Karolina Waclawiak: The Invaders

“Of course I do,” I told her. But everyone looked at me like I didn’t care about safety, like I thought danger was no big deal.

“It sounded positively terrifying,” Bunny said.

“What’d he do, touch you?” Teddy said.

Bunny inhaled sharply and Teddy started to laugh.

“He was drunk and using the street like his public toilet and he lunged at Lori and Cheryl,” Bunny said.

“Lori’s finger is pretty banged up,” I said. “She could have really hurt herself. He didn’t do it, though. She did.”

“Whose side are you on, Cheryl?” Bunny said. “It’s terrible to be afraid in your own neighborhood. Lori had a brilliant idea to build a fence and install a gate. We’re going to do it.”

“Lori’s idea?” I asked.

“She’s just so community-oriented. A natural leader. I could see her being president of the club one day.”

“God, I hope not,” Jeffrey said.

“Well, what’s obvious is that we have a real problem with these people,” said Bunny.

“What do you mean ‘these people’?” asked Teddy, suddenly curious.

Bunny stared at Teddy and he said, “Sounds pretty racist.”

“Lori said he had a knife,” Bunny said, leaning in close.

I thought back. Had I seen a knife? Now I wasn’t sure. Why would Lori make something like that up? He was just peeing; he had a fishing pole and a bucket. Other women started coming toward the table.

“Are you okay?” they all asked at once.

“It’s been a long day,” I answered.

Bunny stared straight at me and asked me if I had been scared.

“We all know Lori’s not much help,” I said. The women didn’t appreciate my sense of humor, so I said, “It just felt uncomfortable.” They were salivating for details. They wanted mayhem.

Leslie, who I usually like very much, looked at me as if I was lying.

“I was only scared in the moment.”

“You left yourselves wide open,” Jeffrey said.

“No, we didn’t. We came upon him, not the other way around.”

“That’s what I’m saying. We can’t live in fear,” Bunny said. “Even if we pretend we’re not afraid.”

“Well, poor people are scary,” Teddy said.

“That’s not what this is about,” snapped Bunny.

Jeffrey looked at Teddy as if he didn’t understand anything at all. The women crowded around us and Jeffrey stared at all of them, then started working on them. This is what he did best. They shared their own stories of fear. Walking the dog late at night near the water and hearing scurrying sounds or voices. Someone was trying to take away what we had, or benefit from it, at the very least. And this was unacceptable to them. The man hadn’t attacked us. There was always an influx of people in the summer. Unknown variables, friends of friends, but they somehow seemed invited because they looked like they belonged. I walked these streets constantly and never felt unsafe before.

I looked to Teddy for help, but Jeffrey just sat there egging them on. He said he had always seen shadowy men wandering the streets at night. People he had never seen before. There was no telling what they would do if they thought they were under siege. They had a lot to fight for.

“Aren’t your men going to protect you?” Jeffrey said to the ladies.

“How?” asked Teddy.

They all giggled nervously as Jeffrey leaned back in his seat. “If your husbands don’t feel like protecting you, I will,” he said.

They giggled even more.

“It’s my gentlemanly duty.” Jeffrey knew just what to say both to emasculate other men and be boastful. I waited for him to add something like “protect you from the Big Bad Wolf” or something cheesy like that. Porno bad. He didn’t watch those movies in front of me, but I could hear him sometimes. I’d put my ear against the door and hear a furious tugging and slapping. I don’t know why I listened. I was just glad he could still get it up. I wondered what he was thinking about, that’s all. Didn’t he know that we were both just masturbating in other rooms, far apart, wanting the same things, just unsure of how to get them from each other anymore?

I stared at these women and wanted to know where their husbands were. I scanned the bar and looked at the line of men in polo knits. It looked like their wives had dressed them — muted yellows, blues, a few stripes. The older ones were hunched over scotches, defeated by wrinkles. The younger ones, the ones that I had started to like, had close-cropped haircuts, neat striped polos tucked into pressed khaki golf pants, and no overhanging guts. They were still talkative and postured for one another. They talked about their orthopedic surgery procedures from the week or maybe the legal proceedings they had taken part in. They looked like they still had some excitement about life left in them. Perhaps they could still be appreciative. Whatever the case, their wives were still slim and sitting next to them. I leaned in and put my arm around Jeffrey and he looked at me, wondering what I needed from him. I pulled my arm away as he scooted his chair forward.

“Oh, Jeffrey, Larry’s got nothing on you.”

I looked up, raised an eyebrow. Nora, sixty-five and thick-legged. What was she doing with her short white hair and hip swivel? She was wearing long shorts that hit above the knee and bright pink lipstick. I was worried that she’d try to kiss him and leave a smear of pink on his cheek that I would have to wipe off.

Her husband had left her and their twins the year before and now, after the divorce was finalized, she was still trying or perhaps just beginning to try to make her ex-husband, pale green polo at the bar, jealous. But he didn’t even turn around. Someone said they had heard her whispering “Do you want to fuck?” in the ear of a visiting sailor from Rhode Island. After that I heard her crying to a friend at the pool about the arrangements couples here made. Couples got bored, they needed to have some spice, but everyone was okay with it and everyone was supposed to go home when it was time to go home. Their arrangement had been compromised and her husband had stopped coming home. I looked around the room and wondered how many of these couples had an accepted tolerance for indiscretions among friends. Revelations like that had made me wonder why no one had ever asked me and Jeffrey to join them in various entanglements. Or had they asked Jeffrey and he’d declined? Or was I the only fool here without a willing extracurricular partner and marriage workaround? I’d considered the stories about boat trips to Block Island that ended up with mismatched cabin partners club folklore, never wanting to visualize, but maybe I was just being naive.

I had to laugh. At least someone like my mother was honest about who she was. These women, eyeing one another like every friend had the potential to leave strands of hair behind in their bed.

Bunny pulled Nora aside and the others clustered around, talking about safety.

“If anyone can get this problem under control, it’s Lori,” Leslie said.

They looked at me and nodded and I knew that no matter how involved I really was in the protection of our homes, I was a club member’s wife for little more than a decade and I would always be the reason their friend was gone, no matter how unfounded that was. No matter how many husbands they slept with, I would always be worse. Jeffrey leaned back in his chair and smiled at them all, his white chest hair sprouting from the vee of his knit polo. I stared at him, acutely aware of his age. His hair was white like Nora’s; maybe they were a better match.

They walked away and I said, “That man didn’t do anything.”

“If he peed on the street, that’s doing something,” said Jeffrey.

“He didn’t really chase us, he just kind of stood there,” I said.