THRILL

[July 13th, 2005] Editor's note: It's a lovely notion, the idea of lounging in a hammock during the summer, savoring spoonfuls of gelato and catching up on your reading. While the idea of extra leisure time may be an invention, WW is publishing this quick hit of flash fiction, an original story set in Southeast Portland, as a nod to seasonal pleasures. Fitting, we think, as a kind of book report from our book-loving town.

Ahn has never liked the thrill rides; being in the grip of a machine does not appeal to him. Now, with the baby, there's reason to let his wife, Sumiko, ride by herself. It gives her pleasure.

The baby is just over a year old, and heavy, in the carrier on Ahn's back. They wait next to the Screaming Eagle, a huge wheel with seats on the inside that hangs from a towering metal arm that swings back and forth as it rotates. The ride has not yet started; first, the riders have to take off their shoes. Sumiko waves, her legs dangling from the seat, her bare feet swinging. She is surrounded by overweight teenage girls in midriff-baring shirts, boys with arms already raised, not holding on, eager to demonstrate their bravery.

Ahn and Sumiko's house is half a mile away, and sometimes at night they can hear the amusement park, through their bedroom window; voices rise and fall in waves of fearful delight, then dissipate through the trees' leaves. Now, the Screaming Eagle trembles to life and the music cranks up. Ahn feels the baby's heat on his back, the sticky fingers on his neck, pulling at his hair, stuck in his ears. Sumiko is screaming with the rest, a blur, indistinguishable as she's flung about, overhead.

Ahn steps back, looks away to the Tilt-A-Whirl, the arcade and ball-tosses, the Ferris wheel-and then, at the concession stand, he sees the girl. He has not seen her for over a year, and had not expected, nor hoped, to see her again. She is working at the concession stand, handing out corn dogs, twisting cotton candy onto cardboard sticks. Has she seen him? It's important that she does not. Ahn steps behind one of the ride's metal supports; he can still, leaning out slightly, watch her. The girl is a young woman, really, 20 or so, smiling at a customer. She's cut her hair shorter and dyed the bangs darker, red, but her face is the same. It is a face he will never forget.

The first time was almost two years ago, a rainy night. He and Sumiko had just moved to Portland from San Diego, had traded sun for rain. It was a night like many nights; Sumiko had gotten home late, taken a shower, and come to dinner in her white bathrobe. They'd been eating in the living room, just simple udon, and out the window, behind Sumiko, it had appeared to Ahn that one of the white pickets of the fence was broken, its sharp tip missing. He stood, and stepped closer to the window. The fence was fine; he had been mistaken-there was a hand resting on the picket, obscuring its white edge, and the hand was attached to a slender arm, and a body, and a face-a girl's face, in the bushes-looking at the house. The girl stood 20 feet away, on the sidewalk. Ahn didn't say anything. He did not stare, did not betray that he had noticed; he could see his own calm expression in the window, reflected back at him.

The girl returned. She came once a week, twice a month-there was no regularity, no reason. Once dusk set in, Ahn was always checking, in his peripheral vision, to see if she were watching him. He had been down, depressed in those days, still working at home, diagramming products that were never produced, and Sumiko usually worked late at her firm.

Alone at night, he would read the newspaper, drink a cup of tea, toast a piece of bread, vacuum the floor. Every simple thing held a thrill. He never looked directly at the girl; he never mentioned anything to Sumiko. He liked how he could see his own reflection in the window, and how the girl's face-white and round, patiently watching-was sometimes caught within the edges of his body.

Ahn took off his shirt, one night, and then his undershirt. Naked to the waist, he strode forcefully back and forth across the living room; for almost 10 minutes, he swung his arms, pushed out his chest; heat radiated from his skin. His fingers trembled with the buttons when he put the shirt back on. Sumiko came home, soon after, and asked him what he'd been doing; she said something about him seemed changed. Smiling, she unbuttoned his shirt, unbuckled his belt. She pulled her dress over her head, her black hair sliding smoothly through the hole in its neck. She led him to the couch, and when she straddled him the lights were on, the curtains open.

Ahn sometimes wondered how much the girl could know-did she realize that his family was originally from Korea, that he was born in San Diego, that Sumiko's family was Japanese-American? Did she know their names? Had she guessed that Sumiko was three years older? What was important, what was clear by her watching, was that she found them remarkable.

So much heat was lost through windows, Sumiko often said, in those days, and he told her he liked the heavy curtains open. He did not tell her why, and she did not ask. As her pregnancy progressed, he sometimes reached out to slow her, turned her profile to the window. He placed his hands under her robe, on the round warmth of her stomach, as if to say, This is what we have done.

The first night Sumiko brought the baby home from the hospital, Ahn held him up to the window, showing him the crescent moon. He was allowing the girl to admire the perfect shape of the baby's head, his perfectly symmetrical ears.

Ahn loved it without effort, being a father. It surprised him that he did not resist the diaper-changing, the sour-milk smell in the sheets, the sleeplessness. Late one night, he had lain awake next to Sumiko as she nursed the baby. They'd been back from the hospital for only two days. Watching, Ahn thought of secrets-how he believed they were permissible, even necessary, how they should only be kept for so long. He told Sumiko, then, about the girl who watched their house, about the first night and the later ones, about the time on the couch, their two bodies framed in the lighted window. Sumiko listened. Startled and interested, yet in a muted way that made him uncertain if she had heard him correctly. And then she lay the baby down, buttoned her nightgown and closed her eyes, asleep.

The following morning he decided not to mention the girl again unless Sumiko did. It could have been that it bothered her, and she was letting it settle, or that she had dismissed it all as unimportant, inconsequential, or even that she understood. Still, in the evening Sumiko tensed when passing the windows, moved with increased hesitation.

At dinner, the third night after he'd told, Ahn could see the girl's white face over Sumiko's shoulder, past the reflection of Sumiko's shiny black hair with its straight white part.

Sumiko noticed him looking past her. Slowly, she set down her silverware, took her napkin from her lap. She stood, and untied the sash of her robe. For a moment, faintly smiling, she looked across the table at him.

Then she turned and stepped away from the table, close to the window, almost touching the pane. She shrugged her shoulders and let the robe slide down her arms, so it fell softly around her feet. In the window's reflection, Ahn watched his wife. The white of her bra, her underwear, stood out, startling against her darker skin. Hands on her hips, she hooked her thumbs under the fabric of her underwear and pushed it down, exposing her Caesarian incision. The black threads of the stitches rose and fell, like handwriting, a scribbled word. A faint smile on her face, Sumiko slowly raised her right hand and waved through the window.

Peter Rock is the author of four novels, including The Bewildered. He teaches creative writing at Reed College.