The Stranger Next Door

by Joy Fielding

  “Could you step out of the car, please?” the police officer directed, and Roger/Lance complied with an easy smile.

  I struggled with my clothing, trying to push my skirt down over the panties twisted around my knees, but the policeman was already climbing into the backseat, assuming Roger’s former position on top of me, his flashlight directed at my eyes so that I couldn’t see his face, his large penis pushing its way toward my mouth. “You’ve been a bad girl,” he was saying in Josh Wylie’s soothing baritone. “I’m going to have to tell your mother.”

  “Please don’t do that,” I begged as his monstrous organ forced my lips apart. “Please don’t tell my mother.”

  “Tell me what?” my mother asked, suddenly materializing on the seat beside me.

  Which is when I woke up.

  “Well, that was fun,” I muttered, my heart pounding as I looked around the room, dark except for the flickering white lights of the tree behind me. I checked my watch, discovered I’d been sleeping for several hours, which meant I’d probably be up half the night. I rolled my head back, letting it drop lazily from one shoulder to the other, and waited for my heartbeat to return to normal. I realized, with equal amounts of shame and surprise, that the dream had excited me in spite of its peculiarities. In spite of my mother.

  Or maybe because of her.

  I marveled at the appearance of Roger Stillman in my dream. I didn’t think I’d ever dreamed about him before, even during the heat of what might have been described, rather generously, as our relationship. And why the link to Alison’s brother? Yes, they were both tall and good-looking, but so what? My subconscious had obviously intuited a deeper connection, even if my conscious mind had yet to determine what that connection might be.

  I wiped a trickle of perspiration from the side of my neck, massaged the tenderness at my shoulders, my hand falling across my breast, the way Roger Stillman’s hand had done, my nipples hardening at the memory of his fingers reaching underneath my blouse to unhook the clasp at the front of my bra. I felt my bare breasts rush into his waiting hands, recalled the way he fumbled with my pliant flesh, manipulating it like cookie dough, his eager mouth sucking on my nipples, as ferociously as a starving infant.

  I remembered my mother’s barely concealed disgust each time she looked at my maturing body, as if my breasts were a deliberate act of rebellion on my part, something for which I should be duly ashamed.

  “Go away, Mother,” I whispered now, lying back on the sofa, recalling how clumsily Roger had pulled on the zipper of my pants before pushing his hand down the front of my panties. I thought of Josh’s hands, imagined his fingers in place of Roger’s, felt them dancing around my most secret folds before disappearing inside me.

  I cried out, my own fingers unable to follow my mind’s lead, to provide my body the relief it craved. Instead I flipped onto my stomach and pressed myself against the hard edge of the sofa, its soft pillows muffling my embarrassed cries, my body shaking with a series of mild convulsions.

  Instantly, my mother’s shame swept over me.

  I pushed myself to my feet and looked around, half-expecting my mother to be sitting in one of the Queen Anne chairs, watching me, as she had watched me in my dream. But the room was mercifully empty of ghosts.

  I walked to the window, stared out at the street, watched large palm leaves dance in the shadows of the tall streetlight. I pressed my head against the glass, clasping my hands tightly behind my back. I caught a flicker of movement across the street, a shadow where before had been nothing. Was someone there? Dear God, had anyone seen me?

  Someone’s always watching, my mother admonished as I rushed to the front door, threw it open, and stared into the night.

  Bettye McCoy and her two idiot dogs were rounding the corner and coming this way. I watched them approach, totally oblivious to my presence in the darkened doorway. She was wearing a pair of tight blue jeans and a cropped red sweater, with matching red heels. A red headband held her thick blond hair in place. Like an aging and surgically enhanced Alice in Wonderland, I thought cruelly, listening to her heels click against the pavement as she was pulled along by her two dogs. Of course the dogs stopped every few seconds to sniff at each and every bush, repeatedly lifting their legs to mark their territory. Just do your business and move on, I thought, watching in growing dismay as one of the dogs suddenly spun around and lifted his rump into the air, dropping several unwelcome deposits in the middle of the sidewalk at the end of my walkway. I waited for Bettye McCoy to scoop the droppings into her waiting plastic bag, but instead she only smirked, then tucked the empty bag back inside her jeans pocket before walking away.

  I reacted without thinking. “Excuse me!” I ran down the front path, stopping just short of the neat pile of fresh excrement. “Excuse me,” I called again when Bettye McCoy failed to take notice.

  Her dogs began to bark and pull at their leashes. “I’m sorry,” Bettye McCoy said, reluctantly turning around. “Were you addressing me?”

  “Do you see anyone else?”

  “Is there something I can do for you?” Bettye McCoy arched one disdainful eyebrow.

  “You can clean up after your dogs.”

  “I always clean up after my dogs.”

  “Not tonight, you didn’t.” I pointed at the small pile of dog feces by my feet.

  “My dogs didn’t do that.”

  I could scarcely believe my ears. “What are you talking about? I watched him do it.” I pointed at the smaller of the two white dogs, who looked as if he were in danger of strangling on his leash.

  “It’s not Corky’s,” Bettye McCoy insisted. “Corky didn’t do it.”

  “I was standing right in the doorway. I saw the whole thing.”

  “Corky didn’t do it.”

  “Look. Why don’t you just admit your dog did it, clean it up, and be on your way. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”

  “You are an idiot,” Bettye McCoy muttered, not quite under her breath.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “What did you say?”

  “I said you’re an idiot,” Bettye McCoy repeated brazenly. “First you chase poor Cedric out of your yard with a broom, and now you accuse Corky of pooping on your precious sidewalk. You know what you need, don’t you?”

  “Suppose you tell me.”

  “Get a man, lady, and stop picking on my dogs!”

  “Keep them off my property or I’ll lay them flat,” I countered, our voices bouncing off the trees, echoing through the leaves. From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alison and her brother walking up the street.

  “Terry!” Alison rushed to my side.

  “What’s going on here?” Lance asked, trying to keep the bemusement in his eyes from spreading to the rest of his face.

  “The woman’s a lunatic,” Bettye McCoy shouted, already in retreat.

  “She wouldn’t clean up after her dog,” I said, understanding how hopeless I must sound.

  “Her dog did this?” Lance pointed to the dog feces he’d narrowly missed stepping in.

  I nodded, then watched in shock as he scooped the offending dog poo into his hands, then hurled it, with stunning accuracy, at Bettye McCoy’s head. It splattered against her blond hair, clinging to the back of her head, like mud.

  Bettye McCoy stopped, her shoulders rising around her ears as she spun around to face us, her face mirroring the openmouthed amazement of my own.

  “You better close your mouth,” Lance warned. “There might be more.”

  “You’re all crazy,” Bettye McCoy stammered, backing up and getting entwined in the dogs’ leashes, almost losing her balance, then bursting into tears. “All of you.”

  We watched as she extricated herself from the dogs’ leashes, a small turd dropping from her hair to her right shoulder, then falling toward the ground, landing on the toe of one red shoe. A final outraged squeal escaped Bettye McCoy’s lips as she kicked off her shoes, gathered one yapping dog under each arm, then ran to the end of the block and
disappeared.

  “Think she’ll call the police?” Alison asked.

  “Oh, I don’t think she’d want to chance this story making the rounds.” I looked at Lance, who was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. Had he really picked up a dog turd with his bare hands and hurled it at my tormentor? My hero, I thought with a laugh. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.”

  We returned to the house in silence. “How was dinner?” I asked before I went inside.

  “Not nearly as exciting as what was going on here,” Alison said. “God, I can’t leave you alone for a minute. Speaking of which, have you decided about tomorrow?”

  I smiled, then laughed out loud. “What time do you want me to be ready?”

  THIRTEEN

  Lance knocked on my kitchen door at ten minutes after noon the following day. He was all in black; I was all in white. We looked like opposing pawns on a chessboard. “I thought you said eleven o’clock,” I said, trying to keep my mother out of my voice.

  “Slept in,” he said without apology. “You ready to go?”

  “Where’s Alison?”

  “Still in bed. Migraine.”

  “Oh, no! Is she all right?”

  “Should be fine in a few hours.”

  A verbal minimalist, I decided, watching his eyes swallow my kitchen whole. “I better go check.”

  “Not necessary.” Lance grabbed my floppy straw bag from the kitchen table, slung it over my shoulder. “Alison instructed me to take you to lunch, said she’ll join us as soon as she can stand up straight.”

  “I think I should check on her first,” I protested, remembering how sick Alison had been with her last migraine, but Lance was already ushering me out the door, guiding me away from the cottage and around the side of the house.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said, giving my elbow an extra squeeze as we reached the street. “Stop worrying.”

  “I just don’t feel right about going.”

  “Come on. It’ll give us a chance to get better acquainted.”

  I looked up and down the sun-soaked street. Shadows, like puddles, spilled across the road from the high trees. Waves of heat, like ocean surf, rolled up from the pavement. Several houses down, a large snowy egret stood, straight and still as stone, on a manicured front lawn. “Anywhere in mind?”

  “The Everglades?”

  “What!”

  “Just joking. Nature’s not my thing. Thought we’d try Elwood’s. We can walk, and we don’t have to worry about snakes.”

  “Don’t be too sure.” Elwood’s was a converted filling station turned biker hangout that specialized in barbecue and Elvis memorabilia. It was located on Atlantic Avenue several blocks west of the Lorelli Gallery. “How do you know about Elwood’s?”

  “Alison pointed it out last night. Thought it looked interesting.”

  I shrugged, recalling the last time I’d been to Elwood’s had been with Erica Hollander. I was about to suggest an alternative, but I decided against it, instinctively understanding that to argue with Alison’s brother would be as pointless as arguing with Alison herself. Taking no for an answer was clearly not a family trait.

  “It’s unusual to be this hot in December,” I remarked idly as we fell into step beside one another, the heat wrapping itself around my shoulders like a scratchy shawl. But Lance wasn’t paying attention, his eyes flitting restlessly from one side of the street to the other, as if half-expecting someone to jump out at us from behind a neatly trimmed hedge. “Looking for anything in particular?”

  “What kind of tree is that?” he asked suddenly, his finger brushing against the tip of my nose as he pointed to the squat palm tree in the middle of my neighbor’s front yard. “Looks like it has a bunch of penises hanging from it.”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  Lance bounded across my neighbor’s lawn, kneeling beside the tree in question, and pointed at the numerous protuberances of various lengths that hung from its trunk. “You don’t think they look like a bunch of uncircumcised dicks? Take a good look.”

  “You’re crazy.” Reluctantly I rolled my eyes toward the tree. “Oh, my God. You’re right.”

  Lance laughed so loud, he startled the nearby egret, who soared gracefully into the air, like a giant paper plane. “Ain’t nature grand?”

  “They’re called screw palms,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Honestly. That’s their name.”

  “Screw palms?”

  “I couldn’t possibly make up something like that.”

  Lance shook his head, grabbed my elbow, picked up the pace of our walk. “Come on,” he said, laughing. “All this talk about screwing is making me hungry.”

  *

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN this city twenty years ago,” I was saying between bites of my hamburger. “Half these storefronts were vacant, the school system was a disaster, race relations were a mess. About the only business that was doing well was the drug trade.”

  “Really?” It was the first time since I’d started my verbal tour of Delray that Lance had shown any real interest. “And how’s the drug trade doing these days?” he asked, surveying the line of motorcycles parked outside the large front patio where we were sitting. “I mean, where would a person go if he were interested in such things?”

  “Jail, most likely,” I said as Lance’s lips curled into a grudging smile.

  “Cute. You’re very cute.”

  My turn to smile. Cute had never been a word used to describe me.

  We watched a middle-aged man whose ragged, gray ponytail extended halfway down the back of his black leather jacket as he wiggled his sagging gut between two chairs. Grandpas on wheels, I thought, taking another bite of my burger, wondering how anyone could wear leather in this heat. “Now, of course, the city’s completely changed.”

  “And what changed it exactly?”

  I paused, trying to choose between the short and long answers, deciding on the short. “Money.”

  Lance laughed. “Ah, yes. Money makes the world go round.”

  “I thought it was love.”

  “That’s because you’re a hopeless romantic.”

  “I am?”

  “You’re not?”

  “Maybe,” I admitted, squirming under his sudden scrutiny. “Maybe I am a romantic.”

  “Don’t forget hopeless.” He reached across the table and peeled several sweat-dampened hairs away from my forehead with a gentle but confident hand, as if he were teasing a bra strap off my shoulder.

  I lowered my gaze to the table, the tips of Lance’s fingers lingering on my flesh even after he’d removed his hand. “What about you?”

  He lifted a sauce-coated sparerib from his plate to his mouth, tearing the meat off with one neat tug. “Well,” he said with a wink, “I love money. Does that qualify?”

  I took a sip of my beer, held the ice-cold glass against my throat, trying to ignore the perspiration trickling into the deep vee of my white T-shirt.

  “Wow! Would you look at those babies!” Lance exclaimed, and I saw that Lance’s attention had been captured by the two shiny black motorcycles with chrome-plated monkey-hanger handlebars that had just pulled up in front of the restaurant. “Aren’t they beauties?”

  “Harley-Davidsons?” I asked, pulling out the only brand with which I was familiar, trying to sound interested.

  Lance shook his head. “Yamaha 750cc Viragos.” He punctuated his sentence with an appreciative whistle.

  “You obviously know a lot about motorcycles.”

  “A bit.” He raised another barbecued rib to his lips, then slowly and meticulously stripped it bare.

  I thought of Alison. She would have polished off those ribs in a heartbeat. “Maybe we should call Alison. See how she’s doing.”

  Lance patted his cell phone, which lay on the table next to his plate. “She knows my number.”

  “
It’s been over an hour.”

  “She’ll call.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, the sweat coating my fingers like shellac. “Has your family been very worried about her?”

  He shrugged. “Nah. They pretty much know what to expect by now.”

  “Which is?”

  “Alison’s gonna do what Alison’s gonna do. No point arguing. No point getting in her face about it.”

  “But you obviously felt concerned enough to fly down here and see for yourself.”

  “Just checking to make sure she’s okay. I mean, she comes to Florida, doesn’t know a soul . . .”

  “She knew Rita Bishop,” I said, recalling the name of Alison’s friend.

  “Who?”

  “Rita Bishop.” I wondered if I had the name correct.

  Lance looked confused, although he tried to hide it by tearing into another rib. “Oh, yeah, Rita. Whatever happened to her anyway?”

  I realized I’d forgotten to ask personnel to find out where she’d gone. “I don’t know. Alison couldn’t locate her.”

  “Typical.” Lance released a deep breath of air. “It’s hot,” he said, as if noticing the temperature for the first time.

  “I think it’s sweet that you were concerned about your sister. I didn’t think you were that close.”

  “Close enough to worry.” He shrugged, an increasingly familiar gesture. “What can I say? Maybe I’m a romantic after all.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. I liked Lance for worrying about Alison’s welfare. “It’s nice you could take the time off work.”

  “No problem when you’re self-employed.”

  “What is it you do?” I tried to remember if Alison had ever mentioned her brother’s occupation.

  Lance looked surprised by the question. He coughed, ran his hand through his hair. “Systems analyst,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.

  My turn to be surprised. “They teach that sort of thing at Brown?”

  “Brown?”

  “Alison said you graduated summa cum laude.”