The New Neighbor Read online

  * * * *

  – Lorelle Dupree, George thought, lying awake beside Karen. He'd been going over their meeting at the door again and again, reliving it, listening to her voice. Feeling it. Thinking about the memory it had revived – the secret, velvety memory he'd kept tucked away like a cherished gift from a long-lost friend.

  He examined that memory again, holding it this way and that, and realized that it was different. Something had changed, something he could not seem to change back.

  Now, when he remembered lying in bed, overwhelmed by the sensations ricocheting through his body, it was not his late wife who pressed the vibrator to his cock, it was -

  * * * *

  "-Lorelle Dupree," Robby breathed in the dark of his bedroom.

  His erection would not go away, no matter how hard he tried to distract or relieve himself.

  Neither would the physical echo of Lorelle Dupree's finger on his throat and her hand on his chest, just over his pounding heart.

  He lay there for most of the night, staring at his ceiling and occasionally saying her name, before finally falling asleep.

  Chapter 3

  Anxiety

  Robby walked home from school the next day; he was tired from lack of sleep and thought the exercise and late-October cold would help revive him. As he turned off of Mistletoe Lane and onto his own street, he saw Jessie – the Garrys’ big golden retriever – bounding toward him, her pink tongue dangling from her yellow-toothed grin. Sebastian, the Weyland's calico cat, was licking his paws contentedly beside the road, and panicked, darting out of Jessie's way an instant before being trampled by the dog's mitt-like paws.

  "Hey, Jess!" Robby called halfheartedly as Jessie danced around him. He heard a door thump shut and looked across the street to see Mrs. LaBianco waddling down her front steps toward her car, jangling her keys as she waved at him and said hello. He waved back and smiled, feeling a twinge of pity for the woman. Just a few years ago, she was a very sweet, attractive middle-aged woman, thin and shapely, with only a few streaks of gray in her dark hair to give away her years. Then she began to balloon, putting on a tremendous amount of weight in a very short time, until she'd become the hulking woman who now wore only muumuus and kept her thinning hair in a sloppy bun in the back. She was still sweet, but now she was pathetic, too.

  Two small children – a boy and girl – shot out of Sheri MacNeil's driveway on tricycles, giggling and making high-pitched squealing tire sounds. The boy, Sheri MacNeil's son Christopher, grinned at Robby and shouted, "We're racing!" A year-and-a-half ago Sheri's husband had left her to raise four-year-old Christopher on her own, and the neighborhood had sort of taken her under its wing. The neighborhood children spent a good deal of time at Sheri's house playing with Christopher and she seemed to enjoy watching over them. As he passed her house, Robby saw Sheri through her kitchen window and waved as he walked on toward his house.

  Beyond his own house, and on the opposite side of the street, Robby saw Paul Weyland, short and bullet-shaped with his rust-colored hair in a crew cut. He was opening his garage when he spotted Robby. He waved with a meaty hand, but no smile disturbed his stern, rocky features. Robby had spoken to Weyland's daughters, Caryl and Stephanie, only a couple of times. They were pleasant, pretty girls, but, like their mother – whom Robby seldom saw without Mr. Weyland – their shyness and timidity gave the impression that they were constantly afraid their father would appear at any second and start shouting at them. Paul Weyland left no doubt that he was the head of his household.

  The Pritchards lived on the north end of Deerfield Avenue, which came to a dead end at a small patch of wooded land. On the other side of that was Highway 44. It was a small, friendly-looking neighborhood, but it wasn't as friendly as it used to be. When Robby was a boy, there were no strangers on Deerfield. Everyone on the street knew everyone else; they watched out for one another's children and pets and if a family went on vacation, they knew their house and belongings were in good hands. Every spring, everyone cleaned out their garages and closets and held a neighborhood rummage sale. But, over the years, people moved out and new people moved in and kept to themselves, and the sense of community bled out of the neighborhood. Now, there were people on the street with whom Robby hadn't had so much as a conversation. People just didn't seem very friendly anymore.

  Except for Lorelle Dupree. She seemed very friendly.

  Dylan could talk about nothing else on the school bus that morning. On his way to the end of the street, he'd spotted Lorelle through her front window – she had no curtains yet – wearing a short kimono that Dylan had claimed was open in front.

  "I saw her tits!" he'd hissed. "I saw 'em! They were… they were… well, I think god made 'em personally. You know, like with his own hands. None of that assembly line creation with her, uh-uh. You think she likes younger men?"

  Normally, Robby would have told Dylan about his encounter with Lorelle the night before. Talking about girls was their favorite pastime, although, much to his chagrin, Robby, unlike most of his peers, had precious little experience with them, and Dylan, a snaggle-toothed boy with glasses that slid down his nose and a soft roundness to his face that suggested a possible weight problem later in life, had even less. Somehow, though, he didn't feel right talking about it. Now, in the light of day, he knew that nothing had happened at Lorelle's outside of his imagination. So he'd gotten a look down her shirt and she'd touched him a couple of times in a friendly way – big deal. But there was something private about his visit with Lorelle, something almost sacred, made even more so by how he'd felt at the time and what he'd done when he got home. So he said nothing on the bus. But for the rest of the day, he found himself thinking about what Dylan had said, about what he had seen. And Robby found himself feeling envious.

  There was a moving van parked in front of her house and two hefty men in green jumpsuits were carrying a sofa across the front lawn, but Lorelle was nowhere in sight.

  Robby stopped at the mailbox to check the mail – his mother usually forgot to do it when she got home from work – then headed up the front walk with a handful of sweepstakes offers and sales flyers.

  "Robby!"

  He stopped, waited a beat before turning, and saw Lorelle waving at him from her front porch. She wore a black sweatshirt with a baggy pouch in front and an old pair of jeans with a hole over her left thigh, revealing bare flesh, her hair in a pony tail.

  "Are you going to give me a hand this afternoon?" she asked.

  "Urn, well…”

  "My power's on and I bought steaks for dinner. How about it?"

  "Well, um…" He had a lot of homework -

  – You've blown off your homework for a lot less, he thought -

  – and he knew being alone with her would make him a nervous wreck, even though he knew nothing would happen. Maybe he could take Dylan along -

  – You want to be alone with her and you know it.

  "Yeah," he finally called to her as the mail slipped from his hand and scattered on the walk, "I'll be over in about… an hour, or so." He gathered the mail, then turned toward the house.

  Jen peered out her bedroom window at him, her face a vague, gauzy mask behind the screen.

  A fat, smoke-colored cloud glided by overhead, blocking the sunlight for a long moment.

  Robby started for the front door and forced himself not to look back at the sound of Lorelle's voice.

  "I'll see you then," she called as he went inside.

  * * * *

  Peering down the hall from her bedroom door, Jen watched Robby come inside. With his head sagging forward and hands shoved deep into the pockets of his down jacket, he looked thoughtful and troubled, maybe even a little sad. He turned to come down the hall and Jen pulled back so he couldn't see her, then closed her door softly.

  Robby's room was next to hers and she listened to him close the door, take off his jacket, then flop onto his squeaky bed with a sigh.

  Jen returned to her desk and picked up her
pen. She was writing a letter to Diana Strait, her best friend. Diana had moved to Seattle seven months ago and they wrote one another regularly.

  Things had not been quite the same since Diana had gone. Now she spent time with the twins down the street. And she saw Diana’s friends, although somehow, they seemed to remain Diana's friends even in her absence.

  Jen and Diana had become acquainted by accident one day two years ago when they'd both been put on detention together – Jen for not dressing for PE and Diana for mouthing off to a teacher – and had become friends instantly. Jen automatically became a member of the clique of half a dozen or so girls that Diana moved in, a group popular enough to raise Jen's standing in the eyes of her peers – and a group that never would have accepted her without Diana's insistence. All of the girls in Diana's clique were very studious and got good grades. Jen got fairly good grades, too, but not in the same way. For Jen, a B was a struggle, an A was an all-out war she had to fight with the books and tests. For that reason, she was unable to go out with the girls every day after school, or get together for a group date in the evening – what Diana called a "date orgy" – with half a dozen guys. Jen was, as Diana's friends so often pointed out, no fun, but Diana was always happy to help her with her homework so Jen didn't have to stay home all the time.

  She never got to know any of those girls as well as Diana, and when Diana moved, her friends allotted Jen greetings in the hall and the occasional lunch, but little more.

  So Jen was left with the twins and a good deal more undisturbed time in which to do her homework. But for Jen, that homework – like making friends – was miserably hard. Sometimes she could break a sweat hunched over her books, especially if there was a test the next day. She was not lacking intelligence or study skills, but she suffered from what she had decided was some kind of phobia. Just as some people panicked or became hysterical when they saw spiders or snakes or looked down from high places, Jen froze up at an open schoolbook, a blank notebook page or the beginning of a test. She could write a letter comfortably and with no problem because she knew it didn't have to be perfect, but numbers made her gut clench with fear and the prospect of stringing words together into a coherent sentence – and spelling them correctly – when writing a paper numbed her into a cold paralysis. She fought it diligently and managed to get fair grades, but it took a couple of hours or so to do an assignment that would take up only thirty minutes for other students – a student like Robby.

  Jen envied the ease with which her brother got so many A's. And he spent less time than most on his assignments, breezed through homework, never had a nervous moment before a test. He had lots of free time on his hands to give Jen a little help with her homework. But he never did. There were a lot of things he didn't do.

  When her mom married George – Jen had been calling him Dad since he'd adopted her right after the marriage – Jen liked the idea of having a big brother. She looked forward to the two of them getting to know one another and growing up together, being close the way Jen always thought brothers and sisters were supposed to be. But it didn't work out that way.

  Jen knew a lot of girls whose brothers were relentlessly cruel to them and she was glad Robby wasn't one of those. But she also knew girls whose brothers were their friends and confidants and she wished Robby was one of those. Unfortunately, he was somewhere in between.

  Sometimes she felt like she wasn't growing up with Robby, but rather growing up next door to him. She'd been trying since they'd first met to get to know him, really know him, the way the kids at school and the teachers and neighbors never could. But she was beginning to think it was impossible.

  He wasn't exactly cold, just preoccupied or – no, it was indifference. His distance did not seem intentional, it was just… Robby. Jen kept trying to bridge that distance. She'd talked about it with Tara – one of the twins – but all she said was, "You've got a crush on him."

  "I do not!" Jen always replied.

  "Sounds like it to me."

  Both Tara and her brother Dana taunted her about it, but of course it wasn't true.

  Not… exactly.

  Maybe she'd had a small crush on him when she was little, but she'd outgrown that. Well… mostly.

  Completely, she thought, her pen poised over an unfinished sentence in Diana's letter.

  Back when Jen had a little crush on him, she had managed once to get a peek at the Robby no one else ever saw. It was by accident, and she'd never forgotten it.

  It was on a summer afternoon six years ago when Jen had sneaked up on Robby's bedroom window. Robby had been putting together a model at his desk facing the half-open window. She'd intended to jump up with a shout and give Robby a scare, but as she crept through the bushes and hunkered below his window, she heard his bedsprings squeaking slightly and decided to listen a moment before popping up. When she heard him breathing heavily, she knew he wasn't working on his model anymore. Instead of jumping, she peered carefully over the edge of his window and her eyes grew twice their size because -

  – Robby was lying on his bed with his legs hanging over the edge, knees spread, pants bunched around his ankles, and his… his thing – at least, that was how she thought of it back than – was sticking straight up! Robby held it in his fist, running his hand up and down, up and down, faster and faster.

  Jen watched, amazed, and watching something so private, so secret, stirred a strange excitement inside her. She'd never seen a boy's thing before, and she'd certainly never seen a boy doing this to his thing. She hadn't even known that boys did … whatever this was.

  Robby squirmed on his bed as he continued to play with himself, and then something fascinating happened: milk squirted from his thing. At least, it had looked like milk to her then; she knew better now. Robby groaned, panted, moved his hand faster, slurping it through the white fluid. Then he calmed, slowly relaxed, and became still.

  Jen couldn't stop thinking about it for weeks. Whatever it was, she became enamored of it and was terribly tempted to ask Robby about it – why he did it, how it felt, and maybe, just maybe, if she could watch up close while he did it again. She never did, of course, and now the very idea that she'd thought such a thing made her slap a hand over her eyes and groan with embarrassment.

  But still, every once in a while, the memory haunted her, rose up in her mind like a ghost and danced behind her eyes. It used to give her a little tingle of excitement when she thought about it, but now the tingle was deeper, lower… and a little scary.

  In her bedroom, Jen heard Robby's door open. She stepped into the hall quickly and he stopped, turned to her.

  "I saw you talking to the new neighbor," she said. "What's she like?"

  Robby raised his eyebrows, shrugged and said, "She's, um… nice," then lifted a hand and said, "See ya."

  She watched him go down the hall, then back to her bedroom with a sigh.

  * * * *

  George took a shower when he got home from work. He'd gotten little sleep the night before, overslept, and only had time for a quick wash before leaving the house; he'd felt dirty all day. After drying off, he glanced out the bathroom window to see Robby going across the street.

  Wrapped in his terrycloth robe, George went to his bedroom, tossed his robe on the bed, and -

  – something stung his bare right foot and spat a long wet hiss from under the bed.

  "Son of a bitch!" George barked, hopping a few times on his left foot as his right began to bleed in four long thin stripes that ran from his outer ankle to the knuckle of his big toes.

  Karen's Manx cat, Monroe, peered up at him from the dusty darkness under the bed. Hatred burned in the cat's black and yellow eyes as it bared its needle-like fangs and hissed again, then snarled and backed out of sight.

  George swept one of his slippers off the floor, dropped to one knee and slapped at the bottom of the bed, grumbling. "You miserable goddamned – “ But the cat dashed out from under the bed on the other side and George heard the heavy thump of its paw
s as it ran for the door. He looked up in time to see Monroe's jiggling tailless ass – and, worst of all, his dirty bare rectum – disappear from the room. Swearing again, George threw the slipper down and sat on the bed to rub his slashed foot, muttering, "Nine years. Nine goddamned years."

  That was how long he'd put up with the only animal he'd ever encountered that he actually hated. He didn’t like admitting that to himself because he was an animal lover. But the cat had hated him first. Monroe had been a tiny kitten when George and Karen married. The cat hadn't liked him then and seemed to hate him more with each passing year. George never knew where the animal was hiding or when it was going to attack him next. Each time, the temptation to give Monroe a swift kick was great, but George always resisted, knowing that if he actually hurt the cat, Karen would be furious, probably even hysterical. Sometimes he thought she cared more deeply about that vicious, neurotic cat than she did for him.

  After dressing and shaving, he went down to the kitchen and asked Karen, "Where'd Robby go?"

  "Across the street to help that woman arrange her furniture and unpack."

  "Oh. And Jen?"

  "At Al and Lynda's."

  Al and Lynda Crane had twins Jen's age – a boy and girl – and if she wasn't at their house playing or eating with them, they were at hers.

  "Aren't they going to eat?"

  "Jen's eating with the twins and I guess that woman's going to cook dinner for Robby." She removed two plates from the cupboard and set them down in front of the fat white Oster food processor.

  "Oh?" George stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Then we're alone this evening?" After the thoughts he'd had while trying to sleep the night before, he'd felt horny all day.

  The microwave beeped and Karen pulled away from him to take out the food.

  Figures, George thought, a little surprised by the bitterness he suddenly felt. "What's for dinner?"