by Tara Brown
When we finished, I drove the car back alone, since my car waited for me outside the naked neighbour’s house.
I killed the headlights and drove the car back into the parking spot. Nothing was different. We never adjusted mirrors or seats or steering wheel. I locked the doors and slipped through the alley, through the backyard of the naked neighbour’s house to the abandoned house.
I waited twenty minutes in the shadows before Phil spoke, “You’re good, Seventeen. No one moved. No lights and no heat sources beyond him in the front bedroom. He’s been horizontal since you left.”
“Night.” I slipped from the shadows to the unmarked car, heading back to the shop to switch vehicles and go home.
But when I got into bed I couldn’t sleep. I felt terrible. It started with me being annoyed with myself, then defending myself, and finally, irritated with her.
What kind of person walked around naked, peeing and lotioning without proper curtains? Those sheers were almost better to view her with. The way they billowed in the breeze almost gave the impression they brushed against her, adding softness and texture to an already erotic vision.
Throwing the covers back, I stomped to my computer. It was still on the World of Warcraft login when I pressed escape and started searching for her on the net.
Her address came up in the phone book under a C. Kirtman. I Googled C. Kirtman and Langley but got nothing. But there was a blog about software design. I searched software design and C. Kirtman and then checked images. Her face was one I would never forget.
I scrolled, drumming my fingers, still annoyed, until I passed an old photo. I clicked it and sat back. Callie Kirtman, Langley software designer.
Opening my female Facebook profile I had for work, I searched until I found her. We even had a friend in common, a yoga teacher from Surrey. She had her settings set so I could see her pictures and everything, plus find the place she worked because she used location services.
She was from White Rock originally. Twenty-eight years old and single. She worked downtown at a technologies firm.
Her dad was a retired mechanic for the school district, fixing buses. Her mom was a nurse, still working. She had a brother named Andrew who looked familiar. I clicked on him and discovered we also had a friend in common. Matt. Only it wasn’t Matt’s real profile. It was his dating one for being a single gay guy in Vancouver.
The world was too small.
I opened a new email account and sent her a message from it to her work email address. When I was done, I sat back and read it, feeling a little vindictive and a lot smug.
“Dear Naked Neighbour, the sheer curtains in your bathroom are a problem for the block. Please consider this as an option.” I pasted a link to the Hunter Douglas site where they featured blinds you could lift or lower. “These blinds would ensure no one had to see your body, but you could still get light in the bathroom. The average cost of a window this size is under three hundred dollars, worth it when you consider how many perverts might be staring in your windows at night. Sincerely, your concerned neighbour.”
It was succinct and polite.
It was even helpful.
What more could a naked girl ask for?
Chapter Three
Pitching tents
Something woke me.
I glanced at the clock, wincing when I saw the two. There was no way I’d slept till two in the afternoon, but the sun coming in the window suggested I might have.
I blinked and listened, wondering what the sound was that had woken me.
Someone banged on the door.
Sighing, I got up and grabbed my phone to check if Matt had texted about a workout, but he hadn’t. No one had texted me.
No one ever came to my door.
I took my gun from the bedside table and crossed the living room, leaving the holster on the coffee table. Keeping the gun behind my back, I got the door.
I nearly shot my ass off as I cracked the door open.
“Who the fuck are you?” The naked girl, who was now fully dressed, barked at me from my doorway. She was angry, visibly pissed off.
“What?” I shook my head, blinded a little from the light coming in behind her.
“This email?” She lifted a piece of paper up. “I traced your IP address through quite a number of routers before it led me to you. Who the hell are you? You clearly don’t live on my block, concerned neighbour.” She cocked a dark eyebrow. If looks could kill, the one she gave me should have melted me to the floor, nothing but a puddle of jogging pants and pistol.
She was tall for a girl, almost my height. The big shit-kicker boots weren’t helping. I glanced past her, noticing the motorcycle in my driveway. Apparently, she had skipped the badass biker chick part in her profile on LinkedIn and Facebook.
“I don’t—don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tried to play dumb.
“Who else lives here, besides your mom?” she mocked me, tapping her foot.
Pissed off women were my kryptonite. I was defenseless. I had two settings: angry cop and stuttering idiot and no charm to wiggle my way out of things like this.
“You clearly speak English, asshat. Answer me. Who sent this to me?”
“I don’t know. No one else lives here. You have the wrong house. I don’t-don’t know what you want.” I sounded groggy which helped me seem more confused.
“Stop acting like your mom isn’t here too.” She scoffed and leaned in, pointing a finger at me. “You stay away from my house, pervert.”
“I’m a pervert?” I accidentally blurted, staring her down as asshole cop started to take over. “You’re the one flashing your shit all over town. What if a kid saw you?”
Her eyes widened. “You did send this!” She waved the paper in my face. “I have curtains, pervert!”
“Look, lady, I don’t know you, okay? But I can tell you, those curtains don't work. They’re see-through.” I tucked the gun in the back of my pants, praying the drawstring would hold it and not let it fall to the floor. Shooting myself in the asshole would technically be the icing on the cake for this moment.
“You’re a sicko! Were you spying on me?”
“I wasn’t spying on you.” I had nothing. I had no reason for my seeing her. I needed a lie. “I was jogging. And as I ran past the house I saw you through the window. You were putting lotion on, right in the window, like you wanted people to see. I thought about the kids who might see or some pervert.” Mike!
“You jog all the way across town? You don’t look that fit.” Her eyes were wild as they roamed my torso. “You pig! You were spying! Just admit it.” She pulled out her cell phone and pressed 911.
“What are you doing?” I didn’t want her to call the cops, especially since I was one and was holding a gun. I stepped back, feeling the gun slipping. I grabbed it and the door opened wider.
“This is so disgusting.” Her hand shook, holding the phone as it rang.
“Honestly, lady.” I needed to stop her. “I don’t know you. I wasn’t peeping on you. I was trying to be nice and help you out.” I almost stuttered but I fought it and the mean version of me that sounded like a cop. “I didn’t think you’d want some weirdo seeing you naked. I assumed you didn’t realize you were visible from the road.” I stepped back again, reaching behind the door to tuck my gun into a drawer of the small table where I always put my keys.
She came into the house more. Her eyes darted to the gun holster on the small coffee table next to the lone chair in my tiny living room.
“Sorry, misdial. I meant to press 411,” she muttered and ended the call. Her eyes narrowed as she stepped farther inside. “That’s a cop holster. You’re a cop?” She pursed her lips in disgust. “A cop peeking in windows? That’s disgraceful.”
“I wasn’t peeking in your windows.” I tried to defend myself.
“Oh my God!” She gasped. “You were spying on my neighbours, weren’t you? The drug dealers. I knew it was only a matter of time before that moron got caught.”
“No.” I winced. “What?” I turned and followed her gaze to the holster. “No. I’m a security guard at the prison.”
Her eyes turned to my naked torso as doubt filled her stare. “Really?” She stepped into the house, getting closer. “You even have a cop haircut.” Her words made me run my hand over my short dark-blond hair.
“You’re a cop. Admit it.” She wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fine. I’m a cop. I was doing a drive-by in the neighbourhood, just responding to a stupid noise complaint, and your window was open,” I lied again. I was never going to keep track of all these lies.
“First you were jogging and now you were driving by, at fifty kilometers an hour, and happened to catch a little glimpse of me in a window and deduced from that I was applying lotion to my naked body?” She rolled her eyes.
I gulped, nodding and biting my lip.
“You are the worst liar I have ever met. I don’t even know you and I can see your tells.” She closed my door, trapping me inside with her. She lifted the paper again. “Explain or I’m calling your bosses and the newspaper.”
“I swear. I was doing paperwork. I saw you.”
“Now you were doing paperwork? Which is it?”
“What?” I was lost. She was so close and smelling so good, and I knew what she looked like naked and I was so fucked . . .
“Answer me!”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to say. You were the one naked, flashing your shit everywhere. I don’t know why you’re pissed at me for letting you know.” I swallowed hard. “You can leave now.” I pointed at the door, praying she would just go.
“No.” She lifted her phone and snapped a picture of me in my jogging pants. “I’m going to the papers if you don’t explain.”
“Stop!” Annoyance took over my tone. I hadn’t meant to use my cop voice on her, but she was starting to piss me off and I was losing my hold.
“I just want to know what happened.” She flinched, her voice softening, “Your email scared the shit out of me.
It took me a second to work it out in my head so it made sense with the lies but wasn’t too mean in my approach. “I got a call, noise complaint. I drove through the neighbourhood and didn’t hear anything. So I parked and was writing off the call—we do that when we don’t find anything. Your window and nak-nak-nakedness were visible from the street. I wrote down your address and searched you. I sent the email to be polite.” My cheeks flushed. “I wouldn’t want someone to see you naked if you were my girlfri—anyway. I was trying to be a gen-gentleman. It will never happen again. If you wanna flash your shit everywhere, fine.”
A soft smile crept upon her lips. “If I were your girlfriend? You’re assuming I have a boyfriend?”
“No!” I said it too fast and too loud. I was confused with her suddenly being so nice. Was this a trap?
“How do you know I don’t?” She took another step closer. I backed up, hitting the table with the gun in it.
“I don’t,” I lied, feeling more naked than I was.
“You’re lying again. You checked me out, didn’t you?” She tilted her head. “I don’t care that you saw me naked. I go to Wreck Beach all the time. Being naked is normal.” She was the most confident female I’d ever met. Maybe person.
“Okay.” My pitch rose.
“You’re pretty much naked right now.”
“Yup.” I just wanted her to leave.
Her eyes lowered to my groin. “I can pretty much see exactly what your dick looks like through those pants. So I guess we’re even.” She laughed, but not like she laughed at me, more with me, except I didn’t laugh. I panicked. This seemed a lot like a head game.
“Okay.” I shook my head in traumatized little twitches.
“Is this your surveillance house? Like a fake house?” She folded her arms, rumpling the email. “I dated a cop, Vancouver PD. He was on surveillance once. His house was like this.”
“What?” I was lost. Was she watching me? “No.”
“Dude.” She glanced around the house. “You can’t tell me this is your house, like you really live here.”
“I do.” I stood up straight again, folding my arms over my chest. I needed to be firm with her. I needed her to leave.
“How long?” she asked in a judgemental tone.
“I don’t know, a year.”
“Wow.” She cringed. “So you use boxes for coffee tables on purpose.” She glanced across the room.
“It works. I don’t need fancy stuff.”
“Except the computer. That’s an expensive computer.” Her eyes darted to the left. “Build it yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“And you play video games and eat from boxes. Do you sleep in a box?”
“I have a bed.” I didn’t understand this line of questioning.
“Good to know.” She lightened up but I didn’t.
“I have to go to work now,” I lied.
“Okay. Well, if you’re in the neighbourhood spying on me, stop in and I’ll make you dinner and we can chat about the druggies next door. That's a whole situation.” She smiled genuinely, like she did in the pictures on her Facebook.
“Oh, uhm, no, I—I can’t. I don’t eat.” What the fuck? Why was I so awkward?
“You don’t eat?” She laughed. “I am so glad it was you who emailed this and not some pervert.” She chuckled and shook the crumpled paper. “You are adorable. I was so worried it was the old guy across the road or the drug dealers next door screwing with me.”
“What?” My cheeks lit on fire.
“I’m Callie. I know you know that, but whatever.” She held a slender hand out. It was tanned and beautiful with a weird lotus flower ring on it that didn’t make a complete circle. It wrapped around weirdly.
I didn’t know if I should or not, but I put my hand out too, taking hers. Her skin was warm and dewy, just the way I’d imagined it. All that lotioning. “Sim-Simon.” I said my real name, like an idiot.
“Simon. Of course you are. Like Simon and the Chipmunks.” She chuckled and did another trip around the room with her eyes. “It’s nice to meet you.” She changed, softened. “And I ordered those blinds already. Got them from Costco. They’re coming to measure tomorrow. I figured since someone was peeking in my regular curtains these ones might be pervert proof.”
“Good.” I was still holding her hand. Had I even shaken it yet? I just held it like a moron.
She pulled back gently. “See ya around, Simon.” She winked and left, leaving the door open so I could watch her saunter down the driveway in her tight leather pants. I hadn’t realized she was wearing them. She was so hot. She was like a blood elf ninja.
She lifted her helmet and shook her tawny hair before putting it on. She waved as she got the gloves on and climbed onto the crotch rocket. Seeing it between her legs made me jealous. She started it like some kind of movie star and backed out, driving away with the loud blast of the powerful bike.
“Fuck me,” I muttered and closed the door.
I had no idea what just happened. But my foyer still smelled like her so I didn’t move. I just breathed her in, daydreaming about being that bike, pitching a tent in my jogging pants like a thirteen-year-old boy.
Chapter Four
Morning glory
“Explain it to me again.” Matt huffed a breath as he pressed the bar loaded with weights up once more.
“No. You heard me. Stop being a dick,” I groaned as I spotted him.
“Jogging pants and a gun and a girl and a slight bit of morning wood? It’s like Mike’s wet dream.” He grunted, bringing the weight down and back up.
“Gross.”
“I think you should ask her out. She was clearly putting it out there.” He grinned as he shelved the bar. “And if she’s anything like her brother—”
“Dude!” I grimaced. “You know I’m not that friend. I don’t like knowing about anyone’s sex life.”
“I never had sex with him.
We got too drunk.” He laughed. “That’s sort of the problem with two guys.”
“Oh wow.”
“Limp biscuit is a thing, bro. Too much whisky can go either way.”
“Stop.” I stepped back.
“For reals. When was the last time you got laid? Not to sound like Mike, but you need to buck up and be a man and go get that girl and help her out with the lotion.” He winked.
“Wow.” I nodded. “This is officially the worst conversation we’ve ever had. And that includes the ladyboy in the back of the pickup truck in Bangkok.”
“You’re being a little bitch.”
“Probably.” I took his place, getting on the bench as he took weights off for me. I lifted a lot less than he did. “She lifts more than I do, there’s no doubt that between the two of us, I’m the little bitch.”
“Everyone lifts more than you do. You work out twice a week because I make you and then you go home to play video games and eat pizza.”
“Whatever. She rides a motorcycle and goes to nude beaches and she wears leather pants. She’s not just out of my league, she’s a different species. It would be like dating you. She’s some kind of superbeing.”
“Aw, dude. You think I’m super?”
“Yeah.” I scoffed. “Everyone thinks you’re super. It’s what drives Mike so nuts. He’d totally do you and he hates it.”
“I know. The sad thing about Mike is he’s the one I would so do if I had to do someone from the unit. Phil’s too sterile and dead inside. He’s so damaged from his wife dying, which I get. But I don’t think he’ll ever rally and get back in the game. Ashley is too hateful. I don’t like angry sex. He’s too bitter for me. I’m a fun-sex kinda guy. You’re too cute and naïve. I think it would be like taking advantage of you or molesting a mentally challenged person. But Mike has a freak flag, and he doesn’t just wave it, he fucking wears it.” He got behind me, spotting me as I lifted the weights.
“Yeah, he’s gross.” I ignored his comment about me being a mentally challenged person.
“You need to ask this girl out.” He returned to the dreaded topic.
