And that’s when I saw them. Flanking the floor of the gallery was a row of massive spotlights. I approached them slowly and crouched down. Mesmerized, I touched the hot rim of one, following its path up the wall. The light stretched all the way to the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” Charlotte asked, smiling tightly at an approaching security guard.
I looked up at her, pivoting on my toes until my knees were parallel with her legs.
“Hi,” I said.
“Why are you grinning like that?”
“Grinning like what?” I asked, having lost all control of my face.
* * *
Product description for 600-watt halogen light:
This light can be set on the ground or a rooftop and aimed in the direction of the workspace. This light can also be used to powerfully illuminate a campground or construction site. Ideal for when you need to finish off a project.
“What do you have,” asked the hardware store cashier, “a possum?”
I smiled and cocked my head. This was a very specific guess. But he took one look at a nonunionized woman in a sundress, sporting a canvas tote, and went straight to “possum.” In return, I explained the Jared situation—the cashier threw in an on/off switch for free.
“You got an outlet by your bed?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” he said, conspiratorially, “plug the extension cord into this and you plug this into the outlet and flick the switch. So you don’t have to get up. You can just roll over and fuck ’em.”
I never thought I would be so pleased to hear those words from a man.
I rushed home, high on revenge, exhilarated by the prospect of a new medium. Jared didn’t deserve to hear the sound of my voice. I put one light outside on the fire escape, running the cord under my bedroom window screen, and a second one on a stool in my kitchen. Then I got into bed and waited. I checked the time. He should be home any minute now. But that night I fell asleep to the sound of the breeze rustling through the trees. Same thing happened the next night. And the next and the next. Screw you, breeze. What have you done with my juvenile delinquents?
I left town for work, planning to take the lights down when I returned. In theory, I should have been grateful. My long night of terror had ended with a whimper—but at least it had ended. That should have been good enough. But my life at that moment was populated by men who had hurt me and my vigilante streak wanted to take just one of them out. Just one.
Walking up my stairs, sifting through a week’s worth of catalogs, I ran into my neighbor. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her baby was wailing.
“I might have to kill them all,” she said, her voice cracking.
“He’s back?” I asked, trying to temper my glee.
“No,” she said, “not him … her.”
* * *
My dreams of Jared going off to college had, unceremoniously, come to pass. Or perhaps there had been a ceremony. Perhaps a graduation rager had taken place and I hadn’t been home for it. It didn’t matter. The sister had ascended the throne of torment with gusto. Years of watching Jared and his friends had taught her everything she needed to know. The sister’s friends—younger, wilder, louder—made Jared’s look like a prayer circle. They had inherited Jared’s playlist but beyond that, it was just a sea of ill-formed estrogen. The sister’s cavalry was into shit like daring one another to throw bottles against the house and setting off fireworks. Clumps of girls spread out on the grass, taking selfies, contemplating future tattoos, failing to have seen the movie Thirteen.
“For Valentine’s Day, my mom got my dad strippers,” the sister bragged. “They did flaming shots out of their assholes and now my mom is, like, best friends with the strippers.”
I closed my eyes and felt the corners of my lips curl. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I flossed. Then I got into bed, rolled over, and fucked ’em.
Their yard lit up as if a helicopter were preparing to land on it.
“What the hell?!” they cried, confused and squinting.
“Turn that off!” they cried.
“That’s annoying us!” they cried.
One of them called me a cunt, which I did not think they had in them. It takes a certain kind of girl to bypass “bitch.” Because they were animals, they threw rocks, and because they were drunk, they missed. The sister tried to reclaim her authority by deploying the only logic in her arsenal.
“It’s our property!” she shouted. “We can do what we want!”
I yawned. In the months to come, I would reward good behavior with darkness, but that night I left the lights on, even after they admitted defeat and went inside.
There was a pleasant, almost celestial glow that illuminated my apartment. This was the light bouncing off their windows and into mine. I thought of the evening I saw Jared and his friends dancing in their kitchen, of how gorgeously happy they all looked. I tried mustering some of that old generosity of spirit, but whatever heartstrings had tied my world to theirs had gone slack. Questions drifted through my fading consciousness: Would the sister call her brother at college and tell him about this? Would he be impressed by the enemy’s tactics? And, really, who cared? I couldn’t be bothered to worry about what people like that thought of me anymore. Their lives were out there and mine was in here. They were forever behind me in time, as unable to catch up as I was to wait for them. All around me, the shadows of tree branches stretched across the walls—branches that lived only because they were connected to a trunk in Jared’s yard.
A Dog Named Humphrey
When the opportunity to appear on the teen drama Gossip Girl came my way, I felt like I had won a contest. Not a contest it would have occurred to me to enter, but the type of
