Karolina Waclawiak - The Invaders

“Bogey! Is it a raccoon?” He was going crazy.

She slammed her foot down on the patio and called his name again. He ran to her and I was impressed. He actually listened to her. More important, he wasn’t going to rip my balls out of my pants.

She stared at the jungle gym for a while, the dog pacing behind her, and finally went inside with the dog, shutting off the kitchen lights.

I waited in the slide for a while, contemplated sleeping in there, but it was getting sort of warm and my shirt was soaked through with sweat, from the stress of it all.

Lights turned on upstairs and I knew it was safe to leave. I went down the slide and made sure not to step in the wet spot of dog piss, then slowly walked across the backyard. I looked up at Jill’s window, where I thought she’d be, and she wasn’t. And for a minute, I was disappointed.

CHERYL

I STOOD IN THE front yard, snipping my Mr. Lincoln roses and trying to figure out what was causing the white spots on their leaves. They had developed a sickness and no amount of mild dish soap or garden-center nutrients was helping. I held the patches of oval leaves in my hands and inspected them closely. Were the leaves being eaten through to the veins? The buds looked haggard but were still trying to bloom despite the attack. I swabbed each leaf with a Q-tip dipped in a solution I had made myself. Vinegar and some other homeopathic remedies. The swabbing would take all afternoon or longer, but I needed to save them. I had to give them a chance to survive.

“What are you operating on?”

I looked up and saw Tuck on his bicycle.

“I’m trying to rescue my roses from whatever disease is eating them alive.”

“Do you suspect foul play?” he asked. “The pisser?”

“I think we’re calling him the urinator now. Anyway, he was peeing on the street, not in people’s yards.”

“Urinator. That definitely sounds more threatening than pisser.”

“It really does the job riling up people at association meetings,” I said.

I stared up at Tuck and held my Q-tip with purpose and said, “Anyway, who would want to hurt my roses?”

Tuck looked up and down the street, then said, “Maybe someone has a problem with you. I heard Lori talk about the tree. Don’t you know how people around here operate? You don’t cooperate… they send a message.”

“There’s more evil ways to take me down than to mess with my flowers,” I said. I looked at Lori’s yard. Everything was blooming beautifully.

I shook my head.

“She just wants to watch you crack slowly, that’s all.” Tuck smiled at me when he said it. Like he knew it was happening and he wanted to lighten the mood.

“I’m sorry about your flowers,” he said.

“You know when you finally find a sense of purpose? Like, something needs you in order to grow and thrive, you take it seriously. Roses are temperamental. What else do I have?”

“Probably nothing, like everyone else around here. Though there’s purpose and then there’s purpose,” Tuck said, smirking. “Do you think I want to spend my weekend mowing and weeding like the rest of these suckers around here? Mulching, spreading little colored rocks around just so? Lori imports her own sand, did you know that? Did you know that? She didn’t like the color of the sand on her part of the beach. Twenty thousand dollars for sand.”

He stared at me, waiting for my disgust. “Twenty thousand dollars for a different shade of sand. Why aren’t you outraged?”

“Obviously, because I didn’t know. Who does that?” I asked.

“Exactly. Who does that? It’s all just going to wash away one day. Then what?” he said.

“It could, you’re right. Storms have been worse and worse each year,” I said.

“Watch Florida be wiped off the map this summer. Then we’ll be stuck with them year round.”

I stared up at the blue sky and said, “I have to make sure our flood insurance is up to date.”

“Just let things be. Don’t need to control it all, you know what I mean? Just let the world spin and we’ll all be okay,” Tuck said.

“Did you ever follow the Grateful Dead?” I asked.

“Only in high school, why?”

“You remind me of every Deadhead I ever knew,” I said.

“I could see you on the arm of a Deadhead.”

“I even followed them one summer,” I said.

“No shit?”

“Yeah, one glorious unshowered summer with my boyfriend. What a disaster.”

“Did you have dreadlocks?” he asked.

“No, but he did,” I said, laughing and embarrassed.

Tuck told me all the good ones had. I looked at his thinning hair and thought of Charlie and wondered where he was now. He probably looked like some middle-aged dad somewhere — collared shirts and loafers. Finding former boyfriends online always made me feel so old. I wondered if I looked their age or if I had willed myself to stay young. I had noticed frown lines forming in inopportune places. Continual sadness and lack of sleep did terrible things to a person’s face. I had stopped my dawn walks, taking them later in the day for safety. Tired and sunburned, I’d restlessly pace and ache in the humid air.

Mary Ann rolled up in her golf cart and said, “We’re having an emergency association meeting to discuss violence and trespassing. Are you two coming?”

“Why are you making it in the middle of the day when most people can’t come?” Tuck asked.

“It’s an emergency,” Mary Ann countered. “You can ride with me.” She pointed at me.

I hopped in her cart and Tuck trailed behind, wobbling his front wheel.

“Are we having a vote?” I asked.

“What’s going on is a travesty,” she said.

She wheeled toward the association building slowly enough so that I could see the new, more insistent signs that were popping up around the neighborhood. Now our dogs weren’t allowed on the beach, either, walks had to be conducted in designated areas, and people watched from their windows to make sure you picked up the piles of shit left behind. I hadn’t even seen who put them up. As we pulled up to the building, I saw other carts lined up in a row. This was serious.

I heard the battle cries coming from inside the squat building and couldn’t do it.

“Mary Ann, I really have to go home. I left the tea kettle on. I’ll be right back.”

She eyed me suspiciously, like I wasn’t committed to public safety.

“If you don’t come back, you can’t vote,” she said.

“Of course I will. This affects all of us,” I said, turning. I didn’t see Tuck. He had purposely lost us. I could not face a room full of retirees arguing about immigration lockdowns. I left Mary Ann and walked by the Cronin house, close enough to be able to see through their windows. No one was home. I couldn’t imagine him keeping quiet for this long. I knew the police had been by the house. What had they told them? And if they asked for a sketch, I couldn’t imagine what he’d conjure up. I thought about confronting him, but I had no idea how that would turn out. He was unpredictable.

TEDDY

I HAD SPENT MY MORNING filling out forms and going through the motions of an “interview” with Richard Shepard. He told me about Brainshark and Salesforce training. Everything sounded tactical. Like we were waging a war with our products, like the opposition couldn’t win against our implementations. Now it was after lunch and I was given a cubicle of my own. The walls didn’t reach higher than my chest so I could see what was going on in the adjacent cubes. Exactly nothing. The woman next to me had pinned all kinds of photos from vacations with her boyfriend or husband on the walls of her cubicle. Each photo was the same except for a different theme-park backdrop — legs outstretched, hands in lap, holding on to each other like there was no greater love anywhere. Beside the photos were certificates of excellence with her name loud and proud: STACEY CHURCH. STACEY CHURCH. STACEY CHURCH. The guy on the other side of me had crystal awards with his name inscribed on each one. His superior salesmanship on view. He was working it on the phone, closing the sale. He had words of wisdom printed out in huge letters pinned to the walls of his cubicle: IS THIS THE BEST USE OF OUR TIME AND/OR MONEY? WILL WHAT I’M DOING HELP RESHAPE ARIBACORP’S FUTURE? I considered what my motivational printout would be. Of course: ASS GRASS OR CASH: NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE. Looking around, I knew that shit would not fly here. None of these bastards looked like they had a sense of humor. They were in it to win it.