Karolina Waclawiak: The Invaders

I didn’t have to do anything anymore or pretend that I had some kind of calling.

Cheryl put kind of a kink into my plan of riding this out forever. My father would be pissed when he got home. Divorce probably. Or a slow burn of quiet, which they were already well into. I was blood and no one was throwing me out. She would go away, like the other ex-wives from the neighborhood, forced into a tidy condo in town, ousted out of the club. They didn’t take kindly to single-lady competition here. Married couples in some state of misery or single men with liver spots. That was it. I didn’t think Cheryl deserved a fate like that. I really didn’t. She was different from the others, and really not that bad. She took care of me even after I spent years treating her like she didn’t belong in our breaking-down home.

I saw Jill coming. She was wearing a short white dress again. I hoped it was see-through, especially with the sea spray still going strong. Even though I knew I would only get so far with her, no matter how bored she was in her marriage.

She waved at me and walked down the seawall quickly, careful not to fall when she reached the rocks. She was wearing some kind of cork shoes and held both arms out to steady herself. I got up to help her and she took my arm and smiled.

“Thanks,” she said. I nodded, suddenly very nervous. Her dress looked like a sack sort of, but it tightened around her breasts. She made everything look good. She leaned in to kiss my cheek and I could smell her. Sweet flowers, like the kind around here hanging over the white fences.

She pulled away and I asked her what the kiss was for.

“A hello and thank you,” she said.

She stared down at the rocks and tried to figure out how she was going to sit down. The seagulls dropped oysters and clams down on the rocks to break them into pieces and there were shards everywhere. I leaned down and scraped them away, trying to make her a seat. She sat down, folding her hands behind her ass and pressing down as she sat, so she could have some fabric beneath her.

“You missed quite a show,” I said.

“What happened?”

“This crazy guy was trying to vandalize the No Trespassing signs. The police came and hauled his ass off,” I told her.

“There’s too many signs now.”

“How many would be enough?’ I asked.

“I don’t know, honestly.”

I thought it might be time to round up the guys to fuck shit up again, but most of them had moved away to start their lives already. Only Steven was left. I wasn’t sure if he was up for it anymore. Besides, he’d probably burn her house down for fun. No one really understood the true extent of Steven’s appetite for destruction unless they saw it firsthand.

Jill stared out at the ocean, at the setting sun, and smiled. “This is nice.”

“It’s pretty good,” I said.

“I never come over here anymore because it’s all blocked off.”

“It wasn’t always like this,” I said.

She murmured that she knew.

“I bet the sunsets are nice over here,” she said.

“Girls like it,” I said.

She turned and smirked at me.

“Everyone does,” I continued.

“Everyone does,” she repeated.

We stared out at the water and I wasn’t sure what to say to her anymore or what she wanted from me. Right now she just wanted to sit next to me and stare into space.

“What do you think will happen?” she finally said.

I didn’t know what she was referring to and I hoped it wasn’t some kind of big, philosophical conversation starter.

I said, “I don’t think the storm will hit us.”

She turned back to look at the sky.

“Maybe it will,” she said.

I went into how the weatherman said it wouldn’t, that it was already in South Carolina, but she wasn’t listening.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I asked her. She shook her head.

She asked me where I lived and I pointed to my dark house. Only the lights in the living room on the first floor were on.

She wrapped her arms around her legs and I asked her if the mosquitoes were getting to her. She shook her head. Was she giving signals for me to put my arm around her? “Where’s your husband?” I asked.

“Out there.”

She pointed behind her to the course. They would have to come in around dark, probably go upstairs to the Captain’s Lounge to have a few scotches, pat one another on the back and talk about their handicaps.

I nodded my head and watched the sun drift down. She looked down at my hands, my limp one in my lap and the other one I was using to steady myself on the rocks.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

I looked down. “I can’t feel anything,” I said.

“Nothing at all?” she said. She leaned in and kissed me.

“I can feel that,” I said. I kissed her back.

She pulled away and said, “Good, what about this?”

She reached out to touch my hand, my arm. I couldn’t feel it. She pressed her thumbs into my skin and I saw the white imprints when she released it and then watched as they quickly disappeared. She pinched me and I didn’t move.

“Stop,” I said.

She tried to pull my hand toward her, to touch her, to see if I’d flinch or move away, but I didn’t. She put my dead hand on her leg and I was sorry that I couldn’t feel anything. She had little blond hairs on her tanned legs; I wanted to feel those but couldn’t. She put her hand on my pants, where my penis was, and it barely registered. She pulled it away quickly.

We looked at each other and she smiled at me like she was sorry for me and I wanted to pull my hand off her leg. I could have used my good hand to pull the dead one off, but that would seem to show even bigger weakness, so I didn’t move at all and she kept smiling at me. Finally, she gave me my hand back and jumped up.

“How did you know I watched you?” I said.

She turned to me and her hair fell onto her lips and she stared at me, real deep, and I turned away.

“I saw your car. Then you,” she said. She looked down at her smooth legs.

“Why didn’t you let me in?” I said it as a joke, but she considered it.

“If I knew that you’d stop showing up, I would have.”

And then what, I wanted to say. And then what? The breeze picked up her short white dress and I could see a flash of flesh-colored underwear. Full fabric — I was curious why she didn’t wear thongs like other girls. Maybe it was an age thing.

I reached out and slid my fingers under her underwear and let my skin touch hers and felt the goose bumps rise. She let me touch her for what felt like minutes. She was smooth and soft, and when I pressed down I could feel the muscles she got from hours of playing tennis. She felt spectacular. Jill slid away from me and sat back down and put her hand over mine. We stared out at the sun until it was nearly gone. This was the best I was going to get.

She turned and smiled at me, then said, “Do you think they’re finished playing yet?”

I said, “Maybe you should just go over there now.”

She looked at me a little hurt, but we were now both aware that nothing was going to happen and that this wasn’t fun anymore or cute. I wasn’t sure what she was expecting, maybe for me to start showing up again, hiding in the jungle gym, hoping to get a glance of her. She got up and brushed off her dress, then put her arms out again as she moved over the crab carcasses and broken pieces of clam shell.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” she said. She touched my arm and it felt like something she would say to her kid, not someone she had just kissed.

CHERYL

I WAS ALONE in the house and everyone was gone, the TV was set to the Weather Channel, and the meteorologist was bleating about high winds and storm swells in Cape Hatteras.