Where Darkness Resides

August 14, 2007
8:30 pm

At this time of the year the sun sets late and lingers on a crimson horizon. At this time of the night, all that moves along Stafford Street are the delicate branches of trees dancing in the warm and clammy Louisiana breeze. Up in the twilit sky, wisps of purple and red clouds stretch out like decrepit fingers, and highlight a descending curtain layered with stars and other cosmic jewels.

He sits behind the wheel of his car, and waits underneath a shroud of shadows cast by the towering row of pines flanking the street on his right. After he rolls the window down, he can better hear the sounds of the neighborhood: the echo of a dog barking in the distance; the songs of locusts screaming wildly in their arboreal homes. With the rhythms of the neighborhood squeezing through the open window, he deeply inhales the pine-scented eve, and then peers desperately across the street, toward the west. He stares not at the dying sun but at the house standing in the foreground of the sun—the house where she lives.

Although he his eager to see her, he waits patiently and silently as sweat beads up across his forehead and above his upper-lip. Here, in the Deep South, the stifling humidity of August is dense and at times intolerable; it fogs the lenses of his eyeglasses and labors each heavy breath he takes; causes his clothes to stick to his body and his skin to stick to the car’s vinyl upholstery. But he endures it; he will endure anything to see and to feel her.

His name? His name is not important; never has it been to anyone during his twenty-six years of living on this abysmal blue dot floating in the cosmos—earth as so many call it. And as he recalls this grim truth he thinks of her dazzling emerald eyes, her sweet breath, and her enigmatic allure. At this wonderful thought, he bathes in a purging delivery of hot blood— rushes through his body, it does. She is the only woman ever to treat him with tender regard, and to him this feeling is so magical, like no other he has previously experienced. The feeling that he gets when he is around her is like an escape from the affliction that has plagued his entire life. It is a feeling so nice and so utterly surreal.

But if only her beauty—her fantastic appeal—were his to hold. If only he could have been the man to first meet her. ‘If only’: those two, immemorial words that have rendered him a life of misery. Though he is certain that he can adequately provide her with the love and attention and emotional understanding that she requires, and while he is confident that he can weaken her strong commitment to her husband, there remains a part of him that questions whether she will love him with the same ardor.

Stuck on this bitter memory, tightly gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he becomes both angry and desperate and begins to feel his veins flex with a mind-stimulating torrent of blood. But he must control himself. He must not succumb to his impulsivity. He must not exercise the sheer and uncontrollable urge to respond to his desires, though he knows them to be just and right.

He takes two deep breaths, tilts his head side-to-side, and uses the palm of his hand to wipe away a greasy film of sweat from his temple. He then flings the salty residue from his fingertips, through the open window, and into the night air, where it sails downward and sprinkles the ground, making the earth even that more unhealthy.

Now, as the windows of the house darken as does the sky, he chooses not to interfere with her this evening. “Let them make love one last time. Let her lay next to him one more night,” he whispers bitterly. Although his disappointment is great and his jealousy even greater, he consoles himself when he thinks of the plans he intends to accomplish tomorrow. He will not sleep tonight. No. He will instead go home and rehearse the events that he is hopeful will impress her. After this is done he will lie down and stare at the moon and think of those glorious days, three months ago, when she first came into his life.