The Goddess Next Door

This spring evening ended like most, dinner then a couple of chapters of something or some other distraction to wind down with, then to bed. Tonight is different. No matter how hard I try I cannot turn the noise off between my ears. I worked out at the gym this morning and worked outdoors the rest of the day so I am plenty tired yet the gears keep humming. Then I notice the light streaming through the windows. Wait a sec--that's moonlight! Looks like la Luna is full of herself tonight.

My sleeplessness explained, I figure a remedy for her shenanigans is in order. A double of single malt and a fresh doob should do the trick. No matter how bright the moon goddess shines tonight. I head out the back door still in my jams and cardigan, the doob dangling between my lips, a silky smooth dram of Scotland's finest and a skip in my step.

One of my favorite spots to enjoy such a thing is in my own backyard. I built a raised shed at the back of the property with a laid stone pad in front. It's equipped with barn doors and motion sensor lighting. Tonight the batteries are stone dead. Not even a dim glow. This leaves me in the dark. I have to feel around to get comfortable. Having a raised floor suitable for a low seat, I settle to one side of the doorway with my back against the jamb with one leg stretched between and the other crooked and planted on the stone pad. A fine triangulated position that is easy on all parts and an upturned five gallon bucket makes a great rest for the toddie.

I raise the libation up to the bright orb in the night sky, "She is a big one tonight," I mumble. I take a sip. The medicine is warm as it slips the surly bonds of the glass to wind its way round what ails me. I pinch the doob between my lips and raise the lighter. "Helps a comin', love," I say with a flick. I draw hard making the end turn bright orange. Just then the door to the neighbor's sunroom swings open.

I know it's just the widow next door letting her quartet of canines out for the sacred once-around-the-yard before bedtime. I finish the draw and hold it. I watch as each one goes their separate ways each preferring their own part of the property. Then she appears.

I hardly ever see her. Most times it's just her hand pushing the door open for the dogs. A few minutes later she claps her hands, shouts, "Come," and they disappear back inside. Then she reaches out for the doorknob and gone. When she does appear we usually hail each other and have a chat. Tonight is different. I don't want to startle her. It's one in the morning. I hang on to the draw.

She's a pale pert redhead with clear blue eyes, a bucket full of sass and living alone with her dogs. We're longtime neighbors. She taught art to adolescents for twenty five years. Our sons grew up together and I was a friend to her and her husband. Now I am a friend to her. I'm her fixit guy next door. I settle back in silence giving her the privacy I am certain she expects.

She claps her hands once and the rambunctious bunch of barkers settles down each one with their nose pointing towards her like darts on a map. Neat trick. She must have treats in her pocket. And something else--instead of one of her many denim house dresses, she is wrapped in a shimmering full-length robe the color of merlot. It's topped by a thick shawl collar of velvet so black it glows blue in the moonlight. Her long dark red locks cascade over her left shoulder. She's a diminutive woman and might be described as stout. Not tonight. Those house dresses are a ruse. She is cutting a fine full figure and is doing it in runway style. She is downright voluptuous. A Frazzeta-like fantasy. Or a Boris come to life.

I let the smoke out of my lungs under my breath then start to take another drag when she loosens the robe's belt. Okay, I am about to watch my neighbor go for a swim. I've never seen her swim at night even though the pool is heated and well lit. Then the robe parts allowing a stripe of her pale flesh to show from chin to ankles. Nope, my neighbor is about to go skinny dipping!

A spring breeze pushes her robe open a bit more and I stifle a gasp with my free hand smacking the doob from my mouth. It tumbles into the darkness and I - - don't - - care. When she retrieves a large clip from the pocket of the robe and raising her arms to gather her hair is like the parting of stage curtains. From her Coke bottle shape to the orbs of her breasts down to the gentle furrow of her tummy graced by her navel. Further still to the delta demarcated by her copper bush trimmed in the shape of an upturned obelisk. Bereft of flat planes and corners she is a moving study in sensuous form--the divine feminine--in the skin.

Her hair secured into a proud ponytail, she turns and moving with the grace of a dancer saunters around the edge of her pool. I am dead still as I watch the shimmer of her robe billowing and flashing parts of her anatomy as she makes her way toward the deep end. Her shapely calves and thighs tensing and relaxing as she goes. The taught bounce of healthy flesh. The tender jiggle of her proud breasts. Her stride conjures a certain abstract painting in my memory. I know what Duchamp felt witnessing the same. He might have been as I, little tipsy, eyeing the object of his awe through the glass that he had just relieved of its contents. Perhaps absinthe or another sazerac. He finds himself frozen in time as he once was as a boy standing on the back of a bigger boy to peer over the rich people's fence. He wanted to see the swimming pool. He had been told it was the biggest anywhere and the heavens sparkled on its surface. What he saw was so much more. It was lined with patterned tiles of cobalt and azure and the bottom itself though illuminated seemed a mile deep. Then she appears reflected on the undulating surface--a fair naked beauty descending stairs by the light of the moon. Spellbound he nevertheless returns his gaze to the reflection.

I allow myself the slightest of breaths fearing I might break the spell with any bit of noise or movement on my part and I dare not blink. Stopping at the far end of the pool, her back still to me, she allows the robe to slip from one pale shoulder then the next allowing the thick velvet band to caress her as she reveals a true classic female form. Her muscularity gives way to the suppleness of her form. If you've been to the Uffizi then you know. As the robe gathers upon itself coming to rest below, it forms a perfect pedestal. She unfolds her arms skyward turning into a thousand statues from the ancient world reaching ever skyward in homage to the night messenger. Under its light, my bespeckled neighbor, the ebullient retired schoolmarm is a fair Greco-Roman goddess not born of aphros but rather spilled out of the moon as if la Luna tipped her martini a little too far. The splash giving life to a perfect spawn of moonlight in the form of my neighbor.

My eyes trace the swoop of her neck across her shoulders and down the curve of her spine. I pause at the dimples of her hips set above the twin cheeks, each demanding my attention. She turns ever so slowly her arms held out as if basking in that incredible moonglow. Then I see her reflection and am gobsmacked. There at the edge above the pool, she glows against the darkness--an alabaster sculpture set against the night. But in the reflection on the still water of her swimming pool she is silhouetted against the moon herself and become a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Then I notice the reason for her height gain. She is wearing a pair of high heels that sparkle in the moonlight. They are spot-on duplicates of Dorothy's ruby pumps right out of the movie but with a serious altitude adjustment. The effect accentuates elongating every line from her shoulders down the swoop of her back that turns back in a perfect reverso at her buttocks. A hand length to the front another French curve starts at the top and front of her thighs extending down through her knees and turning back over her calves and down the swoop to her ankles that stops at her heels. There, her feet on-point form the final S where the forward swell of her arch reverses at her toes gathered inside her pumps.

I am rapt at the sight of my neighbor in divine syncope. When she begins to bathe herself in moonlight I am struck again to not breathing. The moonlight has turned to rain flowing from an invisible source. It splashes over her face and down every swoop and curve. Rivulets course over and down her as she turns into the flow. It splashes around her like jewels dancing at her feet. She glistens as every drop caresses every inch of her being. Then I realize, this is a moment. Her moves are choreographed. This has been played and performed through millennia. A rite of spring. From goddess to goddess. There is meaning, purpose and pleasure in it and I am feeling it all at once there in the dark. The sheer electricity of the moment flows through me. Enough to light a hundred homes.

When she presents her breasts to the stream I am still not blinking and now I'm not breathing again either. She weaves her head ever so slowly enjoying the pressure and beat of the liquid as she turns her hands to feel her own flesh. Then the stream ceases and she pushes the liquid from her face. Then ever so gentle quivers the rest off onto the pool deck. Then she steps out of the pumps and bringing her hands together above her head, dives into the deep end.

I startle a bit as she comes up at the shallow end closest to me. She breaches the surface like a grownup version of the Little Mermaid but au naturel. She looks in my direction but I don't move, make a sound, take a breath nor even blink. I realize then she cannot see me there in the shadows. Or can she? I take a breath and a mosquito buzzes into my mouth. Poor bastard.

She arches backward into the water and backstrokes away through the reflection of the moon. Slick and shiny as a dolphin in the wild, the water slips around and over her as if she were made of chrome swimming in a pool of moon-glow. Nearing the far end she spins onto her stomach and with her feet together bends at the waste and dives. Toes together pointing at the sky as she disappears beneath the surface. When the ripples subside and I am about to come up off my seat, she breaches again. This time with enough force to allow her an easy step back onto the pool deck.

Facing away from me, she turns enough to look back in my direction. When she does just that, my heart stops beating. In all honesty, everything stopped in that moment. Everything but the sparkling rivulets and dripping jewels bouncing around her. I can sense her breathing in time with her heaving chest. I imagine what her breath would feel like on my neck and the rest of me. Would her lips taste like pool water? She wriggles out from under the remaining liquid and stepping back into her ruby pumps raises her arms skyward once more. The dogs howl when she strikes a pose worthy of another painting. She curtseys to her canines approval.

I have to resist standing and applauding myself. Instead, I quiver there in the dark and swallow hard. My mouth is bone dry. I have been watching the whole time like a mouth-breather. I try to work up some saliva. I am still not blinking. Then I remember I still have scotch and down it. It is hot to my throat but easy on the tongue and I thank the gods old and new for this moment. My heart is beating hard enough to set off waves somewhere, I am sure of it. Maybe she can hear them. Feel them. Goddesses have skills.

She finishes by kneeling down to retrieve her robe and pulls it up slowly again allowing that luxurious fur collar to caress her form once more before shrugging it over her shoulders and folding it closed around her. She cinches the belt gently and claps her hands twice. The dogs beat a hasty retreat back inside ahead of her. She releases the hair clip and shakes her locks free before gathering them to drape over her right shoulder this time. Part of the ritual I presume. Like moving your graduation tassel from one side to the next. This time the robe allows only one pale leg to show as she walks back inside. The ritual complete, now I can breathe.

I inhaled hard and took several more deep cleansing breaths readjusting my seat as my butt is numb. Feels like it has a flat spot. I feel around for the doobie, find it and spark it up. I take a long drag and notice something else. She has left the back door open. She never forgets that. Then I see her hand extend as if to catch something out of the air. Her fingers from the pinky to the index folding in once, twice. I don't know what to make of it. I scan the whole of her back yard thinking one of the pups a laggard.

I hold still again. It is autonomic at this point. Like knowing there's a tiger and the tiger sees you. Then just as quickly, her hand finds the doorknob and pulls the door softly shut. Soft enough that I notice that she left it ajar. I tip up the glass hoping for another drop that doesn't come. I finish burning the doob, close up the shed and as I do, the motion sensor lights come on. The batteries are fine. Why didn't they work when I opened up? I shake my head believing there's a perfectly reasonable answer. I take a long last look up at that big bright beautiful moon relishing and recalling what had just transpired.

I have always loved my neighbor as a person. Now I can love the goddess in her too. I think I might have already. It's like seeing anything wild and special and rare, it becomes etched on the inside of your eyelids. For the beheld it is just another day.

I'm a blue whale. I'm a polar bear. I'm the Aurora Borealis. Deal with it.

Such is the value of awe for us humans. Socrates said, "Wisdom begins in wonder." For those things and a goddess bathing in the moonlight.

I stare up at the moon and thank her. Thank her for all of it--the sight of her earthbound emissary. Thank her for that cool spring breeze that blew open that robe. The breeze that made her nipples stand proud and me gasp. The same breeze that carried the sweet scent of the gardenias planted nearby. The taste and warmth of fine scotch and the sublime buzz from good weed. I should be able to sleep now but there's just no way. Every cell in my body is lit up. I was chosen to bear witness. To see the liquid light of the moon poured upon my neighbor's backyard so that I would see her. Selah.

I thought I might go through the gate and fill my glass with some of that bioluminescent holy water from her pool. But I am a thinking man. I'll take a bucket. Maybe two to balance the load. One thing is for certain, the day before the night of the next full moon, I am yanking the batteries out of those motion sensor lights.