Touching Strangers Read online

  “About fucking time,” Zack Pike shouted, and slammed his window shut.

  The man in black stood up and wiped his forehead with theback of his hand. He was smiling. Samantha noticed his teethwere unusually white for a guy in the trades. Maybe he was aflosser.

  Mr. Böröcz pointed to the dead gull and said somethingSamantha couldn’t make out. The man in black nodded, went tohis truck, and came back with a garbage bag and some kind ofgripping tool that looked like a giant pair of tongs. He handedthe bag to Mr. Böröcz, who held it open while he used the toolto pick the bird up by its puffy breast and dropped it into the bag,but one of its wing bones hooked onto the rim and it hungthere—half in, half out.

  Mr. Böröcz held the bag as far from his body as he couldmanage while the man in black attempted to knock the carcassinside with his tool, but it seemed to be stuck. Finally he used hisbare hand to unhook the wing from the edge of the bag.Samantha looked away in absolute horror. She retched. Whenshe looked back out the window the man in black was walkingto the dumpster in the corner of the lot, swinging the bag ofdeath in his hand.

  Samantha closed the curtains, went to the bathroom, andturned on the tap for a shower—her second of the day.

  *

  Aaron could smell Samantha’s cucumber body scrub fromthe hallway. He took out his keys, unlocked all three locks, andlet himself in, tossing his mask and gloves in the stainless steel binin the foyer.

  He went to the kitchen, put the carton of blueberries in thesink to be washed, and helped himself to a generous squirt ofhand sanitizer that he rubbed on his hands and forearms. He wasabout to get another squirt for his face when Samantha walked inand stood naked in the doorway. Her pale skin was dotted withmoisture, her black hair pinned in a sopping pile atop her head.

  “You used all the hot water, didn’t you,” Aaron said.

  “There’s a new tenant in the building,” Samantha said. “He’s dirty.”

  “Not as dirty as the dead bird just I saw.”

  “What? What dead bird?”

  “A dead bird. On the sidewalk. It was disgusting.”

  “You saw a dead bird?”

  “That’s what I said. You okay, Sam? Repetition is asymptom of dementia.”

  “No, no. I saw a dead bird too. It fell on a car in the parking lot.”

  “What? When?”

  “About twenty minutes ago. Right before I got in theshower. The new guy touched it with his bare hand.” Goosebumps flared up all over Samantha’s body.

  “What new guy?” Aaron asked.

  “I told you. The new tenant.”

  “How do you know he’s a new tenant?”

  “He has a key to Ms. Fenster’s old place. Whatever, itdoesn’t matter.”

  “He’ll be dead in a month.”

  “I don’t know. Seems healthy.”

  “Nobody is healthy. The blueberries are in the sink. I need a shower.”

  Samantha examined a freckle on her upper arm. “I don’twant them anymore,” she said.“

  Is there any hot water—what?”

  “The blueberries. You can toss them. Or you can have them.”

  “Samantha, I went all the way—”

  “They look like bird flu.”

  Aaron swallowed. Samantha continued to examine the speckon her arm. The goose bumps on her body began to fade. Abead of water glistened inside her belly button.

  “What are you talking about?” Aaron said.

  Samantha shrugged. “Go look at my laptop.”

  He went down the hall into the bedroom. Samantha’s laptopwas open on the desk. The screen showed the entry for ‘Avianflu’ on Wikipedia. In the top right corner of the page was animage from an electron microscope of Influenza A virus subtypeH5N1: a cluster of bluish, bulbous circles that to a paranoid eyemight resemble blueberries.

  Aaron put his face in his hands and sighed. Now he wasn’tgoing to be able to eat them either.

  “See?” Samantha said, coming into the room behind him.She went to the dresser and plucked out a pair of clean pyjamapants.

  “Why did you look this up?” Aaron said.

  “Because of the dead seagull! It fell right out of the sky,Aaron. Birds don’t just do that. There must have been somethingwrong with it.”

  Aaron scrolled through the page, reading quickly. “It says herethat sudden death is one of the signs a bird might be infected.”

  They looked at each other. The red blotches on Aaron’scheeks grew pale to match Samantha’s almost translucent skin.

  “He touched it,” she said.

  “What? Who? What?”

  “The new guy.” Samantha clipped on a bra and went to thewindow. She looked out across the lot at Ms. Fenster’s old place.The door was closed, but the light in the window was on.

  “Who cares if he touched it,” Aaron said. “That’s hisproblem. He sounds like an idiot.”

  “He didn’t even care.”

  Aaron took a brand new bar of soap out of the drawer in hisnight table. “I need a shower, stat.”

  “Wait,” Samantha said. “Come look.”

  Aaron puffed out his cheeks and joined his girlfriend at the window.

  At the other end of the parking lot, behind a rusty fence,Martha Haggerty’s cat, Nuggles, was hunched on a small patch ofgrass, feasting on something that looked like bits of entrails. It wasextra strange because he didn’t usually venture to that area of thelot. It was the place where some tenants took their dogs to shit.

  Aaron squinted. “What’s he got?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s chowing down. Look, he’s got another one.”

  “Oh my God, I think it’s—”

  “Dead baby birds. Dozens of them.”

  They watched in horror. Aaron gagged. After a few minutesMr. Böröcz came out into the lot with a rake and a garbage bag. The cat took off, licking its chops, and hid under a parked car.Mr. Böröcz shook his head and mumbled to himself as he stuckthe bag to a nail on a post and began raking up the baby birdremains.

  STAGE 1A: SEX

  Aaron had a forty-five minute shower. The water went coldduring the lathering of his lower body. He sat in the tub shivering under an icy spray and cleaned the spaces between his toes.

  Samantha looked up diseases on the Internet. Bird flu, swineflu, dog flu, horse flu. Spanish flu and Asian flu. Typhus, cholera,bubonic plague. She looked at pictures of blackened corpses,scaly rashes, x-rays of lungs with pneumonia. Telescopic imagesof invisible dots that could kill you. She looked until she felt herchest was coated with cobwebs, and then she looked some more.

  She followed links that led her to syphilis, gonorrhea, HPVand HIV. She felt a little less ill at ease on these pages. Aaron wasthe only sexual partner she’d had in her life. She made him gettested for every disease on the chart before he so much as put hishands on her naked breasts. Aaron claimed he hadn’t slept withanyone before either, but sometimes she had her doubts. Therewas this one girl, Nicole Mowbray, a co-worker of Aaron’s atFaucet Fountain, who she knew had a thing for him. She’d callhim every now and again just to chat, and once she showed upat their place after an alleged fight with her roommate and slepton their couch, contaminating the apartment with her presence.Samantha threw the blankets Nicole had used in the garbage andcould still smell Nicole’s horrid scent of drugstore perfume andmenstruation on the couch to this day.

  Aaron walked into the bedroom with a towel around hiswaist. “I have a new freckle,” he said.

  Samantha continued to browse Wikipedia’s list of STDs. “Where?”

  “On the underside of my foreskin.”

  Samantha turned to face him. “Are you joking?”

  Aaron shook his head.

  Samantha closed her web browser and approached herboyfriend. His face was all blotchy from the shower, his wet hairstuck flat to his h
ead. She put her hand on the knot in his towel.“Let me see.”

  The towel fell at Aaron’s feet. He pushed it aside with his toe.

  Samantha got onto her knees in front of him. She took hispenis in her hands and gently pulled back the foreskin. There was an oblong mark, light-brownish in hue, on the inside of the prepuce. She brushed it with her fingertip as if it were a drip of chocolate. Aaron flinched but let her touch it.

  “Are you sure this is new?” she asked.

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “It could be nothing.”

  “It could be cancer.”

  “I don’t think it’s cancer.”

  “It’s cancer.”

  She looked up at his face. “You’re kind of flushed. Do you have a fever?”

  “No. Maybe.” He held his palm to his forehead. “Probably.”

  Samantha stood up and gently rolled her fingertips on thelymph nodes in his neck and at the back of his head. “Hmm.Maybe a little swollen. Look up?”

  Aaron did as she asked.

  She placed her thumbs on his cheekbones and pulled the skindown slightly for a look under his lower eyelids. There was someredness but not much. She put her ear against his chest. “Deepbreath.”

  He inhaled slowly, filling his lungs like balloons, and exhaledinto her hair. His heart echoed in her eardrum. His pulse wassomewhat elevated but not alarmingly so. She pulled her headaway and looked him in the eye to see if his pupils were irregularly dilated. They weren’t.

  “I don’t feel well,” he moaned.

  Samantha held her hand against his cheek. It was a littlewarm, probably from the shower. “I think you’re okay.”

  He felt the nodes in his armpits and shivered. “I don’t know,Sam. I’ve got chills.”

  “You’re making yourself sick.”

  “That’s rich, coming from you.”

  She sighed. “Fine, hang on.”

  Aaron stood in place and stared at the laptop’s screensaver—an animated cardiogram pulsing across a black background—while Samantha went to the bathroom and came back with aglass thermometer wrapped in cellophane and a small tub ofpetroleum jelly.

  “All right, spread ’em,” she said.

  Aaron scoffed. “Come on. Really?”

  “It’s the best way to get an accurate reading.” She sat crosslegged on the floor and opened the jelly jar. “Come.”

  “Can’t we just use the digital one?”

  Samantha shook her head and poked the thermometer out of itswrapper. “It’s broken or something. I used it earlier and it gave mea normal reading, which is crazy because I’m sick as a celebrity.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re totally fine.”

  “I’m really not. Now get over here.”

  Aaron ran a hand through his wet hair and went to her. Hecould feel his anal sphincter tightening at the thought of whatwas about to happen. “Be gentle and go slow, all right?”

  Samantha coated the thermometer with jelly. “I know. Relax.”

  He turned and faced away from her, willing himself calm.“Maybe I should do you next,” he said, and laughed, but she didn’t respond. He felt her cool hand on his inner thigh, and triedto think about math problems, reading by a fireplace, or lookingout the window on a long train ride, but it all swirled back to theglass tube that would be sticking out of his ass any second now.

  “Spread your legs a little more,” Samantha said. “Or we canmove to the couch if you want.”

  “No, let’s just do it here. Hurry up.”

  The thermometer was cold against his anus. He pinched hischeeks despite himself as Samantha slid it up inside him.

  “Sshh,” she said, and rubbed his lower back in circles.

  A siren sounded outside, close to the building, and for amoment he thought the cops would break down the door and arrest him for an obscure crime he’d either forgotten or hadn’trealized he’d committed, slapping cuffs on his naked, thermometer-stuffed ass and laughing at the half-erection he suddenlynoticed was bobbing between his legs. Why was this happening?He turned a little to the side so Samantha wouldn’t see it. Thesiren faded into the distance.

  “Just a bit longer,” she said. “Wait, are you . . . ? Oh my God, are you hard?”

  “Shut up.”

  She was smiling. “I can’t believe you’re hard.”

  “Can you take the thermometer out please?”

  “Just a minute.” She reached around and put her hand on hispenis. It was warm. She squeezed it gently and he closed his eyes.She had read on the Internet about men getting excited by having objects inserted into their anuses. She hadn’t realized Aaronwas one of those men. Maybe he hadn’t known, either. His penisthickened and hardened inside her grip.

  She said, “Do you like this?”

  He kept his eyes closed, breathing deeply. She thought hisribcage might break open from the violent thumping of hisheart.

  She began to stroke him. “Do you want me to . . . ? You know.”

  “Right now?” he said, opening his eyes. “I have to be at work soon.”

  “There’s time.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, okay.”

  She stood up and went to the bathroom again. Aaron stoodwith his legs spread like a shortstop waiting for a ground ball andlooked down at his own penis. The oblong freckle was definitelynew. He was vigilant when it came to cleaning the remote flapsand folds of his body. He made a mental note to call Dr. Zilber’soffice for an appointment, and his erection began to fade whenhe thought of the waiting room full of coughing, sneezing,bleeding, contagious people.

  Fortunately Samantha returned just in time with a bottle of mouthwash and a paper cup. She got onto her knees in front of him and took a swig; swooshed the liquid around in her mouth,gurgled, and spat it into the cup. Then she reached out andcupped his scrotum in her cool dry hand.

  His body prickled at the touch.

  She looked up at him. His penis solidified almost instantly,grazing her left cheek. She closed her eyes, leaned forward, andtook him in her mouth.

  He inhaled sharply through his teeth. Her tongue was icyfrom the mouthwash. The sensation was irritating and pleasing atthe same time. He gave himself over to the sterilized wetness ofSamantha’s mouth, to the comforting sensation of her palms onhis freshly showered buttocks.

  She stopped for a second to scrape a pubic hair off her tongue and looked up at him. His breathing had slowed and there was an expression of dumb peacefulness on his face. She unclipped her bra, let it fall, and took him in her mouth again. He tasted slightly of soap. She was beginning to get turned on herself, which didn’t always happen. She liked pleasing Aaron sexually, to see the bliss and gratitude in his eyes after she’d brought him to orgasm. But it was rare for her to get excited as well. Having sex was just something to do to ward off monotony, like playing a board game or cooking an elaborate meal.

  This time was different. She was hot. She shut her eyes and imagined she was fellating the dusty young man in black.

  Aaron tried to relax and enjoy what was happening. He and Samantha hadn’t fooled around in weeks. He looked down at the rhythmic trembling of her breasts, the swollen rigidity of her pepperoni-sized nipples. One of her hands was between her legs.She was touching herself. He’d only seen her do that once before—the time he’d asked her to, because he was curious to see what a female orgasm looked like. Of course she hadn’t been able to make herself come. She said she couldn’t bring herself to do itwith an audience present, and when he asked her if she ever did it by herself she said no. Typically she had a low sex drive, and he was fine with that. Sex was exhausting and tedious, not to mention messy, but he still got horny from time to time despite himself. He was male after all.

  But now here was Sam, taking initiative and apparently enjoying it. He wondered if a sudden increase in sex drive was asymp
tom of anything.

  Samantha kept her eyes closed—partly out of respect for her boyfriend, and partly to keep the vision of her imaginary partner intact. She imagined him sweaty and pent-up from a day’s work at a construction site or garbage dump. His scrotum would be hairy, his penis salty. He’d dig his dirty fingernails into her scalp and force himself down her throat. He might even call her names. He was probably a man-whore who slept with strippers and strangers, ditzy teenage socialites and boss’s daughters. He probably had a disease.

  She was repulsed and extremely wet. She took Aaron’s penis as deep into her mouth as she could manage.

  “Oh my God,” Aaron said as he felt himself in her throat.

  “Sam, I’m going to . . .”

  She moaned, bobbing faster, waves of energy pulsingthrough her body in little explosions. Seconds later he ejaculatedinto her mouth, interrupting her bliss. She suppressed her gagreflex, reached for the paper cup and spat his semen into it.

  Aaron stepped back and was about to sit on the bed whenSamantha said, “Wait! Thermometer!”

  His eyes popped. “Holy shit. I forgot it was in there.” Hepulled it out slowly and tried to hand it to her.

  “Hang on,” she said, and took a post-fellationary swig of mouth wash.

  Aaron held the thermometer as far from his body as possible. “Hurry.”

  “Okay, okay.” She took it from him, careful to grab it fromthe clean end. She was pleased to see that it was free of fecal matter. It meant he’d showered properly.

  “Well?” He pulled a handful of tissues out of the Kleenexbox on the nightstand and wiped the petroleum jelly from hisbutt crack. What remained of his erection withered instantly.

  “The numbers are all blurry from the jelly,” she said. “Pass me a tissue.”

  He did as she said, and she wiped it off.

  “I don’t feel right in there,” he said, examining the residueon the tissues. “I think you might’ve pierced my rectum.”