Lurk

by Adam Vine

  The woman in the third photo was also middle-aged. She had dishwater gray hair and was bone-thin, her skin wrinkled like an old leather shoe. She was sitting in a tiny apartment, holding an ancient-looking cat. Her teeth were brown. Her apartment was a dump; there was an overflowing litter box, the floor was cluttered with empty beer bottles, and the sink and counter contained at least a week’s worth of dirty dishes. The caption read: Life of a Non-Profit Environmentalist.

  The other updated pictures weren’t of people, but of places, and were captioned respectively: one of our kitchen, titled Kitchen; one of our living room, titled Living Room; one of my room, one of Sam’s room, and one of the master, titled Bedroom 1, 2, and 3. They showed what the house looked like now, with our stuff in it.

  The last two pictures were of graveyards. In both, the sky was a coal-colored dome peeking through the broken headstones, still slick with morning rain. The captions read: Redwood Cemetery, US Hwy 1, and Mary Magdalene Cemetery, Orange, CA.

  I ran my fingertips over the strange, new Polaroids. Who were these people? And how did these pictures come to replace the ones I'd put on the floor before I'd gone downstairs?

  My eyes fell to one of the headstones in the picture I was holding of Redwood Cemetery. The inscription read: Martin Jones, 1973-2005. Beloved Father, Husband, and Son.

  Martin Jones. Marty. One of the 1993 Sunny Hill Crew.

  I already knew what I was going to see when I looked at the other picture, of the headstone in the graveyard in Orange County, but I desperately hoped I was wrong.

  I wasn’t. The name on the grave was Gloria Marquez. 1974-1998. Beloved daughter, friend, and free spirit.

  Gloria. Another member of the ’93 Sunny Hill Crew was dead.

  I pulled out my iPhone and did a quick Internet search for obituaries. One came from our local newspaper, The Sentry, and the other from the Orange County Register. Marty had died in a car crash. According to the article, he had driven off a country road while speeding late at night. Gloria was killed in a murder-suicide by her long-time boyfriend, a Mexican gang member from L.A., after a loud argument that woke the neighbors.

  Slowly, I re-examined the people in the other photographs, the ones who were still alive: Mr. Hard Ass, Narcotics Anonymous, and the Non-Profit Environmentalist.

  I realized why they had looked so familiar. They were the rest of the ’93 Sunny Hill Crew.

  “Mr. Hard Ass” was Andy. He had lost his shoulder-length blonde surfer’s locks, but was still huge and muscular, now working as some kind of lawyer or court official.

  The short-haired woman at the Narcotics Anonymous meeting was Rebecca. She looked older and sadder, but there was no mistaking it was her.

  The Non-Profit Environmentalist was Apple. Poverty and what looked to be a pretty bad alcohol addiction had turned her into a pale shade of the vivacious ginger tomboy with the toothy smile she had been in 1993. In the updated picture, she appeared to be living alone in a bad part of town. And from the look of her apartment, her cats seemed to run the place.

  No one had come or gone from the living room while I was downstairs. No one had touched my carefully laid arrangement of pictures. These were the same physical photo slides as the ones I'd taken out of the box, but the images had somehow updated to show what their subjects were doing now. It was as if the act of me taking them out of the box and observing them had caused them to change.

  I was about to yell for Carter to come out of his room, when there was a knock at the front door. I shoved the pictures back in the shoebox and went to the peephole.

  It was our next-door neighbor, Mr. DeLucio. His face was red and he was tapping his hand impatiently on the glass.

  I opened the door a crack. “Howdy, neighbor,” I said.

  “Hi Drew. I’m gonna make this quick.” He looked angry.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I never liked Mr. DeLucio. He was pushing forty, doughy and out of shape, the kind of guy who wore socks with sandals. He had started some kind of Internet business during the dot-com boom, and was the richest guy in our cul-de-sac. His house was the next one up the hill from ours, but had twice the square-footage. His terrace overlooked our backyard.

  Mr. DeLucio folded his arms. “I understand you’re in college, and that you wanna have fun. I have parties too, y’know. I get it. I was even a student once, believe it or not. Okay, so it was New Year’s Eve, you wanted to have a good time. I get it.”

  “So, is there a problem?”

  Mr. DeLucio frowned. “I'll tell you the problem, Drew. The homeowners on this street have had enough of this crap. Space is at a premium here. One of your friends blocked my driveway. And the noise kept my cats awake until two in the morning.”

  His cats? I wondered.

  “The next time you guys throw a party like that, I’m calling the cops.”

  Carter came out of his room and walked up behind me. “I thought I told you not to come around here,” Carter said.

  Mr. DeLucio narrowed his eyes. “I was just telling Drew here, no more late-night parties. You want to have a little get-together, with one or two of your friends, that's fine. But last night was out of control.”

  Carter looked imposing with his shirt off. He folded his arms and cocked his chin. “No, it wasn't.”

  “Next time, you can explain that to the police.”

  Carter rolled his eyes. “The protocol hasn’t changed from what I told you when we moved in: You have problems with the noise, just call us. Here’s our phone numbers. Now get the hell out of here and stop creepin' on my girl when she lays out in the backyard.”

  Mr. DeLucio curled his lips in a condescending smile. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood for twenty years, and your method doesn’t work. Keep the noise down. End of discussion. As for Natalia’s sunbathing, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was watering my garden, like I do every morning. Your girlfriend’s paranoia isn’t my problem.”

  “Keep her name out your mouth. And if I catch you starin' at her again, I'mma give you a new look.”

  Mr. DeLucio trembled. His upper lip straightened. “That sounds like a threat. You wanna go to jail for assault, tough guy?”

  Carter retorted, “You wanna go to jail for bein' a fuckin' pedophile?”

  Mr. DeLucio stared at Carter, then at me, then at Carter again, pursed his lips and said, “Consider this a warning.” He turned and left us standing at the door.

  “I really hate that guy,” Carter said when he was gone.

  “I can tell. What happened with Talia?” I said.

  Carter sighed, massaging his eyebrows. “She caught him starin' at her when she was layin' out in the backyard. He wasn’t waterin' no goddamned plants, either. She said he was in his room, and was lookin' at her through his blinds.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “What a creep.”

  ***

  I decided not to tell Carter about the pictures. After the incident with Mr. DeLucio, I thought it would be better to let him cool off for a while.

  I also thought it was possible I was insane, and had only imagined seeing them change. We’d all been hammered. I thought I saw Carter empty all the pictures out of the box, but suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.

  When I looked at the photos again, they had reverted back to their original state.

  I dropped the box on the ground and walked away from it. I clenched my teeth and balled my fists. I was crazy. No, I’m not. Yes, you are. It’s the same now as it was before.

  I walked back over to the spilled pictures and gently put them back in the box.

  No. No. Goddamn it, not here. Not now. I can’t slip back down that hole. I thought I could escape it by coming to college, but I should’ve known that was impossible.

  I saw a therapist for depression when I was younger, at both the beginning of Junior High and High School. At one point, I was suicidal. I tried to cut my wrists open in my room. I was in a mental hospital for three days.

  My parents thought it would
be good if I talked to someone about the struggle I had adjusting to the transition between public school and being home-schooled. I saw Dr. Wolfe for about a year, but I didn't like him. There was a lot I never told that guy. He treated me like he'd forget our conversation the second I got out of his ridiculous, albeit comfortable, polka dot armchair. My other therapists, too, all had comfy armchairs. I think the Psychologist's leather couch thing is actually a myth.

  I placed the photos back in the box and hid it in my room, while Carter went into the kitchen to eat the second of his six daily meals. I was about to move the Polaroid camera into my room too, when I heard the back door open.

  Bea walked into the living room wearing a hesitant smile.

  “Hey, Bumble.”

  “Hey, Drew. Can we sit?”

  Bea and I sat down together on the brown L-couch. She looked troubled. “Okay… this is getting weird,” Bea said.

  “It’s been a weird weekend.”

  Bea took a deep breath. “No, Drew. Someone was following me.”

  I sat up straight. “What?”

  “I walked to Safeway, and on the way home… there was this guy. He had a hood on. And…”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. She recoiled a little, but I held her firm.

  “What happened?”

  She sounded small. Alone. “He was walking behind me for a really long time. I thought it was a coincidence at first, because he didn't speed up. But he had this look in his eyes. Like he wanted to... rape me or something, and…” Her breath caught in her throat, and she had to swallow before she continued. “And so I took a side street, and then another one, and when I got back to the main road, he was still there. Like he was waiting for me.”

  “You think it’s the same guy? Sock man? The Ejaculator?” My attempt at humor sounded as stupid out loud as it did in my head.

  Bea didn’t find it funny, either. “I don’t know, Drew,” she whispered.

  “Did you call the cops?”

  “No. I yelled at him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I called him a loser and told him to fuck off.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I couldn’t see his face. He looked, I dunno, older. Like, middle-aged? But like I said, he had a hood on, and sunglasses, and he was pretty far away.”

  “Did he follow you all the way back here? Did he see where you live?”

  “No.” Bea shook her head. “No, this was at the corner of Walnut and Pine.”

  I nodded. “I tip my hat to your boldness in handling the situation. But I’m serious. I think you should call the cops. Weird shit like this doesn’t just happen. Especially twice in one day.”

  She sighed. “Sometimes it does, if you're a girl. But I don't think it's a coincidence this time.”

  I handed her my cell phone.

  Bea ended up waiting about twenty minutes. She didn’t call 9-1-1. She called the non-emergency line instead, so they put her on hold.

  While she was waiting, she noticed the Polaroid camera sitting next to me on the couch. She mouthed the words, “Whose camera is that?”

  “It’s from downstairs.” I said. I picked it up. “I think it's the same camera that took those weird pictures we found last night. Remember?”

  “I didn’t, until Natalia told me,” Bea said. “I was really drunk. I can’t believe there was a dead person buried under your house.”

  “Crazy, huh?”

  “So that’s the camera?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Does it still work?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Bea, who had always struck me as someone who had never been picture-shy in her life, grew nervous in an instant. “No way. What if it’s haunted?”

  I laughed. “Seriously, Bumble?”

  “No, Drew. I’m… not right now, okay? I’m ugly today.”

  “You’re never ugly,” I said.

  I didn’t think about what I was saying until I had already said it. Maybe she was extra defensive after being followed on the street, or maybe it truly had never occurred to her that I found her attractive. Either way, the awkwardness that hung between us grew thick enough to bite.

  She told me this morning how glad she was to have such a nice guy for a friend.

  She only sees me as a friend. A nice, friendly friend.

  I did the only thing I could think of. I raised the camera to my face and waited. Bea hung the phone away from her mouth and glared at me.

  I snapped the photo.

  Police dispatch came on the line while the photo was still sliding out the front of the camera, the cacophonous splaying of the tri-colored chemicals forcing Bea to stand up and walk to the other side of the room so she could hear.

  “Hello, yes, I’d like to make a report. I think someone might be stalking me…”

  Bea relayed the details of the masturbation sock and the strange hooded man on the street to the dispatcher. The image of an angry-looking Bea with my cell phone resting against her right cheek took shape on the Polaroid in my hands. I waved it in the air, like I remembered doing as a kid, to make it develop faster.

  When the picture was done, I showed it to her. Bea frowned. I stuffed the picture in the pocket of my jeans when she wasn’t looking.

  “Yeah, I still have the sock,” Bea said into the phone. “Sure, that’s fine. Thanks. I’ll do that. Thanks. Bye.”

  She blasted air through her lips and tossed my iPhone into my lap, then sat down, defeated. “They told me, Be careful, and good luck, but they can’t send anyone until tonight. The guy said the officer will take a look at the sock, but there probably isn’t enough evidence to make an arrest, to call them if anything else happens, and we’d probably be better off calling the landlord. I don’t know what I expected,” Bea said. “Ugh.”

  “I’ll call Alfonso,” I said.

  “Maybe you should,” Bea agreed.

  We called Alfonso twice and got him the second time. His office was in his house, a few blocks up the hill. Our landlord told us he was having dinner with his family at the moment, so he couldn’t come over until tomorrow morning. He sounded very upset at the notion that someone was bothering Bea. We thanked him and hung up.

  A few minutes later, Jay walked in carrying a bag of burritos.

  ***

  The cop who showed up barely gave us ten minutes of his time. I answered the door, with Bea three steps behind me. Everyone else hid in the kitchen, quietly sipping their beers and finishing their Mexican food.

  The officer was a head and a half taller than me. I'm only 5’5”, so I’m not the best judge, but I'd estimate the officer had to be at least 6'6” or 6'7” and solidly built, with arms like pier pilings, a cannonball belly, and a shiny, bullet-bald head. He was chewing tobacco and had a cup in his hand that he constantly spat in throughout our conversation.

  I'd seen him around before, breaking up student parties and man-handling the hippy kids who resisted, or busting bums who hung out down by the boardwalk doing drugs, always with the sick glee hard-ass cops like him get from ruining someone’s day.

  His nametag read Skoakland.

  Officer Skoakland estimated Bea and me with a grimace. “Evening. Heard one of you has a secret admirer,” he said without a nod.

  Bea grunted.

  Officer Skoakland's spat in his cup as his eyes grazed the spider-webbed corners of our front porch. “I remember this house,” he said with a long drawl. “I've definitely been here before. Lots of noise violations at old Sunny Hill. Even gave one to you guys once, didn't I?”

  Before I could tell him it was the girls who lived at the house before us, Officer Skoakland turned to Bea and said, “Are you Ms. Ferreira?” He had a distinctly white guy cop way of butchering the rolled Rs in her name. “Beatriz?”

  “That’s right,” Bea said.

  Officer Skoakland readied his notepad and pencil. “Let’s get to it. You think someone's stalking you?”

  “I don't know,”
Bea said.

  Officer Skoakland smirked and lowered his notepad. “Either you do, or you don't. I've got other calls to get to, so, do you want to try this again, or should I wish you guys a good night and be on my merry way?”

  Bea frowned. “Somebody put a fap sock on my car last night, and then today, a guy followed me home from the grocery store.”

  Officer Skoakland made some quick notes. “A fap sock – can you describe that to me?”

  “Somebody masturbated in a sock, then put it on the windshield of my car.”

  “You sure it wasn't a prank?” the officer said.

  “Um, yeah,” Bea said, irritation thickening in her voice. “None of my friends would do that.”

  Officer Skoakland spat, licked his lips and hummed. “Hmm. Are you positive the sock was, uh, masturbated into?”

  “I'm a woman. It didn't fall off someone's foot and just happen to land on the front of my car by accident. Some pervert put it there after shoving his dick in it.”

  The officer cringed. “All good points. Now, uh – how about this guy you say was following you. Can you describe him? Age, size, race, physical appearance?”

  “He was … average size? I couldn't tell. He walked with this really awkward slouch. I'd guess middle-aged. Couldn't see his face, because he was wearing a hood, and to be honest, I tried not to look at him until I was sure he was following me. But at that point, I was pretty far ahead of him. I walk fast.”

  Officer Skoakland rolled his eyes. “Was he white? Black? Latino?”

  “White,” Bea said.

  “What color eyes? Hair? Did he have any facial hair or piercings? Any other identifying marks?”

  Bea sighed. “He was wearing sunglasses, so I didn't see his eyes, or his hair, because his hood was up. I don't remember any piercings, but I think he had a beard.”

  Officer Skoakland's hand brushed his cheek. It was clean-shaven. He held out a few fingers in front of his cheek to demonstrate different beard lengths. “What kind of beard? Long? Short? Stubble?”

  She bit her teeth, trying to remember. “It was short, I think... I didn't get a good enough look at his face. Sorry.”