At first, we couldn’t tell who had bought the house next door. The realtor, stopping by to pick up his sign, told me, “He’s a nice guy. You’ll like him.” When questioned about whether the nice guy had a family, no additional information was forthcoming—only a few vague comments: “I think so,” “I didn’t see the family but he seems like the type…” This wasn’t all that helpful. Besides, some family guys turn out to be real creeps.

One neighbor told me it wasn’t just one guy, but that a set of brothers had bought it—two-three-four of them, he couldn’t say. Nor could he pinpoint who had told him this. A few of us surmised that we’d traded in one set of brothers for another. But just what band of brothers were we getting? Would this new set of bad bro’s also be in the porn business? Perhaps Al’s intent for his palazzo of penetration would live on after all.

Soon we watched the first SUV arrive. A chair was taken out and carried inside. Then we watched the second SUV arrive. The guy who got out looked like the first guy. Ipso facto—brothers. This one took out a table and carried it inside.

And so it went. We never saw a moving van, just random bits of furniture being unloaded at different times. No one had a camera positioned so as to capture the entire operation, but we’d meet in the street while walking our dogs or rolling the bins off and on the curb. We’d try not to stare at the house in undisguised dread while we pooled our information. No one had ever seen a moving van but one neighbor had seen a truck from an office supply store in the driveway with two guys unloading a couch that was clearly made in one of those countries that condoned child labor.

About a week after the first SUV arrived, a few of us watched as a high-speed cable installer arrived. One particularly vigilant neighbor—let’s call him Buddy—reported, during one of our klatches over the recycle bins, that he’d had a conversation with the installer who informed him that the cable system being installed was not designed for residential use, but instead was meant for businesses. According to Buddy, when questioned further, the installer could neither confirm nor deny the specific nature of the business or businesses that might require this new cable system, which only left us to speculate further about what the brothers were up to.

In short order, we decided that the new owner-brothers whose names no one had bothered to find out, both of whom drove nice, new luxury-brand SUVs, were planning to live-stream porn from our quiet neighborhood with their brand new big bad bandwidth.