The Shadow in the Shower

S. R. Gruber

It's not like there's anything special about her; she looks like all the other new office drones who flood the city after graduation season. She has the same smooth shoulder-length hair, trim sweater sets and cute shoes. The same vapid blink and nervous smile, too.

I like to pretend the walls of my cubicle are a fortress protecting me from the mundane chatter of my coworkers while I plow through piles of paperwork. The company's a little late to the digital revolution; we're all typing everything in and printing it out again instead of picking up the phone or sending an email. I hate this. I hate the inefficiency and the total lack of accountability and the endless technical difficulties always coming down to operator error.

When the admin from human resources led a pack of new hires through, I pretended to be on a call, hanging up when I saw the admin's frizzy updo float around the corner toward the copy room, followed by a set of identical ponytails.

One of the sweater girls had been chatting with the guys in the cube beside me and missed the crowd's departure. I glanced up at her. She blushed.

"Excuse me," she said, in a super-cute stage whisper. I wanted to kick her. "Did you see which way Trinie went?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"I'm new," she explained.

"Really?"

Her smile wavered a little.

I pointed down the hall where the hair had gone. "That way."

"Thanks," she said, with a big, friendly smile. "I like that skirt."

I watched her wander off in her sensible heels as I rolled my chair closer to my desk. Every June, this place fills with idiots. I spend all summer sitting in team-building meetings designed to get them up to speed and then fixing the mistakes they make when they don't pay attention. Half of them move on by August, more are gone by the holidays. Up, out, whatever. Back to mommy and daddy's house, maybe.

I would quit this place and go to work for myself but I have no idea what I'd do.

I have my routine, though. Get up, go for a run, work, have lunch, come home, make dinner, read until bedtime. It's been that way pretty much since the Ex left, and I like it.

I might never have realized that the woman in the shower was the same one from the new hires tour if these apartment buildings had more than five feet of space between them. Some genius put a tiny little dead grass courtyard in the middle of the building. I'm sure it was to let in sunlight or some crap like that. It might have been a good idea if it didn't leave the south side apartments' living rooms directly facing into the bathrooms of the north side apartments.

Most people were smart enough to cover the windows with little opaque plastic stick-on covers that look like the world's cheapest stained glass. Not her. Flimsy little sheers on hers. Turned everything inside into shadows but left little to the imagination.

Maybe she was hoping to find some stockbroker with muscular shoulders staring in at her as she was soaping up in the shower. Or a programmer with a big salary and good hair.

Not in this building. On the ground floor we have a retired elevator operator with a bad back who doesn't take out his garbage and a woman who drives taxi and operates a phone sex line on the second floor. She's probably seventy years old and she's got smoker's throat like you wouldn't believe but the phone calls must pay pretty well because she's always dressed like a movie star.

And there's me, of course.

I might not have noticed her even with the whole window thing. I keep my reading chair beside that window for the natural light. I don't give a shit about my neighbors so I don't spend a lot of time looking into their windows. I just didn't pay attention to it.

It didn't bother me until she starting fucking in the shower with the window open.

I mean, really. How classless.

Don't get me wrong. I like sex. At least, I did when I was having it on a regular basis. But I don't get the exhibitionist stuff; no one is pretty when they're getting laid, at least not if they're doing it right. It's rude to subject all your neighbors to it when you live in such crammed spaces.

The first time, I was sitting in my chair working my way through some random bestseller. I was going through a pop culture phase and trying to read the books everyone was talking about at work. I got a chapter or two into most of them and gave up. You can only read about so many middle-aged lit professors with bald spots and paunches getting it on with the adoring and perky-breasted co-ed masses before your eyes start to bleed. I was one of the co-ed masses, and I promise you the girls giving head to the profs were not the cute blonds.

I tossed one into the return-to-library pile when I heard someone moan. Of course I looked; sex and death sound a lot alike. I wouldn't let anyone die alone in their apartment if I could do something to help, no matter how annoying they were.

All I saw were shadows, but like I said she was loud and I couldn't help looking. The shadow behind her was tall, thick in an athletic way, not an office chump way. One of his arms was braced against the window frame; the rest of him rocked toward her. It looked like it hurt. She was leaning over; I couldn't see her hands but she must have been holding herself up against the wall.

The hair on my arms stood straight up. You know that feeling you get when something is not right? You can't explain why and people give you funny looks if you try to explain, but you know there is something deeply wrong with a situation? I got that feeling, watching them. I kept expecting her to slip and smash her head or something.

I tried to ignore it, but she kept on with the moaning and grunting. How is that attractive? Seriously. Gross.

I closed my window and picked up another book but she got louder. It was only ten minutes but it dragged on. Every time I glanced out the window there were the shadows fucking across the way.

About when I decided I'd had enough, she let out a shriek so shrill I flinched. I gave her a look--I know, she wasn't paying any attention to me, but it made me feel better--and saw her shadow straighten and turn around.

The other shadow melted away.

I don't mean he got out of the tub. I mean he melted, like an ice cube under boiling water. He was there and then he was gone.

She stood there for a long time. Watching her, I thought she must have been cold, dripping wet without a towel.

It went on for weeks. I started to watch. I couldn't help myself. I wondered about it all the time. I'm a born skeptic; there had to be some explanation for the vanishing act. Maybe he was an athlete and moved fast? No, I'd still have been able to see him either in the bath or walking down her hall.

I searched for references to shadow lovers or phantom sex or ghost fucking and couldn't find a thing, online or in the library. Only the odd psych journal reference to Cupid Lover Syndrome, which is when someone believes they are having a secret affair with a rich guy only the rich guy doesn't know a thing about it. They're like stalkers except it's all in their heads and they don't get violent about it.

Usually.

It hardly seemed like I would be able to see someone else's psychosis, so I figured that was a dead end, research-wise. I had a friend in college who talked about summoning spirits and having sex with them but I'd always blamed it on the ecstasy she swallowed on a daily basis.

The girl across the way never faced him. She always came first and she didn't sound like she was faking it. He melted after a few seconds of faster harder, like steam rising away. Most nights she left the shower almost as fast.

I saw her one day in the subway. I must have given her a look; she peered at me from under her cutesy hand-knit winter hat like she didn't understand why I was looking at her.

"I live in your building," I told her.

"Oh," she said, and her expression changed a little. "Hi." She turned back toward the track.

"Just across the courtyard."

She nodded, giving me a quick glance before returning to the usual stance that broadcasts Here I Am All Alone in a City of Millions, Looking Cute. I was surprised she learned it that fast; I'd seen her for the first time only few weeks earlier. With most of them it takes longer to lose the excitable, eager gleam in their eyes.

She didn't get what I was saying. I thought about telling her my favorite reading chair was across the courtyard from her bathroom window, but you try to find a way to say it without sounding creepy.

And if you can add on the bit where I know about her shadow lover I'll give you bonus points.

Her train came first.

I lost track of how many days I spent dreading the noise, listening to the noise, trying to forget it. The image of the darkness dispersing behind her gave me nightmares; I hallucinated shadowy movements in the corners of my apartment. I woke up panicked every time a car drove past in the alleyway, half-expecting to hear a hand rattling my door. In the office, I'd drift off, staring at the cursor on my screen until a phone call or a ding from my email brought me back again.

I watched her sometimes and wondered if she ever tired of not seeing his face. I know the Psyche and Cupid story. I've read the Lewis version too. There are never any good guys in those stories. The men are creepy and controlling, the women are not terribly smart and everyone is all bound up in telling each other what to do.

How is that sexy? How is it possible to believe that could be love? Do they convince themselves that any warmth beside them is better than none? Is that the best fantasy they can conjure?

How lonely do you have to be?

I ran into my downstairs neighbor, the phone sex woman, and considered asking her about it. She never meets my eyes, though, and she hurried into her apartment before I said anything.

Autumn was drifting in; it was cool enough to open the windows again and let the breeze carry restaurant and river smells through my rooms. I pushed the chair back under the window, opened the sash, and picked up a book. I heard her dishes clinking in the sink as she did the washing up. Not long after the light came on in the bathroom and her skinny little shadow came into view.

This time I saw him arrive, too. I'd never managed to catch him before. It was a reverse of his departure; he formed behind her, like the droplets in the air gathered behind her and the mist became solid.

She started moaning as soon as he touched her. Her hand reached around to him, pulling him against her. He never made a sound, not once. Fine with me, she was loud enough for both of them.

I tried to look righteous and annoyed, ignoring the sick and scared feeling in my stomach. "I can hear you," I said, inches away from the screen. "And I can see you!"

His face turned toward me as he vanished. There was no melt, this time.

She turned to face the window. I dropped my curtain and moved aside, peeking between the fabric and the glass. Her mouth was drawn and her eyes were bigger and rounder than before; she looked older. And sad.

I didn't move away fast enough; she saw me, and pulled back her curtain. She whispered something but I couldn't make it out. From the look on her face, I guessed it was a warning.

I shrugged off the unease and resolved to not feel bad about it. It couldn't have been healthy. It's not like it was actual human contact.

It was no easier to sleep in silence than it had been with the noise.

She put up a window cover, some time during the night. I tried not to look.

The next morning I waited at my desk for her, but she didn't show. I don't know why I thought she'd come to me. All day I stared at my screen and did nothing, thinking about the look on her face. I just wanted to go home and watch the sun fall behind the buildings. My stomach rolled every time my phone rang; by noon I set it to send everything to voicemail.

I saw her as I left the building and made my way to the train; she was on the sidewalk, standing with a bunch of other new hires. She noticed me, and for a second her eyes grew dark. I couldn't tell if she was embarrassed or ashamed or angry; the look was gone too fast. Her eyes slid off me and onto the guy next to her. He had crispy hair and a frat boy grin. He looked a lot like the Ex, actually. She giggled at him and put her hand on his arm, tilting her head and leaning in just enough to give him a glance down her neckline.

She might as well just put his hand on her breast and be done with it. If I felt bad about what I'd done the night before, I got over it. At least I'd be able to read and sleep in a quiet apartment again.

I turned on all the lights when I got there, and moved the chair away from the window, back into the corner. I knew it was stupid, but I wasn't going to let anything sneak up behind me and I told myself I didn't want to see if the shadow came that night. I ate without a book in front of me and ignored the little wisps of darkness that curled into the edge of my vision.

I couldn't eat, and I couldn't focus on anything to read. As soon as the sun set I crawled into bed, remembering her hand on frat boy's arm. I wondered if she'd bring him back to her apartment.

I woke to the scents of smoke and wine as a hand lifted my thigh, rolling me over. His skin burned against mine; I shivered under him and decided I must still be asleep as his hands found my hips and lifted them. I twisted away, trying to get a look at his face.

"I will leave when you ask." He had a voice like spring rain, bracing but full of promise. His hand opened my thighs as his lips caressed back of my neck. "But you can not look at me."

I didn't care how he knew to do that. His hands moved over me like steam, leaving trails of sweat in their wake. I arched my back and let him in.

When I woke I had wrapped the blankets around me and could not find the ends; I panicked and thrashed until I was released. I dreamed it, I told myself. I must have dreamed it, but when I pressed the pillow to my face it smelled of smoke, and a touch of red wine.

I stumbled off the bed and down the hall. Across the courtyard, the light was on in her bathroom. The breeze carried frat boy's voice across, followed by her best sexy chuckle. I wondered if there wasn't anything she wouldn't fuck, if he knew he was just a stand-in for something else. If it mattered.

"It's just for a little while," I whispered. I closed my eyes, feeling my way into the shower. His hands found me almost as soon as the water was hot. I reached back and pulled him close, sighing as he solidified against me.

At least I keep the window shut.