Lyle Lynch, Is That You?

“Lyle Lynch, is that you?”

The unpleasant clamor of the unoiled screen door has pulled her from her slumber. I spin around, standing in the dim light of the refrigerator.

“Yes, Gran. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say. She never usually rises at this hour. I take great care to make sure that I’m here if she does wake and calls out for me.

“You’ve been out? At this time?” she asks, squinting to the blushing red numbers that tattle on me above the stove. She motions for me to join her at the table, the shuffle of her slippers on the linoleum answer for me as she pulls out the chair before me.

“I wouldn’t want to ruin your rest,” I say, ducking my head low as I step past her. “You ought to head back to bed.” I close the refrigerator door, washing us in darkness.

“Where have you been?” she asks. I don’t need the light to see the disappointment on her face. “Have you been out with that woman again?”

“Yes, Gran,” I say. Does her smell linger on me? Are my clothes bathed in her perfume the way my heart is? She has such a special smell. Earthy, but sweet. Like a freshly bloomed orchard of peaches.

“I’ve told you, only whores meet up with men in the middle of the night,” she says. She emits a sigh, so heavy the weight of the silence around us crumples. She’s waiting on an answer, or any form of acknowledgement, and I have none.

“Will you attend church with me tomorrow?” she asks. She only wants the best for me, and only has my whole life. How can I deny Gran her wishes? Though if I gave her all that she expected, I’d be a family man, married, with a house and wife of my own. Maybe a few offspring running through the daisies in the yard. I cannot provide that, so I will attend the church service.

“Yes, Gran,” I say.

“You can confess your sins to the priest,” she says. “Father will offer you guidance.”

“Yes, Gran.” I mustn’t speak with him. There are only a few hours left until sunrise. I retreat to the privacy of my room, dark with the blinds drawn, protection from the spying streetlights, it is a comforting protection from the outside world. I’ve forbade Gran from bothering me when my door is closed.

The sun is coming up and I’ve spent the last several hours practicing my confessions. Trying out words and phrases in a way that dances delicately around the real problem: that I’ve fallen madly for the wrong kind of woman. I prefer to always know what to expect. I’ve got to protect her sweet shyness, and distain for others finding out about our love, be it unrequited or not.

“I’ve met a woman, and she’s led me astray. I try to stay away from her, but she calls out to me. We have our own way of communicating that only she and I understand. She’s beautiful, and she’s just there for me. And, oh, I can’t help it. I must confess it’s gone too far. I’ve touched her. I’ve touched her soft hair, dark and thick, that smells of sunny meadows in the summer. I’ve touched her cheek, her skin silky like satin, brushed my fingertips across the freckles that dust the bridge of her nose. I’ve felt her hand in my hand, her breath against my face. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s become an addicting difference from all the other girls, one that I cannot deny. I believe I’m called to love her.”

“You can have love for her, but you ought to also have respect for her?” Father will say.

“Oh, I do. I’ll forever cherish her,” I’ll say. They don’t understand the way I love her. I know she is fragile, but it’s a breakability I’m willing to risk. I’m destined to love her unconditionally. I want the two of us to be together for the rest of eternity. And I’m sure we will. I think she feels the same. Though she hasn’t said it aloud, I know it’s true. She could never leave me and still breathe air.

“Yes, Father,” I say, emerging from the confessional, the conversation having flowed just as I’d expected - every line a perfectly sculpted falsehood. Father didn’t say that I couldn’t see her anymore. Just that I should love and honor her and treat her with respect, and as long as the two of us are good, God fearing folk, we should look to the light for guidance, and it will be provided to us. Though I won’t give up our sacred rendezvous in entirety, I’ll continue to only see her by the darkness. It’s what she wants. I would scream my love for her from the mountaintops if she would let me. Nor would I tell a single living soul if she wanted it that way instead, and she does. So, I don’t speak about her to anyone. I can’t let too much information freely slip from the same lips that have been pressed to hers. She’ll never forgive me if our secret gets out. It would be the gossip of the gospel loving biddies for months.

As the night falls, I sit with Gran over the television and frozen dinners. I make sure to warm them up for her in the microwave. Stir it up, mix in the pills I’ve concocted for her. She may not know about it, but she deserves better sleep aided by the little white pills she keeps in her side table drawer. She’s out less than an hour later, shuffling back to her room after bidding goodnight, leaving a wet kiss on my cheek. She reminds me not to leave the flat, reciting bible verses to me until I can no longer see nor hear her down the hall.

I wait another half hour just to make sure she’s successfully been lulled to sleep, that there will be no one to witness me slipping under the cover of the quiet night. I stick to the shadows, avoid the camera on the corner of Warner and Maine. Hop the back fence behind the grocery store as not to pass the police station. I move like a ghost under nightfall.

I pass the house she lives in, the one I’d observed her in for months before our introduction. It was just last March that I’d seen her out in the yard, shoveling the snow from the walkway. She was tall, and thin, and beautiful. She has such pretty breaths, clouding around her as she worked. My own breath stolen solely by her, rather than the frigid air. I hadn’t wanted to startle her, nor scare her away. I wanted to keep watching her. So, I just watched her from behind the old maple tree across the street. But then she saw me, and I had to keep moving.

I didn’t see her again until the snow had cleared, and the weather taken a turn for the warmer. But, oh, how I looked for every time I passed her house, praying for God to conjure her right in front of me as I neared. It heightened a feeling in me I couldn’t deny. It was like an electrostatic attraction that kept me busy for weeks. I was beginning to lose hope, but never interest. That is until I was out and about one morning, hiding in the bushes, minding my own business, and then suddenly there she was. Only this time she lazily laid tanning on a towel in the side yard. I couldn’t see all of her, at first. Just her legs, smooth and shiny in the sun. Finding the courage, I crept up the back alleyway to get a better look at her over the neighbor’s fence. Anything for a longer look at her, rubbing tanning oil that smelled of coconut and sea breeze into her shoulders, her skin so supple. She loosened the strings of her bathing suit, leading me into temptation like I’ve never felt before. I watched her for hours.

I even saw her once under the guidance of the moon. I’d fancied a digestive walk after dinner one night. There I was, enjoying the crisp autumn night, wondering if she was still awake. Wondering what color were her pajamas, or if she slept in any at all. But I didn’t have to wonder long, as once I rounded the corner of her street, there she was, perched on the top step of the porch. She was wrapped in the arms of another. A tall man, handsome, and far more attractive than I. What kind of competition could I offer?

Alas, by then, I still hadn’t mustered up the bravery to approach her by the time the snow was beginning to melt again. It had been a full year since the first time I saw her, and still I was too shy, too afraid of rejection to approach her. So again, I just watched her for days, sometimes looking in the windows as I walked by, but only the ones I could see in from the street. I’m not a creep, or a sinner as the church biddies would call me. She is just too beautiful, and she calls out for my eye. She captivates, she wanted me to look, or she wouldn’t be flaunting herself around the yard, there, in the grass, for all the world to see. Her beauty is unchallenged, there isn’t another woman like her for miles and miles.

Our first conversation was invigorating. Left a tingling in my fingertips, and a thirst in my mouth, that could only be quenched by a kiss of her saccharine lips. Our words blurred, bodies violently craving one another, our love had grown from a single encounter. So, this is what I do for love now. Yes, we must meet at strange times, in strange places, but that’s part of the spontaneity of it all. She keeps me entranced, her beauty never fading. I keep her lively, the color in her cheeks, the gently pulse of her heart beating against my hand. She lives for me, and I’m captivated by her gentle touch.

I turn left on Mulberry street, the woods just ahead growing more monotonous the closer I get. I picked the place we meet, thought it over with careful consideration. Though it’s quite a brisk walk from Gran’s flat, we get the privacy to do the things that she and I both want. Tonight, I confirm that there are no prying eyes of nosey neighbors, no movement in the glaring night, just me and her and the silence of the stars before I hop the curb and head into the forbidden surroundings. Fifteen steps back to the old oak tree that’s been split recently by lightning strike, thirty two steps sideways to the fallen log, half rotting and musty smelling, then one hundred and sixteen steps straight back into the deep brush of thorns that nearly scrape my knees. The light of the streetlamps fade with each painstakingly measured step, the scent of her perfume guiding me. There is nothing that smells so sweetly than her.

“My love, you’re more beautiful tonight than the last,” I say. She gives me those eyes, reflected in the moonlight. I crouch down to be closer, her and I laid together under the swaying trees, a haunting wind rustling the changing leaves. There is beauty in the silence of the night. There are no words exchanged, she just presses her lips to mine, gentle and warm, she is the light of my life.

But something is wrong. There is a quick shuffling of steps, twigs snapping like bones all around us. Who could have found our meeting place when I’d taken such care to conceal it from foolish people? Then just as suddenly, we’re bathed in bright cones of light, her and I caught canoodling too closely.

I put my arm up, shielding my eyes from the intensity of the surprise ambush. Can’t anyone just let me be? Can I not have time with the woman I love? I squint into the glaring lights. I can’t even see who dare bother me, there’s so many of them, their bright lights spraying secrets across the ground around us. We’ve been caught, my lover and me. Out here, red-handed and intertwined by the light of the moon.

I look down at my lover, the gaping holes where maggots have eaten away at her eyes. Her hair is rotted into the underbrush beneath us, her body unclothed and laying exposed to the stark wilderness. Oxidized blood, brownish and smeared all over, the perfect tint of blue in her skin, lips a bruised purple, flesh encased in decomposition. She is beautiful, and they don’t appreciate her the way I do. They’ll want to take her from me, want to prevent me from seeing her, from loving her any longer. Don’t they know she belongs to me?

The squeal of a bullhorn screeches through the silence of the night.

“Police. Turn around with your hands up,” they order, and I’m ready to die for my love. I’m elated, her and I together forever. We can exist together in the underworld.

“Lyle Lynch, is that you?”