by Adam Vine
By midnight the keg was half-gone. Sam and his disapproving judgments were passed out on one of the lounge chairs on the deck, and Jay, Rob, and I were drunk as trust fund vagabonds.
In the first picture you can see Jay in the backyard next to the orchard, brandishing the rusty tree shears we found in the storage area. Tree shears are like normal gardening shears used for trimming shrubs or flowers, but with much larger handles and blades. The blades were each over two feet long.
Rob is looking over his shoulder giving the camera a creepy stare. I took the picture.
Jay tested the sharpness of those blades on a few tree branches out in the orchard. Then he got carried away. He ended up cutting half the fruit trees in our backyard, taking out all the branches low enough to reach, running like a madman with the shears raised over his head. Alfonso chewed us out about the damage to the fruit trees the following morning.
In the second picture, Rob is making a face like he just swallowed a bottle of needles, which, he essentially did.
When Jay was finished trimming the trees, he moved on to the giant cactus at the south end of the property and started cutting off its spiny, orange fruits. He dared Rob to eat one. “Man, if you don’t eat that, you’re a little bitch.”
Rob bit into the fruit and his face drooped into a painful, slow motion frown. He spat out the fruit and gasped, frantically picking something out of the inside of his mouth. Jay laughed so hard he almost fell off the deck.
The needles from the cactus fruit had stuck in Rob’s mouth, dozens of hair-like spines with barbed ends evolved to protect the fruit from exactly the kind of predator Rob was – one who didn’t look before he ate.
Rob spent the next six hours picking spines out of his mouth while Jay and I played video games.
***
Twenty minutes before Bea was supposed to come over for the Big Burn, I watched her take a shower through the picture. She stepped under the scalding hot water, dancing as it touched her skin. I watched her wash and condition her hair, shave her armpits and legs and finally her pubic hair.
For Jay? I thought. But I wasn’t going to let it ruin what I was seeing. I unzipped my pants and masturbated. I blamed my moral lapse on the ghost of Scudds Gurney.
***
Carter texted me saying he and Natalia would be late, so Bea and I played darts in the garage while we waited. She was in a foul mood. When I asked why, she said, “That fucking creepster left another fap sock on my car. And he wrote slut on my windshield.” I tried comforting her about it, but she said, “I don’t want to talk about it right now, Drew. I just want to figure out who keeps doing this. And, if it’s your neighbor, how we’re going to stop him.”
The garage was still a mess from New Year’s Eve. No one had bothered to clean it up. I braved the mountains of empty beer cans, discarded tinsel, and destroyed Christmas lights to sift through a milk crate of old jazz records until I found one I thought Bea would like, and played it on Sam’s turntables.
Back during my manic depressive phase when I was fourteen, I had crushes on girls that I incorrectly assumed were mutual. One of the reasons I was so happy to move away for college was that it meant a clean slate, a chance to abandon all that humiliation, the condescending looks and the rumors, and start over. With this group of friends, I’d done a good job of hiding that side of me. They thought I was an easy-going, if somewhat socially-awkward, goofy, fat guy with glasses and punny t-shirts who was fun to get drunk and stoned with.
I was terrified that cycle was starting to repeat itself because of Bea and Jay.
“This is nice. What is it?” Bea said, pausing before her throw to listen to the music.
“Django Reinhardt’s greatest hits,” I said.
Bea cocked her eyebrow at me before returning her focus to the target. The dart slid from her fingers and sunk with a slight tilt into the outermost ring of the dartboard. “Shit,” Bea sighed. “Do you want to play? I feel like I’m hogging it.”
I shook my head no.
Bea washed her face through her hands. “Drew, do you have any other reason to believe your neighbor is the one who’s been creeping down here and following me? I keep putting it all back-to-front, and it seems like there’s a piece missing.”
“I told you guys what I think. I'm pretty sure it's him.”
“You’ve seen him spying on Natalia when she was in your backyard before this,” Bea said.
“Yes, we all have.”
“That’s not normal.” Bea went to fetch her darts from the board and walked back to the line of yellow tape drawn across the garage floor.
Bea thought, then took her throw. The dart sunk deep into the folding wood door of the dartboard cabinet. She shook her head with disappointment. “And the socks! DeLucio knows that’s my car. And I wouldn’t put it past him to do something like that, or to write slut on my windshield. He can see the co-op from the front window of his house. He could watch me coming and going, which means following me to the grocery store wouldn’t be hard at all.”
I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and handed it to Bea. The Internet browser was still opened to the Megan’s Law sex offender registry website, which I’d checked while Bea was in the bathroom. “Actually, there is something else. I found this.”
“Oh, goddammit,” she muttered, seeing our neighbor’s doughy face front and center next to the word Offender. “Why am I not surprised?” Bea gave me back my phone.
Mr. DeLucio had been convicted twice for sex or indecency-related offenses: public urination back in the early 90’s, and “unlawful sexual intercourse” with a minor aged seventeen or younger in 2008.
“Disgusting,” Bea said quietly. “But I’m not going to give in to fear, and jump to a conclusion that doesn’t 100% follow from the evidence. All of this is circumstantial. I’m ninety-nine percent certain – ninety-nine point nine, after seeing that – but I’m still not one hundred percent. I don't feel right not being 100%.”
“I’m 100%,” I said.
Bea went to gather her darts again. She tried handing them to me. I waved her off. “Let’s go over last night one more time. You locked the basement door, found muddy footprints in your house with the windows open while me and Jay were outside, then, you woke up and saw someone looking in your window. After that, we caught that guy trying to break into your basement. Except…” Bea wagged her finger at me, “that guy, and the guy who followed me, didn’t have the same body type as Mr. DeLucio. They were skinny. Mr. DeLucio is fat.”
I bit my lip. “But the guy last night was covered in mud. You said yourself that you didn’t get a good look at either of them.”
Bea nodded. “Drew, I ran him down. That guy was fast. He almost lost me. Mr. DeLucio couldn’t powerwalk across his front yard. And, this guy stank. I wrestled with him, remember? This guy smelled like garbage. Why would DeLucio roll in trash before trying to break in?”
“I’ve noticed some funky odors wafting off Mr. D the times he’s come over here to bitch us out. He’s an Internet dweller. I bet he forgets to bathe all the time,” I said. I do, too, when I spend too much time getting too deep online.
Bea shrugged. “We know someone is seriously over-attached to those pictures. We know this person is male, and doesn’t shower. But we don’t know for a fact it’s him. I mean, what’s his motive?”
“Nostalgia,” I said.
“Nostalgia.” Bea repeated, tasting the word like a bitter fruit. “I don't know, Drew. That's pretty thin.”
“The biggest thing for me is the fact he lived in this house twenty years ago, partied in this same garage we are now standing in, buried all his favorite college memories under a piece of plywood, in that basement right over there, and then once he got rich, bought the house next-door. Presumably so he could spy on the college kids who lived here.” She didn't seem as convinced as I was. “C’mon, Beatriz. You want to talk about not normal? That’s the textbook definition.”
“Don’t get me wrong. The guy belongs i
n a mental institution. Or prison. But what if you’re wrong?” Her stare made me uncomfortable. “Drew. What if you’re wrong, and we do something to him? Something bad? Will you be able to live with that?”
My face was hot. Why was she looking at me like that?
“He’s still living in 1993,” I said. “You remind him of someone he couldn’t have. Someone who’s in those pictures. That’s the motive.”
She nodded, slowly. “Yeah, I guess that's pretty solid. Shit. To be honest, I sort of thought it was one of Jay’s friends. He’s great, but those other two guys are weird. They’ve been on drugs since they got here. And they’re really homophobic.”
“I wouldn’t say they’re homophobic,” I started.
Bea interrupted me. “Every other word out of Rob’s mouth is a slur against gay people.”
“That’s just how people talk where we’re from.”
“No, Drew.” She took a deep breath. “But you’re right about one thing. Benny the Piano Man seems to be our likeliest suspect. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how he reacts to us burning his precious photos. But, you know what we need to do before that happens?”
“What?”
“We need to look at them again.”
My guts wound a little tighter.
I heard a bark and saw Popeye bounding down the stairs. I was scooping him up in my arms when Jay’s grinning face popped through the doorway. “'Sup, peasants?”
Bea flipped him off. “Drew was just telling me his theory about the stalker. I found another sock on my car.”
“Yeah, I saw someone wrote you a nasty message, too. Whoever did that is straight up dysfunctional,” Jay said, then more urgently, “Hey Bea, can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure.” Bea followed him upstairs.
When they were gone, I slid the Polaroid of Bea out of my pocket. I could already hear their voices, not from upstairs, but through the crisp, harsh whispers of the picture.
They were standing in the kitchen. Bea was holding Jay’s hand. He looked concerned. “Does he know?” Jay said.
Bea shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
Jay sighed. “Good.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“I’ve known him since the fourth grade. I’m his friend. Man, I feel like such an asshole right now.”
“You are.” Bea slid her arms under Jay’s and kissed him.
Knives. Only knives.
“Come here,” Jay said. They kissed again. He kissed her on her face, her neck, her shoulders, and the tops of her breasts.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re turning me on.”
Jay bit her nose. “So?”
“So, he might come upstairs.”
“Sorry.”
Jay hesitated. “He really likes you, Beatriz. I’ve never seen him so hung up on a girl. I’m a bad person.”
“No you’re not.” Bea got quiet. She shook her head again, this time with a frown. “It’s not my problem, dude. I don’t like him that way.”
“Well, it’s definitely mine.”
“He’s just a friend. That’s all he will ever be.”
Just a nice friend. Just a nice, friendly friend. That’s all I’ll ever be.
Bea leaned and whispered in Jay’s ear, “I’ll make you forget all about it, tonight. I’m gonna finish what I started.”
Those words brought the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life, even worse than the razor that had almost taken it. I sat in the cold and the wet earth and cried, pricking Popeye’s paws with the tips of the darts, clutching him close as he squirmed and yelped, and cried, and cried.
***
I don’t know how long I was under the house. Jay found me in the basement. “Did Popeye step on something sharp? His feet are bleeding,” Jay said, scouring the floor for broken glass. Popeye whined in his arms.
“Maybe the cactus outside?” I said.
Jay held his dog to his chest, rocking back and forth. “Poor little guy. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’ve got you. Shhh, shhh. I’ve got you.”
Popeye stared at me like I was the worst person in the world.
***
“You said you wanted to look at the pictures, right?”
Bea nodded. “I think we should. Should we wait for Jay?”
“Nah. He’s really worried about his dog.”
“Popeye? Oh no! What happened?”
“He, uh, cut his foot on something out in the yard.”
“Awww. Are they still here?”
“No. Jay went to pick up Ry and Rob from the other side of town.”
“Oh. Whup,” Bea said.
Despite the image burned into the back of my eyes of Bea kissing Jay – I still wasn’t entirely convinced it was real – I let slip a chuckle. “Those two are characters,” I said.
“They want to leave, but Jay’s trying to convince them to stay one more night,” Bea said.
“Cool. Let’s party.”
“It’s not so we can party,” Bea said. “It’s so we can… take care of your neighbor. Actually, it was my idea.”
“Was it, now?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I think burning the pictures is a solid plan. But if it causes Mr. DeLucio to get violent, I’d be a lot more comfortable with a few big guys around.”
Not me, though. I’d die for you. I’d bleed out in your arms, and you think I’m such a worthless piece of shit you probably wouldn’t even let me. You’d rather have Ry and Rob protect you. You’d probably sleep with them, too, after you were done with Jay.
I smiled. “Knowing those guys, they won’t need an excuse to get wasted. Besides, I’m positive burning the pictures will work. How do you get a bully to leave you alone?”
“Kick his ass? I dunno. I never got picked on,” Bea said.
“My parents always told me you stand up to him,” I said. Not that it ever worked.
The expression on Bea’s face was forlorn. “Before we go all blaze of glory on those pictures, I need to look at them. Really look at them.”
The part of me that was still decent prayed they wouldn’t change, and that Bea would never discover my secret; that I would burn the picture that let me watch her in her most private moments and carry that knowledge with me to my grave. The selfish part of me that was feeling hurt, sick, and alone, the part of me that desired revenge on her for breaking my heart, hoped that she would.
Snapshot #24
Caption: A Storm of Santas
Mrs. Claus’s legs gave me wood. I tried my best to hide it, used all the old tricks. I pulled my boner off to the side of my pants, so it wouldn’t make a tent while I was sitting. I tried tucking it up into my belt. I tried thinking of my grandmother’s disapproving stare, or dogs pooping.
Nothing worked. I couldn’t stop staring at those legs. Her red velvet skirt was so short I could almost see the bottom crease of her ass, and every time she walked by and I saw those legs in motion, when she stood or sat down, crossed or uncrossed them, my wilting erection jumped back to full mast.
There were at least a dozen Santa Clauses and half as many Mrs. Clauses crammed into our kitchen and living room drinking spiked cider and hot mulled wine. It was a clear, crisp December night. The turnout of the party wasn’t great, but it was only three weeks until our New Year’s Eve bash – the night Bea I would find the pictures – so we didn’t worry too much about how many people showed up. We just focused on getting belligerent.
In the picture, a few of us are dancing and taking shots in the kitchen. Bea is in the forefront, throwing the horns and pounding a beer. You can see me a few steps behind her, staring down at the back of her dress.
She was the most superb Mrs. Claus of them all. Spilling out of her skirt, her legs looked like two melted caramel candies dripping slowly from a crimson-and-white-frilled spoon; strong, slender, and sweet. I spent half the night following her through the house, imagining making love to her with those glori
ous, untouchable legs wrapped around me.
“Do you need something?” Bea eventually asked me, outside on the deck. She was drinking and smoking cigarettes with two guys from the rugby team, the hunkiest and most hairless Santas I’d ever seen. I recognized those guys. I caught them doing coke once in my bedroom, dressed up like Brennan and Dale from the movie Step Brothers, at our Halloween party a few months prior.
“Uh… please repeat?” I said.
Bea laughed, and not in a nice way. “The bathroom’s inside, Drew.”
“Oh. That’s okay. I don’t really need to go.”
“What. Do. You. Want?” she demanded.
I want to take you away from these idiots so we can be alone. I want you to be my present, and unwrap you, and spread you under the Christmas tree.
“Uh, nothing,” I said.
“Then why are you out here, again?”
“Sorry. No reason,” I said, and went back inside.
Bea had a threesome with those guys that night. I didn’t find out until the next day, when I overheard her whispering about it to Natalia while they were smoking weed on the couch. She didn’t even sound embarrassed.
I didn’t talk to Bea for a week.
***
Bea and I sat on the living room floor with the shoebox of pictures between us. It was late afternoon, and my hangover was finally starting to wane.
We laid the pictures out edge-to-edge on the dirty shag carpet and munched on baked Lay’s potato chips and homemade guacamole leftover from New Year’s Eve. It was brown from sitting in the fridge for three days, but still good. I opened two Black Dog IPAs, but Bea wasn’t in the mood for beer. I got my notebook out, where I’d written down my notes about the 1993 Sunny Hill Crew:
