day with them, saying "Abby, go! Abby, go!" so they could all hurry up and go back into the house. She had relatives in the form of a thirty-something couple who visited several times a week, often staying until 2 in the morning, which meant being out in the back yard in the middle of the night smoking cigarettes, cursing and yelling. There was a lot of time out in the yard spent fighting and talking on the phone, and if we were outside, we couldn't avoid hearing every word.

Mr. Troutbend became an expert on those peoples' lives. He knew when Scott had a job or had lost his job, or was out of town for his job. These were good times for us. Sometimes it sounded like his job was moving carts at Walmart, and then he found something else that had to do with construction. I don't think his wife worked, but maybe she did. They had various kids, but I think the wife's former spouses had custody of them because there'd be a kid around for awhile, and then we'd never hear that one again, and there would be a new baby.

It all seemed like such a messy, awkward life over there, when I looked at their house listing on Zillow, I was surprised how clean and normal it looked inside. If only those walls could talk.