Delightful Trespass

Occasionally, I have written stories, mostly fictional, but based on the smallest of facts. I have long since given up trying to sell them to some journal or paper. I have never sold the few I did submit. Perhaps I am not good enough.  Perhaps I am, but not lucky in this respect. Either way, with the passage of time, it no longer worries me and I have this outlet, the blog.

I ran into this story I wrote some years ago and had buried in a folder. I like it because the heroine, though living much as I have all these years, reacted in a way I never would have in so risky a situation.

DELIGHTFUL TRESPASS

"Nothing exciting ever happens to me," said Jen to her companions as she exited the car.  They had been talking of mutual, and unlike us, married friends who, late in life picked up and moved to Australia.

"I love you guys," Jen continued, "but once it might be nice if my Saturday night was about more than watching a long dead movie star in a black and white film at the Egyptian and you two mocking the other movie goers.  And it doesn't have to be a sixteen hour trip. Me, and someone who 'gets' me."

"Tell it to your therapist!" the driving member of the two college friends chided, flashing an "I've heard this before" smile, as he restarted his motor.

"I did, and then he died". Jen paused. "No connection, I hope!". Jen's tone was light, keys rattling as she approached her vestibule. She knew these lovely men saw her through the prism of their long friendship, a solid one, but carefully constructed not to delve much into the emotional depths among them. The single thing her therapist ha made both gloriously and painfully clear was that relationships should be a lot deeper than those to which she had been long accustomed, even sought out.  Losing her therapist had been a blow, and the depth of that rare experience was something she had never been able to repeat for "real".  She had lots of insight, but the will to change had remained recalcitrant. Still life was basically good. She really had not complaints.

"So to Facebook, then to lament are we?" queried the bemused passenger out the window. She remembered a little sadly that he had once compared their relationships to a "three legged stool.". Ugh.

Jen waved and bowed.  "I shall recount that a most pleasant tie was had by all."

She watched as they drove off, took a deep jasmine filled breath and looked up at the few stars she could see.  This was the life she had composed.  Deal with it.

The four unit building was completely empty.  Two neighbors were out. Twenty years her junior, the were always somewhere far later than she, that's when they were in town, since they traveled hither and yon for their respective businesses.  The remaining apartment, across from hers was awaiting a new tenant willing to pay market prices for what was becoming finally a trendy-ish area.  Jen reaped the benefit of long term residency and rent stabilization.  No doubt they would take her out "feet first" when the time came, hunkered down New Yorker in Los Angeles to the end.

She went into her rooms and poured herself a night cap, Protect, a current favorite.  She abandoned herself to her deep leather chair and looked into the night from her ground floor window. Crickets and the occasional passing car punctuated the quiet post midnight.

And then she heard the water whoosh of the shower in the supposed to be vacant apartment.

She got up. "Maybe I'm hearing things. The delusional spinster."

Jen went to the utility porch and opened her back door closer to the side on which the bathroom of the apparently temporarily occupied apartment was located.  Yes, definitely the shower.

And then the sound stopped with the squeak, squeak of the handles.  She saw that the bedroom window was open.  Not broken, just open.

Jen went back through her place to the front hall doorway.  She opened the door, a crack.  And then, despite herself she walked across the hall, paused and knocked. It was reflexive, a surprise even to her.  She did not run, although she angled away from the door, just in case.
He was at ease.
The door pulled open.  A man gazed at her sideways, his straight black hair glancing his forehead. He brushed it back with his left hand, and finger glanced his graying mustache. He was at ease.  He had dressed, old jeans and an old jean shirt of a slightly darker color, rumpled but clean. Had she not known better, she could have believed that this was someone who had every right to the apartment.  He looked at her unflaggingly, but with a most disarming kindness, "Hello, I'm Damien."

Despite a passing thought of Ted Bundy, she maintained his gaze, pointing to herself.  "Jen."

He waved her in, opening the door a bit wider, revealing on the otherwise bare floor a blanket with paper plates of bread, cheese and a bottle of a serviceable, but inexpensive red wine.  The room was lit subtlety by three or four votive candles.  His straight hair, she noticed, was still wet.

"I planned for the occasions, a respite, if you will," he said in a quiet, pleasant voice. "But I didn't plan on a companion in it.  An odd request, perhaps, but would you join me Jen?".

The way he said her name touched her very center.  She felt totally safe.  How could any of this be safe?  He was a stranger.  He was a stranger and a burglar.  But all he had done was to cleanse himself and to seek an indoor meal, how could that be dangerous?  How was it even wrong?  Despite herself, Jen went inside.

They sat on the floor, across from one another, the blanket and food between them.  He had small paper cups and he poured the wine as if once his life had included such social intimacies. 

"It matters to me what you think about how I got these provisions we're sharing.  While perhaps not quite an honest day's work, it was an honest day asking for the good will of others at La Cienega and San Vicente.  You'd be surprise how far twenty dollars goes.".

She took the cup had he slowly withdrew his hand, his gaze once again steady.

"The wine, a Barefoot red, $6.99, the cheese, cheddar cubes, just under 3, the bread, a mere $1.50, the cups less than that.  The blanket I had.". He broke he bread. He handed her a piece. What she was feeling was not logical. A line for an old movie, "Wuthering Heights" burst into her head. It was what Cathy said of the brooding Heathcliff, "He is more myself than I am."

Tentatively, she asked of him how he came to be homeless.  "A kaleidoscope of reasons, accidents, fearful interactions, but misty bad choices for which only I am responsible.  I'd love to blame someone.  But this is the life I have composed."

Jen's stomach jumped hearing those words, which she had thought only a short while before, considering the tides and eddies and choices in her life.

Damien, seeing her slightly sad reverie interrupted it, "Jen?  Where have you gone?". Breathing out expansively back to the moment, Jen confessed, perhaps for the first time admitting to herself, "that's how I have come to be alone, accidents, fearful interactions, but mostly bad choic3s for which only I am responsible.  She glanced at him; in the candlelight it seemed as if his eyes were beginning tears.  Instead of running from her words in favor of his own, he sat silent with her. 

"So, what's next Damien?" she finally broke the moment.

"Well, I think" said Damien, "that maybe I am just about to turn a corner.  I am hopeful.". At that, there was a sudden flapping sound, and a flash of swirling light, which both of them at once realized was a police helicopter.  It's proximity to Jen's building could be no accident.  Someone had heard him, them, and called the police.

They got up beyond quickly.  He dislodged the blanket from the stuff on top of it, like a magician. 

"You have to go Jen. Now.". He took her hand for an instant and kissed her on the cheek with a gentleness Jen could never forget.  And then he was gone, out the back window into which he come.

Jen sprinted back to her placed. And listened to her pounding heart. 

Then she heard the heavy steps of police and the sound of radio calls.  And then one of them knocked.  She answered with as fake a calm as she could muster.

"Ma'am. We. Got a call about someone breaking into the apartment next door.  Looks like someone was in there.  Did you hear anything?"

Jen was no saint and like any human being she had lied in her life.  But never as willfully as this, "No officer, I was in the back in my bedroom.

It never would have occurred to him that she had aided and abetted a trespass, and had enjoyed it.

"Thank you ma'am.". And he was gone.

When Damien did turn the corner, it was her devout wish she'd see him do it. 

And maybe she'd turn a corner of her own.