A Lady Under Siege - By B.G. Preston Page 0,3

for an eternity, then unleashed a smoky explosion of phlegmy hacks and coughs, exaggerated for comic effect. “Smooooth,” he croaked.

THEN FROM A HEIGHT, from the shadows, came a woman’s voice. “Excuse me, can you be quiet? I have a ten-year-old with school tomorrow.”

It took them a moment to locate her. A second story window in the townhouse next door. There she was—a face, pretty but scowling, thirtyish, blonde hair. Derek extricated his legs from under the picnic table, stretched himself unsteadily to his full height, tilted his head back and snarled, “So who asked you to procreate? The planet’s overpopulated and it’s your fucking fault! Get the kid some earplugs!”

For a moment there was silence. An ambulance could be heard faintly in a distant street. The woman answered, in a low, level voice, “I’d love to keep shouting, but I don’t want to wake my child.” She added, with a quiet, whispered fury, “You’re a monster. You’re not human.” Then she closed the window, and was gone.

“Just ignore her,” Derek said.

“New neighbour?” asked Ken.

“Yeah. Uptight bitch.”

“Cute though.”

Derek shouted up at the empty window, “You’re cute when you’re angry!” In a softer voice he muttered, “Uptight bitch.”

Violetta said, “Maybe we should go.”

Kaitlin made a pouty, disappointed noise.

“You wanna stay?”

She nodded.

“You don’t have to win.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Derek.

“We had a bet—that she was going to get some tonight,” Violetta said.

“Vi!” Kaitlin yelped.

“That’s the spirit,” Derek cried gleefully. “I’m the last man standing, and by candlelight and moonlight on this gorgeous night I could almost be mistaken for George Clooney, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” Kaitlin murmured.

“George Clooney doesn’t live in a junkyard,” said Violetta.

“I’ve got grand ambitions for this night,” said Derek, ignoring her. “I’m going to tip all the shit off this table, and you’ll see. Before sunrise, I swear!”

“You want to do it on the table?” asked Kaitlin, giggling doubtfully.

“Oh yeah! There’s something about doing it outdoors, I love it! I’ll put down a blanket. Or get a sleeping bag to crawl into—ever tried it?”

She shook her head.

“Al fresco!” he hollered joyfully. “It’s like hot chocolate on ice cream, only the ice cream’s on the outside and the heat’s all in the middle. Frozen outside, hot inside—I’ve never yet seen those fuckers on the Food Channel pull that one off.”

“I think I’d rather be in the house,” said Kaitlin, glancing up at the window, “so no one’s going to start yelling down at me.”

“Inside can be arranged too,” Derek said. He tilted his head back and cupped his hands for one final shout toward his neighbour’s darkened house. “Thought you killed the party, did you? I don’t think so!”

3

Voices outside woke Meghan. She looked around uncertainly—after nearly seven weeks she still wasn’t used to waking up in this bedroom, in this house. She hated this place, a drab little townhouse sardined between unkempt neighbours, just around the corner from a stretch of Queen Street East littered with greasy spoons, dollar stores, Money Marts and Laundromats. Seven weeks since she had separated from her husband, and it felt like she had traded lives along with addresses—she had left behind a leafy, upscale suburb, exchanged it for being woken up almost every night, at two, three, or even four in the morning, by that.

Do drunks not realize how stupid they sound to others? Of course they don’t, they’re drunk, she thought wearily. It’s the second time tonight that idiot has woken me up. But as she came to fuller consciousness and listened more carefully, she began to realize there was more than just the usual drunken banter going on. They weren’t talking. The noises made her think of the word rutting. Grunts and slaps and a wet sound like suction. Like animals do it, a stag and a doe. Outdoors, in nature. Oh my God, are they really doing it outside?

From her window she could see that the candles were extinguished. A giant black slug squirmed on top of the picnic table—a sleeping bag with two bodies inside. Not twenty feet away from where she watched, they were copulating.

She shrunk back discreetly to the edge of the window, peeking like a kid from behind a tree. I can’t believe I’m watching this, she thought, but she didn’t turn away. I have to watch, to tell people how it ends, she told herself, straining to hear the grunts and exhortations coming from below, and fighting an urge to open the window to catch more. A tingle passed through her—the unavoidable titillation in being an