The closest thing to a friend that Robert had was his next door neighbor Peter. He didn't enjoy Peter's company so much as he was entertained by him, his endless grumbling about his wife and children reassured Robert about his solitary life. As he always did when he came to Robert's house the first thing Peter did was grab a beer from the fridge. Peter had just gotten off work and hadn't been home yet, intending to spend some time decompressing with Robert first. Peter envied Robert to no end, if given the chance he would swap lives with him in a heartbeat. When he was at Robert's house he was able to imagine such a life for himself and that was enough for him to return to his home and his life feeling better about everything. Peter worked as an operations controller at a small power plant. The job was monotonous and he had long since stopped caring about it. He was desperate to know what Robert had done that had allowed him to quit his job but Robert wouldn't tell him and Peter's guess was that he never would. Robert told Peter next to nothing about himself, mostly because nothing had been happening in his life aside from the eggs, and he would never tell anybody about that. On this evening however he didn't need to say anything to Peter about what had changed in his life, it was obvious.

"When did you get that tattoo?" Peter sat down in the living room and asked him.

"What tattoo?"

"The one on your neck; what is that? A duck?"

Robert sprang up from his chair and ran to the hallway mirror to see the tattoo that had mysteriously appeared on his neck.

"It's a goose, it's not a duck."

"Why did you get a tattoo of a goose?"

"I like geese, I think they're interesting."

"And why were you so shocked when I asked you about the tattoo?"

"You said it was a tattoo of a duck, I thought maybe they'd made a mistake."

The strange series of events that Robert feared his conversation with the goose would set in motion had begun unfolding. Peter returned home after spending an hour at Robert's house, time they mostly spent talking about Robert's bizarre fascination with geese. For dinner Robert scrambled three eggs that he ate on toast while watching the news on TV, this time the lead story was about the growing concerns over the situation in Ukraine.

While asleep that night Robert had a dream that he was being strangled that was too vivid for him to ignore. He woke up earlier than usual, at 6 a.m., and went over to Peter's house. Peter was having breakfast at the kitchen table with his wife and two daughters. Robert, still dressed in his pajamas with disheveled hair, asked Peter if they could speak in private. Peter agreed and they went into the backyard. Robert told Peter that he had reason to fear that he was in danger and asked if he could spend the day at his house.

"Why are you in danger? Is somebody after you?"

"No no, it's nothing specific, it's just a feeling that I have, that something dangerous is going to come to my house."

"Have you gotten yourself involved in something shady? Is that why you were able to quit your job?"

"No, it's nothing like that, I don't even know that the thing I'm afraid of is human."

"You know that you're sounding like a crazy person right now, right?"

"I know that, but I can't ignore this feeling that I have."

Peter found what Robert was saying to him disturbingly strange, but Robert was his friend and he wanted to be of help to him. He told Robert to wait outside while he went inside and cleared things with his wife. Cathy didn't like Robert, she thought he was strange and she thought he was a bad influence on Peter. She didn't want Robert in the house with her for the whole day but before the issue could develop into an argument Peter cut her off and said peremptorily that Robert would be staying. The day that Cathy spent with Robert as her guest didn't make her think of him as being any less strange. He spent the day in his pajamas staring out of the kitchen window at his house. She had always suspected him of being involved in something shady. With his background in financial services she'd thought that he was laundering money, and her first thought when he told her that he was in danger was that he had been stealing from his clients who were now out to get him and that by having him over at their house their lives were being placed in danger. She wouldn't allow anything like this again, when Peter returned from work she was going to make that clear to him.

Robert knew that it was only a matter of time before someone or something showed up at his house to bring to fruition what he had seen in his dreams. After waiting all day without anything happening he started thinking that perhaps he'd overreacted, until he saw the same two mobsters that had been trying to grab the goose walking around in his home. They had come back for the goose, and because he had said it was his goose they were targeting him as well. Robert moved from the kitchen to the living room so he could see the two men leaving his house. He couldn't afford to waste any time. Once the two men had left he returned to his house, hurriedly packed a bag and left in his car. He drove from Queens to New Jersey and checked into a hotel where he would wait for the goose's return, certain that the animal's mystical powers would guide it to him. The faith that he'd put in the goose turned out to be well placed. A week later he heard a tapping on his hotel room window and saw the goose tapping on the window with its beak.