A Scenic View

“I've always been afraid of the sky at night,” Jesse Diana said softly.

She had always been shy, she meant. Even Johnathan understood that much. He nodded his head and gently rubbed her neck. They were sitting in her car, parked near the edge of the dark hilltop, gazing at the stars. The lights of the city were plainly visible behind them, but distant enough to make no intrusion on their view. The stars were bright and cast a tranquil, softening light on the lovers.

“He looks so friendly,” Jesse thought dreamily, then closed her eyes, letting her thoughts drift, her thighs relax. She surprised him now by holding onto his arm and resting her head on his shoulder.

“But somehow it's different tonight,” she said aloud. “The rain and the moonlight makes it seem safer, you know? The sky, I mean.”

Jesse had been falling off the earth, she felt, for a long, long time, falling like a frightened child toward a far, bottomless sky. Everything was upside down, upside down, and had been for years. She was afraid to turn loose of anything, for she didn't know where she'd land. She had always been sure her heart would break before the end and she didn't want to be conscious of what was happening if life was going to be like that, though she didn't want to be unconscious either, for she was afraid someone would take advantage of her. She was afraid to be afraid—in short, she was afraid of her own shadow.

She was afraid all the time these days. She was in love, too, she supposed, not to mention in lust. Yet she was now approaching middle age and it was the middle—or at least not the end—of the AIDS epidemic, and one had to be more careful than ever. Johnathan was interesting, but he wasn't “perfect”. No knight in shining armor, she knew. She was stuck on him and stuck with him. But more than that, somehow, and she knew she had to be cautious.

Johnathan said nothing for a long while, just patted her head, stroked her arm, and stared out the window. He meant to show that he understood. He had no idea at all what she meant, but he was enjoying her touch. He liked the way her body felt nuzzled against his, and he didn't see where his understanding mattered very much if he could only calm her down. If he could only make her focus on him. An old trick, but still the one that was needed.

“Why does she have to be so shy all the time?” he wondered. “Jesse's nice like this, no matter that she seems a little sad.”

That was, more or less, true. She was not distinctly unhappy, and that was as good as things got sometimes, he felt. He wondered why she didn't understand that.

“It's finally started to rain here a bit,” Jesse had written that afternoon in a letter to her friend Pearl. “Well, there you have it; you finally caught me talking about the weather! Today we had one of those rare rains that actually makes the day a little cooler. It was strange, but nice, and I was glad I noticed. Most of the time, I don't, of course. It's hard to keep track of nature when you can't even keep track of yourself.”

3rd draft: 02/02/06
©1989 Ronald C. Southern

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