The Neighbors Are Watching (5 page)

“I won’t be home late,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Where’s Diana?”

Only then did Allison shift her eyes toward him, fixing him with a look of watery venom. “I don’t
know
, Joe. I’m not her
mother.
”

Joe’s sympathy for her evaporated immediately and it took more will than he thought he possessed not to call her a bitch and tell her to get herself together. “I’ll see you later,” he said and stomped into the garage letting the door slam behind him. Not that she’d hear it. He doubted she could hear anything except the hum of her own brain. Once again, the need to
do
something about his wife nagged at Joe. Summer was almost over and Allison needed to straighten up and get back to work because he’d be fucked if she thought she was going to parlay this domestic business into time off. He could feel his anger winding up. She’d been indulging herself for too long—and he’d been letting her. It had to stop and he’d have to figure out a way to get through to her.

He was already sweating when he got into his Lexus and punched the garage-door opener fastened on the visor. Still angry, he punched the gas as he reversed out of his driveway. Across the narrow street, another car was also backing out of its garage, and although he hit the brakes as soon as he realized what was going to happen, Joe didn’t have enough time to stop before their bumpers struck and the hard plastic of taillights shattered onto the asphalt.

“
GodDAMN
it!” Joe smacked the steering wheel hard with the heel of his hand. It was his fault, no question, and now he had to resign himself to being totally late to work. It wasn’t as if anyone was keeping score—Joe was general manager—but it threw off his rhythm for the whole night when he
came in late and he could never seem to get it back. Joe drove forward a few feet so that he was back in his driveway and got out of his car. He didn’t even know who he’d crashed into.

The sexy blond who’d moved in a few months ago but whose name he didn’t know had gotten out of her car and was inspecting the damage to the back of her Honda Civic.

“I’m so sorry,” Joe said, using his most solicitous please-allow-me-to-offer-you-a-free-dessert tone. “I tried to stop, but …”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It doesn’t look that bad.”

Joe sighed, taking in the sight of her crushed taillight and bruised bumper. He tried to calculate the odds that she’d just agree to settle it without dragging in the insurance companies and whether he could afford the out-of-pocket expense to fix it. “No,” he said, “not too bad, I guess.” He extended his hand. “I’m Joe,” he said. “Joe Montana.”

She smiled at him and shook his hand. “Like the football player?” she said.

“I wish.” Relaxing slightly, Joe took her in. Too much makeup and a tan that looked unnaturally deep, but a very pretty face, fantastic breasts peeking out of her sheer top, and great legs totally exposed by her tiny miniskirt.

“Your wife’s Allison, right? I’m still getting to know everyone on the street. Guess I missed the last block party. I’m Jessalyn,” she said. “Or just Jess.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Jess. So listen, let me get my insur—”

“You know what, I’m kind of in a hurry right now? I know this sounds bad, but it’s not like I don’t know where you live—or you don’t know where I live. Do you think I could just come over later or maybe—”

“Hey, Joe. I heard the crash. Everything okay out here?”

Reluctantly, Joe shifted his gaze from Jessalyn to see Dick Werner striding over to them, a mayoral look of concern on his face.

“Hey, Dick, how’s it going?” Joe had to keep himself from smirking. He couldn’t understand how a grown man under the age of seventy would
allow himself to be called “Dick.” There were so many variations on “Richard” that would work fine—even
Rick
, for god’s sake. But that was Dick Werner to a tee, Joe thought, with his side-parted hair, his 1970s porn star mustache, and his Topsiders. He just didn’t give a shit about how he appeared to anyone else—probably even thought he looked stylish.

“So would that be okay?” Jessalyn said, completely ignoring Dick and giving Joe a little conspiratorial wink—both actions making Joe feel suddenly manly and cool. “You know, about coming—”

“Sure,” Joe said. “Absolutely. I have to get to work also.”

“Want me to have a quick look at this for you?” Dick asked Jessalyn. “You could have damage to the—”

“You know what, it’s totally fine.” Jessalyn brushed him off. “It was totally my fault and we’re going to … unless your car … Is your car okay?” A pretty furrow of concern creased her face and she licked her lips. She was kind of trashy looking, Joe thought, but definitely hot. He wondered how he’d missed noticing her before now. A quick backward glance to his own car told him that she’d taken the brunt of the collision. “No, I mean, yes, I’m fine. And we can—I mean, I can—”

“I’m not going to be back until late,” she said. “So why don’t I just come over in the morning. That okay?” Joe nodded. She gave him another wink and turned to get back into her car. “Okay, see you then!”

As if to convince them both that the accident had been her fault, Jessalyn revved her engine and peeled out of the street, leaving Joe and Dick to stare blankly after her.

“Well,
that’s
something,” Dick said, apropos of nothing, and knelt down to pick up the shards of red plastic. Wanting to leave, but unwilling to let Dick clean up the mess that he’d caused, Joe hurried to scoop up some of the pieces.

“I’ve got it, Dick, thanks.”

“Listen, Joe, since we’re here—I was going to come to talk to you anyway—your, uh … your …” Dick’s sallow face flushed. “Her name’s Dina, isn’t it?”

“Diana?” Joe asked. He stood up, gripping the bits of plastic in his hand. A few yards down, he could see his skinny neighbor Sam leaning against her mailbox, smoking a cigarette and watching them with interest. What the hell, didn’t anyone have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon than eavesdrop?

“Diana, right,” Dick said. “Did you know that she’s over at my house? She’s been over a lot lately, hanging out with Kevin. I didn’t know if you knew that.”

No, Joe didn’t know—having missed that development while trying to keep his marriage together and still earn a living. But what difference could it possibly make to Dick if Diana was spending time with his son, who appeared to be a complete delinquent to everyone but his parents?

“Is that a problem? They’re about the same age and Diana’s new to the area. It’s nice of Kevin to make friends with her.” Joe didn’t know where Dick was going with his line of inquiry, but he wasn’t going to help the man get there. He knew Dick was a right-leaning good ol’ boy, but hadn’t taken him for an outright racist. He didn’t want to think it possible that Diana’s color mattered to Dick, but you just couldn’t tell with people anymore. Especially not here in this sunny patch of North San Diego County where so many residents were not at all as accepting and easygoing as they’d have you believe.

“Yeah,” Dick said, “but, you know, they’ve been spending a lot of time on the computer together. You know what they—what kids can get up to. I really wanted Kevin to get a job this summer but now it’s too late with school starting. And I don’t know if … Listen, Joe, man-to-man here—”

“Well, it’s not like Kevin’s going to get her into trouble, is it Dick?” The comment was so unlike him, but Joe’s patience had just run out and he had to get away from Dick and the corrosive drama of his home life. In comparison, the hectic dinner shift he was headed into would be paradise. He could see that he’d thrown Dick into an impossible quandary with his statement—there wasn’t really a polite response to what he’d just said—and
he took advantage of the man’s temporary silence by walking over to his car and getting in.

“Sorry, Dick, I’ve really got to get going. I’m already late.”

But instead of saying good-bye and heading back to his own house, Dick followed Joe to his car and leaned in the driver’s side window. “I’m just saying, Joe. I thought you’d want to know—you know, where she is.”

“Okay, Dick, thanks.”

“Is Allison okay?” Dick asked. “Dorothy says she hasn’t seen her in church for weeks.”

Joe felt his jaw tensing. He’d never been a churchgoer himself and didn’t accompany Allison on Sundays, which was probably why it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would have noticed her absence. Of course it would have to be Dick. Who else? Fucking perfect.

“Allison’s been under the weather lately,” Joe said. “Some kind of bug. Plus she’s feeling a little overwhelmed … lot of work on the house.…”

“Right, of course,” Dick said. “It’s a lot of work.”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”

Dick gave the top of Joe’s car a tap and finally backed off so that Joe could pull out. It really didn’t matter now whether he managed to get to work on time, whether his customers spent a hundred dollars a head tonight, or whether he managed to get through dinner without fielding a single complaint; Joe’s night was ruined—unsalvageable. As he rolled to the end of the street, he saw that Sam was still standing at her mailbox, her cigarette burned down to the filter. She waved to him as he went past, smiling at him like she knew something.

S
am was only a quarter way through her bag of carrots when the juicer squealed and jammed to a grinding halt. She reached for the off switch, but her wet hands were too slick and she slipped, dislodging the canister and spilling what little juice she’d already collected.

“Fuck!”

Bright orange liquid flowed everywhere, seeming to expand as it moved across the white-tiled countertop. It would stain permanently no matter how fast she soaked it up or what kind of product she used to clean it.

“Fucking fuck.”

She yanked the power cord—something every manual told you not to do—finally bringing the machine to a stop, but the gears had ground against each other too long and she could smell burning plastic. The thing was dead.

“Gloria!” Sam crossed the kitchen to get something to stop the mess from spreading and dripping onto the floor where it could do more damage but froze somewhere in the middle, unsure whether a sponge or paper towels would do a better job. Paralyzed with indecision, she watched as carrot juice seeped ever deeper into the grout. She wanted to cry. These were the kinds of little things that could just kill you, she thought.

A flash of movement outside caught Sam’s eye. She looked out the kitchen window into the backyard where she could see Joe Montana’s badgirl prodigal daughter shuffling through the dead eucalyptus leaves on her way to the Werners’ house. This had been going on for at least a month, but Sam had never stopped the girl and asked her why she had to maneuver her heavily pregnant self across the backyard to get to the house she could probably reach in less time by going the conventional front way. Sam knew what it meant to be a girl in trouble and it was no skin off her nose, even though it was somewhat ridiculous for a girl in her condition to be creeping through the foliage to go see a boy—because obviously it was Kevin that she was hanging out with and not either one of his asshole parents. Although from what Sam knew of Kevin, he was destined to turn out in the same rotten mold as his bigoted father and his self-loathing, antifeminist mother.

Sam felt a stab of angry fear in her chest. It was 2007, well into a new
century
, but you’d never know it from the way Dick Werner looked at her and Gloria every time their paths happened to cross—as if they were witches straight out of seventeenth-century Salem. He probably got off on imagining her and Gloria together even while he quietly condemned them. He was just the type. She’d seen it in his piggy little eyes.

Sam watched as Diana ducked behind the Werners’ fence and disappeared from view. She had to stifle the urge to run out there and tell her to be careful—to stay away from those people. It wasn’t Sam’s business after all, even if Diana regularly used her backyard as a connecting artery. The first time it had happened was back in early August on a weekend when neither Sam nor Gloria had their boys. Gloria was upstairs, a cold wet rag to her migraine-plagued forehead, and Sam was sitting outside trying to organize all the boxes of beads, crystals, and semiprecious stones she used for her jewelry. It was way too hot inside and their air conditioning cost upward of fifteen dollars a day to run. There’d been at least the hint of a breeze in the backyard, so Sam poked around in the topaz and turquoise
until she was startled to see the very pretty, very pregnant teenager appear before her like some kind of swollen apparition. Sam knew who the girl was, having extracted that much gossip from Dorothy, who’d been more than willing to share it.

“Hey,” the girl said. “I’m Diana.”

Sam smiled at Diana, a rush of emotions swirling through her. She felt a powerful maternal urge toward the girl, which was only heightened by the fact that she was missing Connor with knifelike intensity. And there was another, much sadder emotion stirred by the girl’s appearance. Diana looked so bereft—so lost and frightened in bare feet and an ill-fitting and overly cheerful summer dress—it immediately threw Sam into her own teenage past, almost thirty years ago now, when she’d been in exactly the same situation—young, pregnant, and disgraced.

“My name is Sam,” she said simply and bit back the questions—
What are you going to do? Are you going to give up your baby? Because you’ll regret it for the rest of your life
.

“Is it okay if I just cut across here? I’m not, like, breaking in or anything.” Diana touched her belly, as if that spoke to her credibility.

“Do you want something to drink?” Sam asked her. “Some lemonade or something?”

“It’s okay, I’m good,” Diana said. She pointed to Sam’s jewelry boxes glittering in the sunlight. “Those yours? I mean—what are they for?”

“I make jewelry,” Sam said. “Necklaces mostly.” Her gaze traveled down to Diana’s tattooed ankles. “And some anklets too,” she said.

“Cool,” Diana said and moved toward the fence. “Well, I’m going to go. Thanks for letting me … Thanks.”