Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
He watched the couple through their window until it went dark then stumbled back into the shadows of his driveway and through the moving drift of the banana trees and elephant ears gathered at his front door. In the soft hush of the townhome he shared with his wife, he put his palms on his cheeks to calm himself and climbed the stairs not feeling underfoot, toward the faint voices from his bedroom. He imagined, as he neared the blue glow, that he was instead approaching the bedroom he watched and the couple. His belly lurched; it seemed all too possible.
Anna had the air running with the covers pulled up to her chin, watching television. She sat up at the sight of him. “How strange your eyes look!” she said as he stepped over the threshold. “Jim, are you all right?”
Those early days of peeping were captured for him in a sequence of pictures. The blood-red skies, her dark sheet of hair, the trickle of candlelight bouncing onto the live oak outside the bedroom window, the grapefruit air of approaching October, and the sensation that he was heading toward a pinprick of light at the end of a long, black corridor.
He was ten years retired, seventy-nine years old, and married for fifty-six of them. He was a teacher, and he toiled away most of the mornings and afternoons of his life droning about peasants and feudalism and kings and the break from Rome. He never wondered about the emotions behind the centuries of history he taught. He only memorized the facts and doled them out again and again, year after year. He told and retold these ancient tales with rigor until one day all sentiment melted away. One day it was there, the next, it wasn’t. He never made any particular impact on any of his students, and they likewise made no impression on him. When he looked out into the seas of pubescent faces—blank, bored, antsy faces— he found they were all the same, finding no importance of the past, of seven-hundred-years dead ghosts in their lives. And soon, he could not blame them. He retired to spend his days alongside Anna, who retired in the previous months.
There were to be days of leisure, days of travel, days of rekindling and days of reading. The days would be of moderate comfort because money was no worry. Jim and his wife led reasonable lives without extravagance. And there were no children. Early, in the beginning, they spoke of names and whose likeness would dominate. But months stacked into years with no baby. So the spare room was used to store his books with the vacuum and the desk neither of them used. They never talked about it. It was a different world then in many ways, and such things were not spoken of.
The long-awaited days arrived and…? He would lie in bed in early starlight, a hapless victim to the steadfast reliability of his body’s internal clock and thought of the many things he could occupy his vacant hours with and ended up doing none of them. He and Anna went on a cruise to some dingy Caribbean town he could hardly remember, to Las Vegas where he’d gotten food poisoning from a dinner show, and a long weekend at a haunted seaside bed and breakfast that gave him nightmares. That was the last vacation, he supposed, about five years ago.
He expected the idle, but he did not expect that early, constant sense of free-falling with grips of sudden anxiety that he must do something. Anything to stave off that awful notion that he longer had purpose, that he was clinging to the lip of a circling drain. His life: a loop of Sunday to Sunday, punctuated by dour doctors’ visits, with everything else between a complete fog. One day, though, he’d stopped caring about that too.
About seven years ago, Jim and Anna moved into the tree-laden townhouse complex for which he now presided over a small part of the HOA. The neighborhood was set far back on a sprawling horse farm in the rolling green fields of north central Florida. Because the townhomes could only be accessed by code far at the front entrance to the farm, there was no reason at all for the residents to worry about any type of danger.
Jim oversaw managing the care and maintenance of the many trees that darkened the neighborhood, keeping it shady and green all year round. For several years now, under the pretense of enacting his duties, Jim took a few walks each evening around the neighborhood. He started out the same, leaving his driveway, he made a right up the big hill, and followed the circle around the pond. The water broke into lagoons, shaded by the moss draped in phantom shapes from the aged live oaks, with their twisted, downward curves and banana trees, bowed with fruit. When he made his way to the west side, he saw the huge, open paddocks ensconced by vined forests. The motions from the sun from this point were spectacular. The sky so vast and tangible.
Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
Jim never considered himself to be an imaginative man, but now with his mind ablaze with pictures. Of course, he pictured himself as the husband, but then he drifted and imagined himself as the wife and then he was hooked. He pretended that he might watch from some secret place, like their parted closet or in the reflection from the bathroom mirror. Maybe listen from beneath the bed. He never thought especially long or hard about any of his behaviors or thoughts. He did not look onto the sky for answers, sought no spiritual guidance and accepted the whims of the universe pertaining to his life as more or less equal to what he felt he deserved. Nothing about himself Nothing about himself required deep thought or introspection. Yet now his thoughts of what he saw were mingled with wonder about why he was allowed the opportunity to see.
It was October and Jim was halfway down his driveway when he caught sight of a large black rat by his mailbox. Through darkening sunlight, the rat was moving in a weird, wavering way. Jim squinted to get a better look, thinking the nasty thing must be sick. As he neared his mailbox, he saw that it was not a rat, but a plastic Halloween decoration. A black cat affixed to a wooden stake and plunged into the ground.
“Trash,” he muttered under his breath anyway. “Disgusting.” He began to round the corner toward the couple’s townhome.
As usual, there was a fluttery nervousness mixed with their very nearness that electrified him and conjured reckless thoughts. This was his own, special thing and a secret he shared with no one else in the entire world. Since that night, Jim took to watching from beneath their bedroom window, behind the trunk of the live oak. In whatever semblance of fall came to Florida, Jim was provided with enough shadow to peep unsuspected until it became too dark, and he didn’t want to risk a fall, the solemn hospital stay that becomes the lingering malaise, death. How reality came crashing back.
And on this evening, the night he remembered always after as The Night of The Rat, Jim stood and stared up at their window, aghast. Their blinds were drawn, with no parted spaces to see through. A glow from their lamp shone around the blinds. He could not believe it. Despair fell over him in waves as their faint movements taunted him behind the blinds. Oh, yes, they were both home both in that room with his view closed. A bloom of anxiety that his secret was discovered mingled with his disappointment and the combination was hideous. All of the little things that grated on his nerves all day came back to him in a crushing montage and he couldn’t grapple with the unfairness of it all. He hated that he waited all day for nothing. He was very angry that were very young, and he was so old. He hated that he sometimes had stupid fantasies about being asked to dinner and then for wine. Everything mounted and he was seething. He sobbed as he climbed out of their darkened yard and hoped they would hear him in the night and worry about the strange animal or loathsome spirit they’d awakened.
Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
Because Jim held a mostly pointless position with the Homeowners Association, he had access to certain documents held in the offices of the neighborhood’s clubhouse. So, Jim drove in his coffin-shaped car up to the circular structure that sat high on a hill. The clubhouse and its shimmering pool overlooked the sculpted paddocks dotted with dappled horses and fading barns and jungled woods, low hills, and down a winding road were the roofs of the townhomes through the treetops. Sunlight streamed into the silent office and settled in quivering panels on the floor, like a message. I’m hallucinating, he thought and moved softly, even though he had every right to be here and look through these papers, if he so desired. This right came with his position, and he was not breaking any laws in taking advantage of said position. Although, he did not want anyone to come in and actually make him explain this or what he was up to. He sat in front of a desktop computer and sorted through a filing cabinet for their townhome number, indicated at the top of each file. 118, The Wrights. Just like that. A simple and sturdy ancient name, derived from peasants and centuries of hard work. Peter and Rachel Wright. He marveled at the pleasing cadence to their names, especially hers. Rachel Wright was thirty and married to Dr. Peter N. Wright, thirty-three, equine veterinarian. The HOA did not require for a woman to put down her occupation if she was married, but Rachel did, and her job was listed as “dance/piano instructor.” Jim smiled and caught his reflection in the computer screen. The angle of sun shifted with the approach of afternoon and drifted across, warping his face.
He said: “I look like some sort of ghoul.” And then: “Rachel Wright, Rachel Wright, Rachel Wright, Peter and Rachel Wright. We have a secret together, Peter and Rachel Wright, and me. Peter, your wife Rachel is rather beautiful, one day I will…” Then he stopped abruptly and left the clubhouse.
Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
The air of autumn, of fires on the horizon, the lazy thrum of the mowers on neighboring farms, the afternoons that lingered in dusty limbo, the golden light at every hour. By now, Jim felt as though he knew Peter and Rachel Wright and as a result, was able to predict their movements and wants. Even their thoughts felt within his grasp. Yet there were many things about them that he did not know. He did not know, for instance, what they smelled like or the textures of their skins. So, the world of his night walks replaced what he did not yet know. The sweet rot of the evening air; he could be going to his mailbox or bringing in the groceries, taking out the trash in a fugue, and the breeze would curl around him, and his stomach would leap, and his vision caved as if he would faint.
For a while, these secondary parts of being and observing rendered the Wrights’ scents and textures. Everything was precious because everything was Peter and Rachel Wright. It was all connected. He saw signs in everything, all confirming he was following something. This sufficed for long enough, but after he’d let himself in through their unlocked sliding door, he’d lost some of this idolatry. The meaning of these gusts of wind and rustling leaves began to wane.
He observed that on Sundays, the Wrights left their house around midday and might not return until late in the evening. Where they went, Jim was currently working to discern. In the meantime, they’d driven away in Rachel Wright’s little black coupe and eighteen minutes later, Jim crept around the trees and behind the townhome. The Wrights lived in the particular curve of the neighborhood that was backed against a rolling, but empty horse paddock with huge, vulture-draped trees, and even farther back, a dark jungle and the crash of the interstate. Because of this, and because the adjoining townhome was owned by a family who came seasonally for the horse show circuit, no one saw Jim creep into the screen door and onto the porch.
The screen wrapping around the porch was thick and as black as midnight, with tiny beams of afternoon light cutting through the air. What a queer little space, he thought and surveyed the porch with his hands on his hips, slightly disappointed. There were several thick and leafy potted trees and spider plants crowded around two low-set wooden chairs. There was also something stale, and a hint of mildew. Jim made a “humph” noise and tried the sliding door. It breezed open and the cool from the air conditioning furled around him. He slipped in and shut the door. He thought he might run around the rooms like a banshee, or scribble on their walls, and tear apart their bed. But that first time he just stood there, in the open space of their first floor. Large windows along the back wall, tall lamps, a huge Persian rug depicting a twisted dragon with many heads, a stone fireplace, and a TV before a loveseat heaping with pillows. There were high shelves stuffed with books and magazines and some overflowed into stacks pushed against the walls. On those high walls, some sort of trashy modern art, Jim presumed, and considered throwing something at the pieces to shatter the glass panes.
It was a dream with candles scented in Oolong tea, jasmine, and April flowers detergent, the closed, damp of air-conditioning, so different than he imagined.
He very much wanted to use their bathroom. He did not know why, but once the thought crossed his mind, he could not let it go. Passing the kitchen to get there, he noted a pile of papers from which he slipped their phone bill and a tube of lip balm.
The little bathroom beneath the stairs was barren of décor. A tiny, tiled shower stall with a pile of spider legs in one corner and a toilet with a loose handle. An empty wastebasket and a watered-down soap bottle missing its dispenser. Never used, so Jim might be anywhere. He imagined himself caught and imagined himself playing the part of the confused old man, helpless and lost. He did not flush, did not clean up, did not wash his hands. Nor did he want to catch sight of himself in the mirror, so he put his hands to his eyes as he left the Wrights’ home in a hurry. That quick, he marveled, it was all over. He could not wait to see what lay upstairs. He could not wait to see their most private spaces. And soon he would know. But most of all, he could not wait to stand at their bed and look out from their window. To peer down from their perspective how he might appear to them. That was something he could not picture at all.
Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
A Sunday again. Jim waited until the coupe passed the window at the top of his stairs. He walked past Anna flipping through a magazine and nodding her head vaguely to the radio. Jim went to the entry way and slipped on his walking shoes. Then, walking back to the entrance of the living room:
“Going for some air,” he said.
“Mmmmhmmmm.”
“Just want to get my blood moving.”
“I heard you,” she said and he opened the front door and stepped out onto his carport. In a blink, he was under theirs, moving between Peter Wright’s sedan and the wooden lattice of the structure. On the other side were several luscious hibiscuses and the sounds of bees, swarming the flowers. He glanced up at the master window and waited a beat. It was a step in the ritual he felt compelled to make, as if to remind himself where this began.
Around the empty, attached townhome and then through the screen porch, through the sliding door, different levels he had to complete, and then…a different world entirely. It was so intimate and close, he sometimes forgot they did not know. He forgot that it was only his secret.
Then, through the living room and the dining area and the stairs, now he was moving too quick for his old body. At the first landing, he took ragged breaths and waited for his knee to quit throbbing and the stars behind his closed eyes to stop their nauseating swell.
All because there was the bedroom. The door only partially ajar, as if they designed a scene of suspense to invoke his senses to the fullest. He hesitated and peered through the part. What if he miscalculated and Rachel Wright was at home with a headache or cramps or faintness or some other feminine problem, and stretched out on their bed? Her rightful place, not Jim’s and what if she should scream? He peered in and saw that at least the bed was empty. He pushed on the door. Waited. Finally, he realized he was wasting time and stepped over the doorway. He observed every end of the master suite. He shuddered. In their bathroom, he opened every drawer, sniffed each little tube, and peered into every bottle he came across. He stuck his head in the shower and touched all the little droplets of water leftover from the Wrights and laughed at what a lunatic he’d become.
Jim slipped off his walking shoes and leaned over and ran his palms over the comforter and the bed, hastily made and smelling of fabric softener and body lotion. He ran his hands up to the cool pillows in big, sweeping motions. Then, when he could stand it no longer, he slipped in between the sheets and nestled himself in the middle. It was all too much. The closeness of their personal effects, the reading glasses, cups of water, and the books with marks in various places. So close, he thought. He thought he was with them and wanted to be inside of them. He had always known them, in some way or in another life. Of this, he was certain.
He must have dozed because he came to with a start, not knowing where he was, and with his heart throbbing in his chest. The clock told Jim that he’d only slept for twenty or so minutes—he was unsure as to when his thoughts dropped off—but the entire experience shook him. How quickly he slipped into blank sleep like that. Suppose he should die in such a way.
But in the walk-in closet, Jim ran his face along the rows of the Wrights’ clothes, all different sorts of textures, the dim bulb giving off a strange yellow hue. He pulled out the drawers. Inside he found many interesting things. Cash, a few pieces of diamond and gold jewelry, a rough draft that culminated in a mediocre five act play. Lacy underwear and swimsuits and college sweatshirts and damp bath towels. And a series of polaroid pictures. The Wrights, it seemed, had taken a trip to some winter place. Jim saw pictures of them drinking snowy cocktails, Rachel Wright, windswept and smiling coyly in front of a dark wall of pine trees, pictures of dazzling icicles in blue morning light. Peter stepping into a Jacuzzi, his bathing suit pulled low on his hips, The Wrights before a roaring resort fireplace, Rachel with hands in display of a flamboyant raspberry dessert, Rachel without her top, arms spread, standing on their balcony, miles of snowfall behind her. So many more. He let them fall through his fingers onto the ground and put his hands to his temples.
The one that Jim slipped into his wallet was the one of the Wrights posing before flaming indigo sky, so far north and high up, where night fell very early, and the wind clean and fragrant and the mountains sharp and the skies cloudless. In the sunset, the Wrights were dressed for dinner, but mostly featureless, and Jim saw absolutely no harm in taking this and tucking it behind his ID. It wasn’t like he took the one that Rachel took, standing nude and curved in front of a fogged hotel mirror, and behind, Peter Wright emerging from the steamy cave of the shower. Jim thought it was about time to leave when his fingers grazed over something silky as he pulled on the closet door. It was a silk top, hung on the knob.
“How beautiful,” Jim whispered and thought how the bones of her shoulders might feel, beneath it and then squeezed under the weight of his grasp. How easily this silk would slide off her skin. He planned on taking it, but at the last moment tossed it by the wooden chairs on the porch. He glanced at his watch as he started down their yard and was surprised to see it was not even half past twelve. He headed home, wondering if Anna had any ideas about lunch.
As it happened, Jim ran into Rachel Wright the next day as he was taking a walk around the neighborhood. Rachel was lingering near her mailbox studying the contents of an envelope. Jim gasped, for the collision of their worlds struck him so suddenly, and he was so unprepared. But then, later, he was certain she knew as plainly as he knew. Rachel was wearing the same shirt he’d found. He could not believe it. He thought this must be an answer. Because there was no doubt that she received his sign. She lifted her hand, and he trudged over.
She introduced herself and apologized for forgetting if they’d met before, affecting an almost convincing sincerity. He told her the usual facts about himself, Anna, how long they’d lived here, HOA, blah, blah, blah. He barely heard anything that he said and didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Rachel appeared charmed that he was a retired teacher.
“How wonderful that must have been!” she exclaimed. It had been and now it was all over. How ignorant the young are! How certain they are of the infallibility of their youth! How they savor that beautiful delusion that those dreadful years will never arrive! Not for them! He didn’t bother trying to catch glimpses of their mail. He already went through it earlier. Then Rachel asked him where he was walking to, a cue, he perceived, that she was ready to send him on his way. He told her the truth. That a few of neighbors called or stopped by to tell him that there was an alligator, a product of the recent rains, sunning itself on the bank of the pond.
“Oh! Wow! Well, be safe, okay?” Rachel Wright said and took a step toward her home.
But Jim began to tell her a long story about an alligator that found refuge in the same pond years earlier. The gator was very large and ate all the ducks in view of watching neighbors and moaned and grumbled in the night. The residents could not allow the creature to move on at his own pace, so a trapper was called, and the beast was dragged writhing from the murky shimmer. And everyone kept saying how’d it grow so big, how’d it get so massive like a black hole, just eating everything right in the middle of their neighborhood.
Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
Lately, he surprised himself with how bold he’d grown. These days, Jim spent all sorts of time in the Wright townhouse. He did not limit himself to certain rooms on certain days for certain amounts of time. Now he wandered around their home in service to his moods. Drifting from room to room, looking over their belongings, but not really seeing them. One visit, he might stand naked in their shower or eat crackers at their dining room table and consider the trees at the mouth of that great forest behind their home and leave the bowl right there. Who cares. He thought often about leaving a gift for them, like a symbol in their language.
It was in the guest bedroom Jim found himself in lingering over boxes of unpacked belongings when he heard the Wrights come in through their front door. Jim did not move, nor did he panic. They lingered in their kitchen directly below him and he could hear the muffled din of their voices. Peter Wright laughed loudly and said:
“He’s a moron.”
“He’s a Taurus,” Rachel said.
“So he claims. But he’s a moron.”
Partially concealed by the overflowing boxes and with the light in his favor, a bruised purple, there was no reason to even glance in this little room. And there they passed, right by him in a rustle of shopping bags. Jim strained to hear, cocking his head and drawing back his lips wolfishly in strain. He crept into the base of the short hallway and eased closer, pushing his feet along the carpet.
“Now I wish we got some of that pie to-go,” said Peter.
To which Rachel replied: “Don’t even talk about it. I said so.”
Jim was at their door now. Marijuana smoke drifted by him in slow tendrils. He could see inside their room now and there were the Wrights in their bed smoking a joint, their forms shaky in television light. There were coughs and giggles and private, rambling talk between Peter and Rachel Wright that seemed to have no point or destination. Jim learned many things about them. He learned that Peter was busy at work and sometimes saw seven horses a day. One today had blue eyes. Rachel had blood drawn that morning and thought she was going to puke at the sight of the tube filling. Both Wrights shared an intense mutual dislike of one of Rachel’s piano students and spent several minutes sharing disparaging stories. They discussed the peculiar phone calls Peter kept receiving at the office, left by Jim, of course. They had Schezwan for dinner and Peter wanted to go back in two nights for the special he’d mistakenly thought was served tonight. This was good for Jim. He liked to think of them being nourished. He liked to think of what they ate, of what they would like, of their bodies taking in vitamins.
Certain, confusing things struck them both as amusing and Jim could not understand why. He thought perhaps they were both a lot stupider than he believed. Jim’s legs began to ache, but he dared not move.
“I need to play tomorrow,” Rachel sighed with the sounds of the sheets rustling.
“Save some playing for when I get home,” said Peter.
Now, Jim moved to the door and put his face directly in the space and listened now as they readied for bed, speaking over their toothbrushes and soon they were in the shower.
If either had looked toward the door, they would have certainly seen his face awash in flashing TV glimmer, smiling broadly. But they never did. Jim waited until they eased into dozing speak. When he was sure they were asleep, he crept down their stairs. It was full dark out now, starry, though early night. Only ten or so.
“Where were you?” Anna said, getting up from her chair when he arrived home. She made as if to follow him up to the bedroom. Like hell that was going to happen. He walked past her, mounting the stairs and groaning in pain with each step. “I almost called the police,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He shut the bedroom door. Let her figure that one out.
There was huge, private happiness, but there was also something else that wrapped around him and dragged him through dredges of despair. He knew of the hollow, vast anger that grew in the dark alongside what he thought might be love. Sometimes he let it course over him until black spots bloomed in his vision, and his jaws ached from clenching madly in fury and he would beg himself to forget those Wrights. But it was all a part of him now. He couldn’t be kept away for long.
Most of the time he just could not believe he hadn’t been seen. He felt like a ghost already.
Taylor Melia Elyse Mahone
The neighbors stood in their driveways, and some walked the road down to the paddocks with blankets to lounge and sip wine and watch the orange sun melt over the pink and purple clouds. The sky was another world with sweeping, cottony mountains and glowing orange seas crested by pink waves. Color wallowed in the sky past eight, lazy and languid from its spectacular display of majesty, like it was still summer, not a week from November, coming in with the taste of blood.
“Weird sky,” Anna said from beside him. They stood on their porch as the sky fringed the black outlines of trees in rings of ember.
“What? You don’t like it?”
Anna shivered, the hue from the sun merging her with the fuchsia shadows of the condo.
“Makes me think of the end of days. Like a world upside down and on fire.”
Because of the sunset Jim began his walk a little after seven and was pleased to find Rachel Wright leaning against the rear of her car, studying the road. His approach caused her to startle. Her expression was one of worry.
“Watching the sky?” Jim asked. She was totally framed by the light, her eyes gleamed with it. The sun rippled down her hair like a halo.
“Hey, …Joe. No, I mean, I see…very beautiful. I saw from inside.” She pointed behind to the window he knew well.
He nodded and smiled behind tightly sealed lips.
“I’m waiting for my husband. Have you met him…? Peter…?” She trailed off and shook her head. Jim gestured with both hands for her to keep talking.
Rachel told him that she did not want to be in her home alone because she’d believed someone else had been in her home. This was confirmed with her discovery of something strange in her bathroom. Rachel wanted her husband to come home right away. She called his office a while ago and was told that he’d already left and now she just had to wait while edges of the sky grew dark in wait to overtake. Jim listened serenely as Rachel whispered to him that she found a tooth, a huge, grey molar with bloodied roots beneath the shower ledge. She was set ablaze by the sun, he thought, a goddess. It was difficult to totally make her out. Jim said he would be glad to wait with her here under this magnificent sky until her husband arrived home. Which, Jim assured her, would be any moment.
She inhaled and half-nodded, and he just gazed at her, running his tongue over the empty space in the back of his mouth, thinking how beautiful she is, thinking how close she is to seeing it all too.
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