“Nothing, nothing. She having period, veh tired. Is nothing.” Mrs. Park pushed her toward her room. “You go sleep.”

“It’s only seven-thirty.”

“Baby, you go bed. You mind own business.” This time, Mrs. Park pushed more insistently, even opening her door for her. “This not you business.”

Rosemary went to her room and locked the door. It was just as well. She rushed to her window, half expecting Arik waiting outside, mad with remorse, a ready boner tenting his pants. But there was nobody.

She pulled her curtains shut and took out her cellphone. No new messages. With a few taps on the keypad, she deleted Arik’s number from her directory, along with the cartoon icon of Apu from The Simpsons she’d assigned to him. Scrolling down to Archived Messages, she played her favorite, received a week before and saved away like the rarest ambrosia. She pressed the phone to her ear till her lobe ached:

“Rose, hey, I know your phone is off and you’re probably asleep right now but I wanted to leave you a message that I, uh, don’t have the balls to say to your face. I am so deliriously out of my mind with you, man. It’s 3 a.m. and I can’t go to sleep right now thinking about you, and how, I don’t know, like, I want to be inside you all the time . . . [laughs] I hope I’m not freaking you out. I probably sound like I’m high right now, but, well, I guess I am high, on you. You’re entirely responsible for this. You make me feel like everything’s possible, like we’re spiritually bound [giggles]. Yeah, that’s it. And I just want to be with you, you know, and fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. Oh my God, I love the way you wriggle and squeal when you’re coming. I came like eight times today thinking about that. I hope this doesn’t sound too insane or stalkery or anything, but I’m so hard again right now and I’m gonna come so fucking hard for you . . . Um, what else do I have to say? Oh, right . . . I’ll kill for you, I’ll die for you. I swear it. Iloveyou, bye.”

With a few icy thumb strokes, Rosemary erased the message and with it, every trace of Arik Kistorian.

Knocking on the door. Some idiot was toggling her doorknob.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming . . .” She hid her phone.

It was her mother, in yet another deplorable, shapeless housecoat.

“Why you lock door?”

“I’m not in the mood to be lectured. What do you want?”

“Next week, terminator is coming. We go somewhere.”

“Could you say that again, in English please?”

“Next week, terminator coming here. We having many termites. They putting poison inside the house, killing termites.”

“So?”