Lurkers

by Sandi Tan

  Rosemary got back on her bike dully.

  “Where are you going now?” asked Mira. “I want to tell you my termite plan.”

  “Stop tailing me!” Rosemary rode downhill for a block, then swiftly swerved left and sped along one of the tree-lined cross streets that would take her east, toward the Armenian neighborhood.

  Mira felt intensely alone. She looked at the blue cottage. Her sister was right—it was cool. It was perfect. She wanted to live there. The dinner smells made her stomach rumble. Buttery mashed potatoes. Roast chicken. Love and protein.

  A silver Mercedes slowed down as it approached Mira and her bike, flashing its headlights at her in friendly warning. It turned into the driveway and parked snugly behind the Ford Taurus, as if the driveway had been constructed to accommodate those two cars exactly.

  The back doors popped open and two little mocha-skinned girls, about seven years old, maybe twins, climbed out of the car. At the same time, the front door of the house opened, and the Indian woman in the silk blouse stepped out. The girls squealed “Mommy!” and ran into her arms. The white bull terrier woke up to bark a hearty welcome. Finally, the driver of the Mercedes emerged. He was a silver-bearded Sikh who looked like a surgeon or a psychiatrist, a specialist in any case who was senior enough to wear his turban to work. He locked the doors of his vehicle with a beep before strolling into the house. The pretty mother of the girls greeted him with a peck on the cheek.

  Just before the front door of the house closed, Mira saw the man turn his head and throw her a suspicious glare. He had every right to do it. She was a total stranger standing on his sidewalk, staking out his family under the darkening sky. The curtains on all their windows pulled shut, one by one by one.

  Rosemary slowed down when she hit the block where she supposed Arik lived. She didn’t know his exact address, except that he had mentioned two walking-distance landmarks: Sam’s Dry Cleaning, where his mother worked, and Dominic’s, the pizzeria where he often grabbed a slice.

  The houses on his street were small, modest, Spanish-style bungalows painted in innocuous shades. In the twilight, she couldn’t make out if a house was orange or pink—he’d said his was a ghastly salmon. Everything blurred into one big gray area. She walked her bike past the houses, narrowing down what might have been Arik’s to about four or five, based on details he’d mentioned—disheveled camellia bush, dried-up lawn, his mother’s garish taste in curtains. Then it got too dark to see anything, and invisible dogs started growling and barking wherever she walked.

  She got back on her bike and cycled home.

  Rosemary and Mira hid in their rooms while the Korean realtor lady visited again. She’d been over for tea twice in the past week, talking like a foghorn, flashing her crimson nails. She wore short skirts and really high heels, and because of her flat, angular build, she looked to the girls like a man in drag. Her business card had become a fixture on their fridge, pinned under a Hello Kitty magnet: quellie soo, licensed realtor, tip top estates (east division).

  She worked Mrs. Park hard, impressing her by throwing into her Korean some awkwardly formal English: I tell you, isn’t that something? To see it is to believe it, believe you me. The girls had never seen their mother join so agreeably into conversation, and for hours at a time. Together the realtor and Mrs. Park nibbled all afternoon on kimchi, chestnuts and seaweed crackers, gulping down liters of tea brewed from expired corn. Sometimes, the lady brought over snacks made from red bean paste and Mrs. Park would whoop with joy. Today, she made Mrs. Park clap like a circus seal when she showed up with a Styrofoam box of gummy dill dumplings.

  Mira barged into Rosemary’s room. “Everything about her is so fake,” she said. “What if Ma’s being had?”

  “Whatever, I don’t care.” Rosemary turned back to her library book on Pre-Raphaelite painters. Her sister snatched it from her.

  “John Everett Millais. Is he famous?” Mira flipped through the book, seeing pages upon pages of auburn-haired maidens dancing in forests, kissing knights, floating still on top of lakes. “He’s got three names. Just like a serial killer.”

  “Give it back. It’s for Workshop.”

  “Are you studying to be, like, a waitress at Medieval Times?”

  “No.”

  “Please, Rosie, tell me you’re not going to start wearing those puffy Ren fair dresses like all the chubby Goths at school.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Please don’t become a chubby Goth, Rosie.”

  “Go away.”

  “I haven’t told you about my termite plan yet.” Mira bounced on the bed. “House-buyers hate termites, right? And termites love stinky, damp places. So I was thinking if we flooded the basement and attic with our pee, we’ll start, like, a super infestation, then Ma won’t be able to sell the house. And, though we’ll have an incredibly stinky house, we won’t have to go. End of story.” She beamed.

  “Of all the stupid things you’ve ever said, that is the stupidest I’ve ever heard.”

  Mira sat catatonic, disbelieving, for a minute. Then she bolted.

  Meanwhile, in the living room, Quellie Soo was explaining the concept of “staging.” In order to have a successful open house, Mrs. Park needed to “stage” the event, to give the buyer the impression that they’d stumbled onto a happy place inhabited by happy people. For that to work, Mrs. Park couldn’t have their furniture and effects packed up or shipped away just yet—the house had to look lived in, as if its owners had simply stepped out for a pint of milk for the cat. Vacation photos in gold frames, Quellie said, were key to a smooth sale. New curtains and paint, too. Mrs. Park had to consider making these upgrades because too many flaws were visible; there was no way they could show the house in its current state.

  When she saw Mrs. Park sinking into another one of her cushion-clutching internal monologues, Quellie formulated an economical alternative to reel her back: sell the house at Christmas, when the trees on Santa Claus Lane would be all lit up. The spirit of goodwill might make buyers overlook its flaws. As she left, she implored Mrs. Park again to get the house fumigated. She knew it was the $4,600 fee that was holding her back.

  “Sell the car, my dear,” Quellie said in English, and left for her next appointment.

  At dawn, Mira popped out of bed and crept barefoot out of her bedroom holding a plastic yogurt cup filled with her own piss. She flicked on the light to the basement and, wearing her mother’s slippers because her own were too precious, ran down the steps into the musty underground, trying not to giggle.

  The air was freezing down there. It was a real dump, all germs and cobwebs. The termite guy had been right—it was a firetrap, filled with Korean newspapers from the Neolithic Age. And cans of paint with their lids sealed with rust. And old flashlight batteries. And—could this actually be?—that decrepit Big Bird doll encrusted with her baby puke. Unbelievable!

  Mira doused the crawl space just under the wooden floorboards of the kitchen with the piss, careful not to get any on her clothes or skin. When she was done, she pulled down her pants and squeezed out more pee on a stack of vintage newspapers. She looked at them for a second.

  Shit! The one on top showed the Twin Towers under attack—she could have auctioned it off on eBay. Oh well, too late now! She doused the burning towers with more pee, and cackled.

  The door to the basement slammed shut. She stifled her instinct to scream. Very carefully, she crept up the steps, turned the doorknob, and peered out.

  “Rosie?” she whispered. “That you?”

  The kitchen was empty. The big-faced clock ticked. It was six-fifteen.

  She emerged from the steps to peer into the adjoining hallway where her sister could have been hiding. Nobody. Everything was still. All the windows were shut. There wasn’t a stray breeze in the entire house.

  A wide smile broke across Mira’s face. She knew. She knew. It was one of t
hose supernatural beings she’d been trying to call up. A poltergeist.

  Finally! What took you so long? She went back down to the basement, and waved in her unseen accomplice. Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Come, help me.

  The thermostat read ninety-five. Mrs. Park’s head lay on the dining table as the slow blades of the ceiling fan massaged the still air above. Her sweat-soaked hair spilled across the vinyl place mat, a sickly black mop covering her eyes. Her shoulders heaved with REM breathing and her arms hung down at her sides, two meaty plumb lines.

  This is what Ma would look like dead, Rosemary thought gloomily. She plucked the cordless out of its cradle and took it back to her room.

  “Hello?” Arik picked up, sounding groggy.

  “Hi. It’s me, Rosemary Park. If this is a bad time, I’ll hang up.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. I was just . . . I must have fallen asleep without realizing it, on the couch.”

  “That’s crazy! My mother’s asleep at the dining table.”

  “No way. My mother’s sleeping, too, in her chair! And so’s my little brother. They’re both asleep in the middle of the freakin’ afternoon. And the whole place smells like kerosene from her dry-cleaning shit.”

  “Oh, wow!” Rosemary laughed. “It’s like a sleeping virus! Wouldn’t it be funny if, like, we walked outside and found that every single person was asleep except for us?”

  They both laughed quietly.

  “I’m so glad you called,” Arik finally said. “You wanna hang out?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Totally.”

  “Like, now?”

  “Sure.”

  Rosemary walked into the Rite Aid after locking her bike and checking her underarms for BO. She was instantly greeted by Arik, who was standing by the tower of blue shopping baskets and holding two ice cream cones—Rocky Road and strawberry cheesecake—already melting despite the profuse AC.

  “Hey!” He handed her the strawberry cheesecake. He just knew. “There was a clerk at the ice-cream counter. It almost never happens, so I went for it.”

  “Thanks,” Rosemary blushed, in spite of herself, and reached for her wallet.

  “No, no. It’s on me,” Arik grinned. She noticed that he’d shaved off his Fu Manchu patches.

  They walked through the store, licking their cones. Arik gave her a smile as they passed the eye-level display of Preparation H suppositories. “My mom uses that stuff.”

  He looked irresistible in his Green Day T-shirt and the cargo shorts that ended high enough to showcase his down-covered calves. She’d touched those legs doing various exercises in Workshop but never socially. The back of his T-shirt was sweat-dappled and stuck to him.

  At the freezers in the back of the store, they pressed their backs against the cold glass doors and sighed in unison.

  “Aisle seven, by the lozenges,” Arik muttered, talking through one side of his mouth. “Toupee alert!”

  Rosemary spotted the old guy in a cheap golf shirt wearing a lopsided hairpiece. She giggled.

  “World’s fattest Ethiopian,” Rosemary said, tipping her chin at an anorectic lady squinting at vitamins through bifocals.

  “World’s skinniest Iowan.” Arik arched an eyebrow toward an obese woman, who was panting as she struggled to take two steps in her walking frame.

  “Planet of the Apes.” Rosemary directed her elbow at the bearded Armenian gent circling the painkillers aisle, graying chest hair popping out of his singlet.

  “Watch it, you’re talking about my people here!” Arik laughed. He stretched out his fur-lined arm for Rosemary. “I’m getting there myself. It’s my genetic destiny to turn into a werewolf.”

  Rosemary resisted the temptation to stroke his arm like it was some sort of cute hairy pet. “An Ewok, maybe.”

  They held their gaze for a moment, then Arik turned away, blushing.

  “Hey, look, an old dude flirting with the male pharmacist,” he said. “Well, I suppose it does say pick-up window.”

  Rosemary craned her neck to see the in-store pharmacy, and gasped. “Oh, my God, that’s my neighbor!”

  “You’re kidding, right? The old dude or the pharmacist?”

  “The old dude. He lives next door to me. He’s, like, a famous writer. Raymond Van Pelt.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I’ve never read his stuff either. He’s very early-nineties. Genre, but supposedly ironic.”

  “I hate irony!”

  “I know. Me too!”

  They watched Raymond sign for his prescription, take the little paper bag, and bid goodbye to the young pharmacist. Rosemary hadn’t seen him in the wild—he actually looked kind of happy, kind of handsome, kind of youthful, a completely different person than the grump-a-lumps she knew, perpetually engaged in a muttering argument with himself. She’d never noticed his feet before either, and saw that he wore green loafers made of swank crocodile leather. He was possibly the only person in the history of Rite Aid who wasn’t shopping in footwear assembled by Indonesian child slaves.

  “I bet it’s Viagra.” Arik crunched down on the last of his cake cone. His fuzzy arm brushed against Rosemary’s but neither of them budged.

  “He’s too old to have sex, probably.” The little hairs on her arm stood up. Arik was so close. So close.

  “I don’t think that’s necessarily true.” Arik grabbed her hand and suddenly lunged forward and kissed her on the lips. His lips were cold and soft from the ice cream. She kissed him back, parting her lips slightly as she had done with Mr. Z. Their tongues clashed and he moved his body over hers, pressing her against the icy door of the freezer. Her hands reached instinctively for his lower back.

  He forged ahead with the confidence of someone who’d spent hours practicing on his inner elbow. She felt her lips plump up and every touch from him became a shivery thrill. He moved one of his hands under her T-shirt to grab her waist. The freezing glass against her back and Arik’s burning body on her front put her in a contrapuntal dream state—cold, hot, cold, hot. She allowed herself to drown. Arik K., the guy she’d been secretly staring at for a whole year, was kissing her, for real.

  Finally, they had to break for air. They looked at each other guiltily, with bedroom eyes and bashful smiles. Their lips were rimmed pink with light abrasions.

  Arik put his hands on the small of her back and reeled her in for another kiss. Another wave of desire washed through her and she closed her eyes. “I feel like we’re invisible,” she said. “And inaudible.”

  This time, she clasped her hands behind his neck. She was surprised by how smoothly everything came to her, and his reactions were just as natural. She sucked on his tongue; he responded by thrusting it deeper into her mouth. He pushed his lower torso toward her and, meeting with no resistance, rubbed himself against her, following whatever rhythm felt good to him.

  A man cleared his throat near them.

  “Excuse me, lovebirds,” he said. They unglued their faces, dazed. It was a portly African American in a Dodgers jersey. “Could you both just scootch over a little. I need to get to my ice cubes.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Arik said, still hugging Rosemary as they moved aside.

  “Don’t you apologize, son,” the man said. He reached into the freezer and grabbed two large bags of ice. “Lord knows I wish I had your youth. Carry on.” He winked at the two of them, then waddled off, a bag balanced in each arm.

  Arik released himself from Rosemary and pressed his front against the cold freezer door, throwing her the goofiest, straight-from-the-heart smile.

  “Shall we get out of here?”

  She kissed him, and they ran.

  The heat outside greeted them like an old friend. Arik grabbed Rosemary’s hand and led her to the back of the Rite Aid. Wordlessly, in the shade of the loading area, they wrapped themselves in each other. Arik pinned her ag
ainst the wall and continued to rub his groin against her as they kissed. Heat rose from the concrete, and they were very quickly slick with sweat.

  “I hope . . . this isn’t bothering you.”

  He moved her hand to the front of his pants. There it is, she thought, there it is. It was like Mr. Z’s, only more pronounced. She didn’t know if she should rub her palm over the bulge, or fondle it, or what.

  “I want you to touch me, Rose,” he whispered into her ear so it tickled. “And I want to touch you.”

  His hand moved inside her shorts and she hoped she wasn’t too sweaty and gross between her legs. He leaned into her, breathing with his mouth, breaking into a smile whenever their eyes met. She unzipped her shorts and helped his hand slide under her panties. She felt his fingertips move gently, anxiously, down her crotch, startled at first by the prickly forest of pubic hair, then venturing on. It felt so good to have somebody else’s fingers in there instead of her own, and she tried to concentrate on being the recipient of this pleasure. But she kept pulling herself out of the moment—she was curious, she wanted to watch.

  Arik squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth forming an o as he found the valley between her thighs and dipped two fingers into the thick, warm wetness awaiting him.

  “Oh my God,” he panted. “You feel like the inside of a jack-o’-lantern!”

  Rosemary whimpered as he moved his fingers in and out of her. She wanted to come. He thrust his tongue inside her mouth for a deep, long kiss, then quite suddenly withdrew both it and his hand. He looked like he was choking.

  “Fuck, Arik, are you okay?”

  “Oh my God, oh my God!” he gasped, even more shocked than she was. He pushed her away roughly and opened up his pants. Immediately his cock popped out like a long, pink ax handle. It was bigger than she expected, the tip of it made her think of a Pink Pearl eraser. As soon as he grabbed it, thick white liquid shot out of its head. Rosemary jumped away just in time so the projectile missed her and struck the wall.

  Arik propped himself up against the wall with his free hand, and Rosemary watched him twitch uncontrollably with his eyes pressed shut until all the milky streaks drained out of him. She tried to contain her horror.