After the fourth ring came clicks that meant the machine was responding.
I kept creeping backward.
Outside, the stranger arrived at the side of the pool. He stood up, put his hands on the concrete edge, and seemed to stare straight at me.
I’m not big on distances. My guess, though—he was only twelve or fifteen feet away from the glass door. And I was on the other side of it, five or six feet back.
More clicks from the machine.
A man’s voice said, “Ah, you finally got yourself an answering machine. Hope it’s not because of me. But it probably is, huh? Who’s the guy you got to record the greeting for you?” A pause. “Never mind. It’s none of my business, I guess. Anyway, are you there? Judy? If you’re there, would you pick up? Please? I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but…I don’t want to lose you. I love you. Are you there? Please, talk to me.”
He went silent.
The man in the pool jumped, planted a foot on the edge, and climbed out.
“The thing is, I’m not going to call again. I’m not going to beg you to change your mind. I’m not going to plead with you. I’ve got to hang on to a little of my dignity, you know?”
The man started walking slowly toward the glass door.
“So this’ll be it. The ball’s in your court. If you really want it to be over, fine. I’ll accept that. I’ll never bug you again. It’ll be adios, Tony. Forever. I don’t want that to happen, but hell…Are you there, Judy? It feels weird, talking to you this way. Would you please pick up, if you’re there?”
The stranger arrived at the door and peered in.
Could he see me?
Could he hear the quick loud thudding of my heart?
I stood motionless, staring at him. He had his arms raised like a guy who’s been ordered to “stick ’em up.” His open hands were pressed against the glass. So was his forehead. But his nose didn’t touch the glass. Neither did his chest or belly or legs. Nothing else touched except for the tip of his penis, which looked like a smooth and strange little face pushing against the glass to help him search for me.
“Okay,” Tony said to the answering machine. “If that’s how you want it. Anyway, I’ve moved to a new place. I couldn’t stand being in the old apartment anymore, not after everything that’d happened there.” He sounded as if he were trying not to cry. “I’ll give you my number, and you can call me if you want to. If you don’t call, I’ll understand.”
As Tony gave his new telephone number, the man outside took a step away from the door, reached down and grabbed the handle and jerked it.
Snatching up the phone with one hand, I blurted, “Tony!”
With my other hand, I slapped up the light switch.
A lamp came on by the couch.
The sudden brightness hurt my eyes, made me squint, obliterated my moonlit view of the stranger. The sliding door was now a mirror. It showed me a hollow, transparent version of the coffee table, the lamp, and me.
I saw myself with the phone against my left ear. I stood crooked, still bent sideways to the right as if frozen in my reach for the light switch. My belt had come loose. The open robe seemed to split me down the middle. It still covered my left side from shoulder to thigh, but my entire right side was bare to the gaze of the stranger.
If he was still there.
He must’ve leaped back when the light first came on.
Now he returned, looming out of the darkness just beyond the door and pressing his body against the glass.
Tony was talking into my ear. I didn’t pay much attention, but he seemed to believe I was Judy.
The stranger gaped in at me. With his body pressed to the door, the lamplight reached him. He looked awful—grotesquely flattened and spread out—like an alien creature trying to ooze through the glass.
“HELLO!” I shouted into the phone. “POLICE! I WANT TO REPORT A PROWLER!”
“Huh?” Tony asked. “A prowler?”
The stranger writhed against the glass, licked it, rubbed it with his body and open hands as if making believe it was me.
From where I stood, it
My reflection was superimposed over him.
He couldn’t see that, though. And didn’t need to, because he had a great view of the
“YES! HE’S IN THE YARD! HE’S TRYING TO FORCE HIS WAY IN. THIS IS 3838 WOODSIDE LANE. YOU’VE GOT TO GET OVER HERE RIGHT AWAY!”
“Who is this? This isn’t Judy?”
“HE’S A WHITE MALE, ABOUT TWENTY YEARS OLD, SIX FEET TALL, A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POUNDS, WITH SHORT BLOND HAIR.”
“Is this for real? Do you really have a prowler?”
“YES! AND HE’S NAKED, AND HE’S TRYING TO GET IN! YOU’VE GOT TO SEND A SQUAD CAR RIGHT AWAY!”
“Holy shit,” Tony said.
“PLEASE HURRY!”
“Do you want me to hang up and call the police?”
Taking the phone away from my mouth, I yelled at the man, “THE COPS ARE ON THE WAY, YOU SICK BASTARD! THEY’LL BE HERE IN TWO MINUTES!”
I know he heard me, but he seemed to be lost in his own world of skin and glass and me.
Watching him, I saw myself. I looked like a ghost being molested by a mad, drooling mime. He writhed against me, caressed me, kissed me, then suddenly went rigid and started to jerk, shaking the door in its frame. For a moment, I thought he was having a seizure.
In a way, he was.
When I realized what was going on, I gasped and turned my head away.
My eyes met the light switch.
I shot my hand out and flipped it down. Darkness clamped down on the room.
The door stopped shaking.
I looked.
The stranger took a few steps backward, then whirled around. He ran to the edge of the pool, dived in, and swam for the other side.
While I watched him, I heard Tony’s tiny, faint voice coming from the phone’s earpiece down by my side.
The stranger boosted himself out of the pool, scurried over the concrete, swooped down and snatched up his shorts. He didn’t put them on. Clutching them in one hand, he dashed onto the lawn and ran toward the woods.
I lifted the phone.
Tony sounded frantic.“…okay? Hello? What’s happening?”
“I’m here,” I said.
“What happened? What’s going on?”
“I think it’s all right now. He just ran away.”
“You’d better call the cops.”
“He thinks I just did. That’s what scared him off.”
“Maybe you’d better call them for real.”
“I don’t know. He’s gone now.”
“How do you know he won’t come back?”
“Thanks a lot, Tony.”
“Sorry. Are you okay?”
“Just a little shook up. I’m all by myself, and he came sneaking out of the woods behind the house.”
