Night Watch

by John Sokol

From his bed, Stanley tried to ignore the sadistic pointing hands of the clock ticking shamelessly above the bureau. He stared out at the pearly and perfect shape of the moon while he waited impatiently for the reassuring sounds of his wife's sleep. He held his hands in front of his face and marveled at the nearly silhouetted, partially chiaroscuroed effect that the light coming through the window gave them. Such fragile, odd limbs, he thought.

He turned his head and looked at Margaret who had finally gone to sleep beside him. Lately, Stanley hadn't been able to see that look of compassion that had once been in Margaret's eyes. Now there was only weightlessness -- and an indifference toward him. She had become intoxicated with a careless sense of liberation. She carried this attitude around like a symbol, like a crown that she wore for suffering an injustice that Stanley had never suspected. It was this ironic superiority, this jaded quality, that dumbfounded Stanley more than anything. He felt it had caused them to drift apart.

Stanley touched a wisp of his wife's hair and a great cry of satisfaction spilled out of his mouth as a small sigh. It wasn't for Margaret, whose love had become abstract to him, nor was it for the sake of old memories. It was a sigh of thankfulness. He could now slip away to the back of the house as he had done nearly every night for months. He wasn't proud of this habit that he had grown into. He was even somewhat ashamed of it, but he needed something to look forward to in his life as much as the next person. Besides, he wasn't hurting anyone. This little quirk of his, this remedy for a few of his frustrations, his inadequacies, was completely innocuous and would remain that way as long as he kept it to himself.

So Stanley slipped quietly from his side of the bed and walked to the end of the long corridor to the bathroom. When he entered the small dank room, he did not turn on the light, but closed the door behind him and locked it. The room was black with the night and the brown curtains covered the entire window, except for a space at the left where a finger of light poked through the darkness. Stanley went to the window and pulled the curtain back so that it let in even less light. Then, pulling a portion of the cloth back around his nose, he peered through the window where he had previously removed a small cracked piece of glass from the corner of the frame. Looking through this hole instead of the glass prevented the steam of his own breath or the grime on the window from distorting his vision.

His view: the warmly lit windows of the rooming house across the narrow alley.

It was summertime and crickets were chirping in the park behind the house. Across the way, the young woman -- whose windows Stanley watched each night -- was in her living room, arranging books in her bookcase. The windows of her house lined up in such a fashion that he could easily see into most of the kitchen, bedroom, and living room. She had opened all of her windows, because it was muggy and hot in August, even though it was well past midnight.

Stanley had learned a lot about this young woman from watching her actions every night for nearly two hours. She kept to herself quite a bit -- he knew that -- reading, or cooking, or rearranging her books. He knew where she kept various pots and pans in the kitchen. He knew where she kept her ironing board, where she put her clothes when she took them off. He even knew the ritual she performed in drying her long hair after a shower. She talked on the phone for long periods of time and she sometimes walked around the house wearing very few clothes. She also played the guitar, and she often fussed over herself for a long time in front of the mirror. Sometimes she sat at her desk, facing directly out the window, and composed letters on her typewriter. She would look up from her writing, as if she were thinking of a way to phrase her next sentence. At times she seemed to look directly into Stanley's staring eyes, almost as if she knew he was watching her. Yet he knew that she couldn't see him because of the dark room, the closed curtains, and the small peephole he had so cleverly devised. She would smile and lean her cheek against her hand, dreaming, so he imagined, of the man for whom Stanley would gladly substitute, even for one short evening.

* * *

Stanley knew Susan (he had heard a friend of hers call out her name from the alley once) as he knew movie stars and famous people from their pictures in newspapers or magazines -- rather one-dimensionally. He had tried using binoculars a few times, but they were awkward -- bulky and cumbersome against the window -- and he didn't like the removed effect he got by looking through them. Besides, the houses were so close together and the field glasses so strong that he only got details: her face, a breast, an arm or a knee. He appreciated, instead, a total view of her actions in her environment. As Stanley often rationalized, his enjoyment did not come about because of an anticipation of the few times she ran around without any clothes. He found enjoyment in vicariously viewing a reality that seemed more real than his own.

Susan's hair was chestnut and fell straight to the middle of her back. She had a broad mouth and full lips, a nose that was neither straight nor particularly attractive, and high puffy cheekbones, all of which somehow gave an erotic sadness to her face. Her legs were long and thin and she moved with a nimbleness that reminded Stanley of Degas' paintings of ballet dancers that he had once seen in a museum. She was meticulous and spent much of her time rearranging the things in her house. She stood for long moments with her chin in her hand while trying to make a decision about where to place a piece of furniture, a book in the shelves, or a lamp on a table. Stanley often thought that she did these things out of a kind of loneliness.

On this particular night, Susan seemed to be expecting a visitor. She had put on a dress, something she didn't often do, and was now going through her house, making sure that everything was in its place. She was standing in front of the mirror, arranging her necklace, when, through the quiet night, Stanley heard her phone ringing in her bedroom. He watched Susan answer the phone. She often talked with her hands when she was on the phone. Strange habit, Stanley thought. At times, he could almost get the gist of her conversation; certainly he could perceive its mood. She usually seemed to be feeling silly, because she laughed quite often. She must have a talkative relative or a very good friend, Stanley thought, because she had been on the phone nearly every night that he had ever watched her. In fact, he couldn't remember a time that she hadn't been. As she talked, she often sprawled out on her bed. She often put her bare feet on the wall and stared out her window toward Stanley. She always stared, through his window, his eyes, his bathroom, through his house, into open space. Tonight, however, she sat up suddenly on the bed, placed the receiver on the night stand, and walked out of her room toward the front hallway. To Stanley's dismay, she returned, leading an older man by the hand. He wore a black suit and he carried a cane. He was tall, about fifty, and wore a full beard. As the man sat down in the chair beside her bed, Susan hung up the phone. She turned out all the lights in the house except for the lamp on her bedside table. Then she went into the kitchen and returned with two drinks in tall glasses. After they had talked and sipped their drinks for a while, Susan went to the foot of her bed and began taking off her clothes. Stanley watched her as she sat on the bed and gently pushed her one shoe off her foot with her opposite toe. With her hands searching for the clasp at the back of her neck, she carefully removed her necklace, meanwhile pushing off her other shoe with her bare foot. She then stood up, pulled her dress over her head, and tossed it over the back of a chair. She continued to undress until she was completely naked. Stanley's eyes were sore and they were starting to burn from the strain of staring. He had kept them as wide-open as possible and he hadn't blinked once the whole time. Now Susan led the man to the side of the bed and turned out the lamp on the table.

Stanley's eyes burned even more as he strained to see through the impossible darkness. He couldn't see much of anything. Nonetheless, he stayed at his window for a long time. He watched the indistinct movements of faint shadows. After the night had progressed well into the next day, Stanley finally went back to bed, frustrated and depressed.

* * *

The next night, Stanley waited again until his wife was asleep, and then quietly left for the bathroom. Susan was sitting on her bed, wearing a half-slip. She had one leg on the night stand beside her bed. Again, the lamp on the nightstand was the only light on in the house and it gave her skin a soft, autoluminous quality, and defined her figure nicely. She was painting her toenails. She looked so lovely, Stanley thought. Then he wished he was young again. But he wasn't. Not only that, he was shivering. The night was chillier than the one before and it had rained most of the day. Stanley wanted to be comfortable during this night's watch, because he thought he might stay at the window longer than usual. So he went softly to the bathroom door, unlocked it, and went into the hallway closet for a robe when he thought he heard noises coming from his own bedroom. He wanted to get back to his window quickly, but the noises coming from his bedroom made him curious. He tiptoed quietly to the door and put his ear next to the wall in the hallway. His wife was dialing the phone.

"Hello, Susan. This is Margaret," he heard his wife whisper. "Stanley's been in the bathroom for almost ten minutes now. What are you doing tonight? Are you in front of the window? Tell me what you have on! Tell me everything!"

John Sokol is a writer and painter living in Akron, OH. His poems have appeared in America, Antigonish Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Georgetown Review, New Millennium Writings, The New York Quarterly, and Quarterly West, among others. His short stories have Appeared in Akros, Descant, Mindscapes, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Redbook, and other journals. One of his stories has been translated into Danish, and, another, into Russian. His drawings and paintings have been reproduced on more that thirty-five book covers. His chapbook, "Kissing the Bees," winner of the 1999 Redgreene Press Chapbook Competition, is available through Amazon.com

John Sokol can be contacted at JSokol7608@aol.com

Unit Circle Fiction