She headed to her house without looking back.
“Be brave, Mrs. Park,” he called after her.
(Illustration by Zela Lobb)
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Minutes later, he kicked himself for forgetting to ask her about the blue couch.
* * *Late that night, way past his bedtime, Raymond was swirling his third glass of Muscadet and reading Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages while Josephine Baker sang “Blue Skies” on his Victrola. When he lifted his head to yawn, he was startled by the sight of a mop of black hair in the lower edge of his picture window. From its movements, he could tell that it was no long-furred dog but something more intelligent — someone was watching him with eyes hidden behind that curtain of hair. It surveyed the living room, scanning it from one end to the other, like a robot designed for menace.
“What the...” he said aloud. He stood up and waved his arms wildly. I can see ya, ya little cunt.
No reaction.
Then the curtain of hair rose with a sickening grandeur, like a black tulip blossoming. Raymond shuddered. His spy stood lankily in the picture window, framed like one of Goya’s Black Paintings. A portrait of a girl completely in the nude, her skin pale against the dark velvet night. The hair remained covering her face like a lustrous ebony mask. Her pubic area, meanwhile, was exposed — a bristly chimney sweep’s brush.
Was this some kind of sick, homophobic taunt?
“Stop that! Come on, stop that right now!”
Arms akimbo, he gave her his most authoritarian stare. He channeled Charlton Heston, then Peter Lorre.
It made no difference. The girl took several steps back and then, with no regard for her personal safety, slammed her entire body hard against the glass. Thwack!
“Hey! Hey, I mean it!” He stopped himself from stepping outside lest it was a trap set by the unhinged Mrs. Park. He’d hate to be caught berating a naked girl, especially if the cops were already on their way.
Instead, he waved his finger at her from indoors like a chiding schoolmaster.
“Fuck off! Just go away, will you?!”
The girl peeled herself off the window. She took three slow steps back and again threw herself against the glass. Thwack! And yet again, she repeated her motions. Thwack!
Raymond froze in horror. This was antique leaded glass, impossible to replace, and the fiend didn’t seem likely to give up until it broke. Who was this person? What did they want?
At her fourth thwack!Raymond thought he heard a crack either in the glass or in its frame. That was it. A man had the right to protect his property. He gulped down the rest of the Muscadet and stormed to the door.
“You’re asking for it, girlie!”
She must have had quick feet because when he opened the door, there was nobody on the porch. Not a soul. A cold draft rushed past him and into the house. There was nothing out there but the night. The chirping crickets gave nothing away.
He turned to the window and surveyed the damage.
There were two smudges in the center of the pane, shaped exactly like greasy nipples.
Sandi Tan is a writer and filmmaker living in Pasadena. Her short films have shown at the New York Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art. She’s just completed her first novel, The Girls of Santa Claus Lane. www.sanditan.com.
