Lurkers

by Sandi Tan

  “Workshop is canceled,” he said, in a neutral voice, “indefinitely.”

  “What?” Arik turned his wild, bewildered eyes to Rosemary for backup, but got nothing. “Mr. Z! Why are you mad at us? We’re just doing what you told us to do!”

  “All good things must come to an end.” Mr. Z said this calmly, and began walking, the dead leaves crackling under his feet. “Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

  “Wait! I don’t get it!” Arik was about to cry. He pulled away from Rosemary and took three steps after Mr. Z. “Please! What’s going on?”

  He looked back at Rosemary, who watched Mr. Z’s departure with folded arms. She shook her head: “He can be so fucking corny.”

  She was finally ready to do it. With a branch cutter she found in the garage, she made a U-shaped tear in her window screen that could be lifted up like a dog door.

  There was a shuffling of slippers and the rapping of knuckles at her door.

  “Baby, why you lock door?”

  “Because I’m not seven years old and I want some privacy, that’s why!”

  “Where you put car key?”

  “What do you want it for?”

  “Give me car key, Rosie.” Mrs. Park continued knocking in her quietly insistent way. Groaning, Rosemary tossed the branch cutter under her bed and closed her curtains.

  She opened the door. “Tell me what you’re planning to do with it.”

  “Just give me car key.” There was a new hardness in Mrs. Park’s tone.

  “Okay, okay.” Rosemary twitched. “It’s in the bathroom cabinet, inside my box of tampons.”

  When night fell, she slipped outside to wait for Arik. She found a hidden spot behind the camellia bush and stood there, fending off ants and bugs by repeatedly stamping her feet in a ridiculous goosestep. She should have worn jeans instead of shorts but it was too late.

  Finally, a male silhouette materialized, walking up the center of the street. She ran out to greet him.

  “Hey!” She waved at him to hurry up, and he obeyed.

  When her guest came into view, under the moonlight, Rosemary froze. It wasn’t Arik.

  “Well, hello, Ghost,” said the man. He approached her like an old acquaintance, a bemused smile across his face. He wasn’t particularly threatening—he was much too ordinary-looking for that—but his tone of intimacy made her hair stand. “How’s it going tonight, you?”

  She didn’t know what to say but common courtesy told her she had to say something. “Fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it.” He glanced at the darkened house across the street. “She’s gone AWOL again, hasn’t she?”

  “Who? The lady who lives there?”

  The man looked at Rosemary with a teasing grin. “You’re being awfully coy tonight, Ghost.”

  Slightly insulted, she gave up what she knew: “She’s gone out of town, not sure where. She asked my mom to turn on her sprinklers for her. I have no idea when she’ll be back.”

  His response made her blood run cold. He groaned in agony, and he cracked his knuckles. She peered past his shoulder and hoped that Arik would show.

  “I’ve got something here for your trouble,” he said. He reached inside his denim jacket and pulled out a necklace with a gold, heart-shaped pendant. “Here, take it.”

  “I can’t.” She backed away. “But thanks.”

  “It’s even got your name on it.” He moved the pendant into the moonlight, and swung it; she saw how pretty it was—engraved with the block letters B.A.Y.

  “My name’s not Bay.”

  “Beautiful and young. That’s you, my Ghost. That’s you.”

  Swiftly but gently, he grabbed her hand and dropped the necklace into her palm, the metal as cold as ice, then closed her fingers over it. His hands were manly and thick, and his caresses were unambiguously sensual, as opposed to Arik’s improvised groping.

  “I can’t . . .”

  He turned, and was gone.

  Arik arrived on his bike five minutes late, hurrying and clumsy and apologetic. He seemed to her even more of a boy than ever—a sweaty, unreliable schoolboy whose breath smelled of blue Gatorade and marinara sauce.

  Rosemary peeled open the window screen from her room and he climbed in with only a few nicks from the wire mesh. Before he could even kick off his shoes, they were entwined on her bed, him on top of her. His mouth covered her neck and shoulder blades with kisses; his hands grabbed her breasts under her bra.

  “God, I’ve been waiting for this for, like, forever.” He pulled off her shorts and pressed himself against her.

  They both stripped, kissing every time another garment came off. Then they were completely nude except for the new gold necklace around Rosemary’s neck.

  “You look really hot tonight.”

  The tip of his cock almost reached up to his belly button and every time it touched Rosemary’s bare skin it jerked. They threw the covers off the bed and he moved his face down between her thighs.

  “I want to eat your pussy.” As those words escaped his lips, he was shocked at how lurid they sounded, and he giggled, high-pitched and girly. He repeated the line in parody Count Dracula fashion, “I vahnt to yeet your poo-see . . . I vahnt to yeet your poo-see, dahlink!”

  She wished he would stop. Couldn’t he tell he was making her feel gross? When she parted her thighs, she saw that he was immediately intimidated by what he found there. He gave her slit a few light licks, avoiding the slimy areas, then puckered his lips and hastened back up to more familiar territory. Her gold pendant he sucked on like it was candy, metallic candy that would chase away the taste of the ocean on his tongue.

  “Arik . . .” She wrapped her legs around him. “Arik, I want you to fuck me.”

  “Wait,” he gasped, “hold that thought.” He bounced off the bed like a golden retriever sent to fetch the paper and rummaged through his backpack. Hands shaking, he pulled out a thirty-six-pack of condoms: “I was being optimistic!”

  He plucked open the box ceremoniously so she could see it was sealed and untouched, and withdrew a chain of little foil packs. Fingers trembling and breathing heavily, he removed one and tried to peel it open with his teeth.

  “Hurry, Arik! You’re already dipping.”

  “I’m trying, I’m trying.” The foil wrapper finally tore. He spat out the loose flap, wincing like a baby when the tang of spermicide hit his tongue. Now he had to get the thing on. “I want to . . . ram myself inside you!” Even as he said this, his cock grew soft.

  “Hurry . . .” Rosemary went over and kissed him hungrily.

  He rose for her again. Everything smelled of rubber gloves and antiseptic, like the hospital where she’d had her tonsils snipped off.

  “Let’s just do without it,” she said.

  “Are you crazy?” The condom kept slipping off. Finally she flicked it off his penis and it landed on the rug like a piece of skin.

  “Great, now there’s going to be dust and hair and bacteria all over it.”

  “Don’t be such a girl about it.” She pulled him by the hand, and he followed, all buzzed and confused. “Just come to bed.”

  “Rose, you’re crazy . . .” Then he reached between her legs; she was sopping wet.

  She lifted herself up to meet him and gently rubbed her bush against his balls.

  Arik smiled, daffy, dazed and full of mixed feeling. “I love you, Rose.”

  She let that line hang in the dark so her mind could authenticate it before her heart lapped it up.

  “I love you, too, Arik.” She stuck her tongue into his ear, making him quiver and moan.

  He relented. He let her pull him down on top of her. After another lingering kiss, he pushed himself inside. She was so slick that he was halfway in before he realized what had happened. They were no longe
r virgins. He gasped with joy, almost laughter. What a relief. He looked down at Rosemary and saw her face all scrunched up.

  “Are you alright?”

  “It feels good,” she said. He wasn’t convinced. But it didn’t matter. As soon as he felt her relax around his cock, he pushed in deeper. She moaned. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see her agony. He moved, and kept on thrusting, pooling sweat in the twin dimples on his lower spine. He was about to ask her again if she was okay when spasms overtook him. He grunted and twitched with the strongest orgasm he’d ever known. At the last minute, he remembered to pull out and came in violent spurts that struck her face and his face, her neck and his neck, her breasts, his chest. She squealed.

  “Oh shit! I should’ve . . .” he panted, catching his breath as he collapsed on the bed next to her. “Oh God, I hope I didn’t . . . I hope you’re not . . . Oh, fuck!”

  She shushed him and kissed him and held his head as he melted into sleep.

  While he slept, she played with herself and came five times, her fingers covered in a glaze of both their juices by the time she was done. She watched it dry and coat her fingers like candle-wax. Then she woke him for round two.

  The next morning there was a red envelope wedged in the crack of her locker door. It was addressed to “The Sick Rose” in cursive writing and sealed with red wax, like an old-timey valentine. She took it to the ladies’ room and peeled it open in the privacy of her stall, while a trio of AP English girls put on eyeliner and debated the Jewy hotness of actor Adam Brody.

  Inside the red envelope was a piece of college-ruled notebook paper, transparent in its cheapness. On it, in familiar chicken scratches, was a hastily copied poem:

  O Rose thou art sick

  The invisible worm

  That flies in the night,

  In the howling storm,

  Has found out thy bed

  Of crimson joy:

  And his dark secret love

  Does thy life destroy.

  Wm. Blake

  She felt a little heartsick; the poem sounded so old and so bitter. Yet, her heart swelled with pride that she’d provoked such a jealous response from Mr. Z. She resisted the urge to run off and find Arik so they could giggle over the fact that Mr. Z had him pegged as an “invisible worm.” It would probably send him galloping to Mr. Z’s office, contrite and begging for forgiveness like the approval-hungry boy that he was.

  After school, she saw Mr. Z walking to his car, solemnly gripping a thick biography of Stanislavsky and a cup of Yoplait. He backed the Nissan out of his parking spot with a hasty screech, almost running over a teacher talking on her cellphone. Waving an insincere apology, he sped away, his exhaust fumes toxic and black.

  When Rosemary got home, the Camry was missing.

  She panicked—her mother had driven it off. Then the panic coalesced into cold, hard fear—her mother had abandoned her.

  She ran into the house with knees like jelly. “Mira! . . . Mira?” Her legs gave out in the hallway and she found herself crawling on her arms to the bedrooms, panting and breathless, on the verge of tears. “Mee-rah!”

  A heart-stopping shuffle of slippered feet, emerging from the kitchen.

  “Baby, what is matter?” Mrs. Park was in her housedress beating eggs in a bowl. “Why shouting? Mira still in school. Be back later.”

  “Oh.” Rosemary was relieved and disappointed to see her mother. Her legs came back. “What happened to the car?”

  “Quellie Soo help me to sell it.”

  “What?” She pulled herself off the floor. “Why didn’t you ask me first? I’m starting Driver’s Ed next week!”

  “No worry—you can study the driving in Korea.”

  The blood rushed to her head. She wanted to fling a chair at the alien woman standing in the doorway, the one who claimed to be her mother but was in fact so persistently foreign, so persistently unloving, so persistently strange. Hot tears of rage flushed down her cheeks; she was equally furious that she had failed to hold them back.

  “You fucking insensitive bitch!”

  With those words came the bite of instant regret. She kicked the wall.

  Mrs. Park eyed her daughter calmly. “No shouting today. Today is my birthday. Don’t tell me you forget.” She returned to the kitchen, and checked on the fetid pot bubbling on the stove.

  The dining table was covered with traditional Korean dishes. Small plates of boiled mung beans, pickled cabbage, tiny fried fish, tofu squares. Larger plates of omelet with pickled root vegetables, dumplings filled with green mush and mystery meat. Bowls of goopy buckwheat noodles in a cold, grey, sour broth. The spread managed the feat of seeming at once grand and hopelessly bleak.

  “I don’t eat taupe-colored food,” said Mira. She prodded the dumplings with her chopsticks.

  Mrs. Park chomped away heartily, savoring the flavors of her youth. She was in grandee mode.

  “Today, I am forty years old. We eat Korean food.”

  The girls said nothing. It wasn’t their birthday.

  “Mira, thank you for birthday present.” Mrs. Park held up a plastic wind-up Tweety Bird, the prize in a Happy Meal long gone.

  “You’re welcome. The pony will have to wait till next year.”

  Another meaningless minute of silence. Mrs. Park turned to her elder daughter.

  “You the quiet type, Rosie.” Mrs. Park said it like a vet diagnosing fleas. “In Korea, you study hard, go to college, become doctor.” She concluded with her master stroke: “No need worry about husband.”

  Rosemary gritted her teeth and kept quiet until she could take it no longer. “You don’t even know me.”

  “How you say this? I am your mother. I know you since you born, baby.”

  “That’s exactly my point.” Rosemary gripped her chopsticks till her knuckles were white. “Fuck this shit.”

  She picked at a limp mung bean sprout. Their mother chewed on a slice of pickle in silence, no doubt thinking a million negative things. Mira found herself in the unlikely position of family peacemaker. With no choice but to be a good sport, she swallowed one of the dumplings.

  “This is pretty tasty.” She looked at her mother—who was still expressionless, still locked deep within herself.

  “Ma, say something. Say: fo’ shizzle my nizzle.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just say it.”

  Mrs. Park cast her eyes away but Mira kept at it.

  “Ma, say it. Ma, say: fo’ shizzle my nizzle. Come on! Fo’ shizzle my nizzle, Ma.”

  Mrs. Park put down her chopsticks. “Fosheezer ma neezer.”

  “Yaaaay!” Mira hollered enthusiastically and gave her a standing ovation.

  Mrs. Park found herself smiling in spite of herself. “What is meaning, Mira?”

  “It means,” Mira beamed, “I agree with you, my delightful friend.”

  – 11 –

  THE SILVER BULLET

  The haunting, if it even was a haunting, continued all summer—doors left open here, ectoplasm there, the dial on his radio tuned to Mexican stations and the volume set at Earth-Shattering. More than twice, mariachi trumpets had him leaping out of his skin. And those yowling disk jockeys—who or what the hell was La Raza? Could his ghost be some Latina who salsa’d around his house to this kind of thing?

  As the weeks passed, Raymond started looking forward to the visitations. He liked the radio tampering. He liked the mounds of cookie crumbs neatly piled like anthills on his staircase. He liked especially the sexy puddles of ectoplasm. He started talking to her. This had all the makings of a buddy movie: aging horror writer and his dead Latina confidante, an I Dream of Jeannie for the twenty-first century.

  “The blue Hugo Boss shirt or the green Thomas Pink shirt?”

  When these disturbances stopped in the last week of September, he fe
lt bereft.

  He had started a log. The visits only occurred when the security system hadn’t been on. When he had it activated, with its beep-beep-beep “On” sound, the ghost seemed to respect his wish not to be disturbed. Some nights, he left the entire system off just so the ghost wouldn’t feel unwelcome. But recently, even when he had it off for a week straight, his friend didn’t show up.

  He knew it was nuts to miss her, much less court her by consciously refusing to put on his alarm. Coming and going was the prerogative of ghosts, after all. Whenever he left the system off, the old paranoia returned—punks invading his house, smashing his precious things and taunting his graying manhood. Just last week a guy in a hooded sweatshirt had held up a woman at gunpoint five houses away. It became a real conundrum—turn the system on, and his ghost wouldn’t come; turn the system off, and he might have human monsters to contend with.

  As it was, the only hauntings he received now were the incessant phone calls from his father.

  “Oh, Ray, just a little longer—”

  “I told you. I have a very important meeting I have to get to.”

  “But today’s Sunday!”

  “The literary world never sleeps, Dad. You know that.”

  “I sure as shooting do not.”

  “I gotta say. I do love your way with words.”

  He hung up the phone, and if a man could kiss himself, he would have. The solution to his dilemma had suddenly revealed itself to him.

  The buildings got shabbier as he drove south and west away from Santa Claus Lane. Sub-divided Victorians became halfway houses, Baptist churches became crack dens. A sign proclaimed: this church is prayer-conditioned. Haha. Young men idled on street corners in baggy blue jeans and white muumuus they seemed to think were T-shirts. He could scoff at them safely in the daytime, but come nightfall, when they pulled on their black hoodies and merged into the night, he knew he’d be quaking again.

  Just before the eight lanes of the 210 came into view, a burst of redevelopment: beige shoeboxes overlooking the on-ramp with “New York–style lofts,” the trapezoid of a Mormon temple, a block-wide fortress with “All Welcome” sermons in Armenian, Tagalog and Español, offering last-minute salvation before drivers braved the freeway.