Beverly Smells of Lilacs

Lionel Shelton stood at the door, put his keys into the right hand pocket, patted his left breast, checking his wallet and slipped his swollen feet into the size ten brown loafers before turning out the light. All he had to do was open the door and leave but he didn't. Instead he stood listening to the sounds in the hall, people talking, and the squeak of the linen cart approaching. He put a hand on the wall, beside the jamb and waited for the feeling of the cool surface to register in his mind. He waited for the vertigo to pass and when it didn't he whispered to himself, "What do you think you're doing, you stupid fool?" but he didn't slip out of his shoes nor did he take off his jacket; he stood there as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark and his mind wandered over to the last couple of days and a fresh assault began.

It was Tuesday or maybe Wednesday, what did it matter, when his weeping eyes cleared long enough for a glimpse at the loveliest creature he had seen in years. She sat, her thin legs daintily crossed, as she watched her fingers nimbly slip stiches and followed the gesticulating arms of a Barker's Beauty. He had found a little of his old manners when he sat next to her and, all rapid-fire delivery, began the delicate maneuvering that led to a promise of tea the following afternoon. She was wise to his efforts but didn't mind, a thought that confirmed for him that while he was old, he wasn't dead. He was in his comfort zone, surrounded by the cheap vases stuffed with plastic flowers, on assembly line end tables beside floral couches; his home for the last seven years. The dusty rose lamp shades cast a warmer hue than the sun ever had, in his memory, and the mood was elevated by the familiarity of the hand crocheted throws draped over the backs of the wing backed chairs, while the smell of perfume, too heavy, and the liniment, too musky, was barely recognized by noses deadened from years of effort and use.

Lionel Shelton hadn't been outside in more than two years. He preferred the dry air of the central heating to the chaotic humidity of the city around him. He preferred the muted light to the erratic behavior of the sun; the moon. He preferred the quiet of the T.V. lounge to the roar and crash of the streets below. His world was muted and carefully arranged, in direct opposition to his memories of his life before The Shepherd Estate Towers and its soothing sameness. He stood with his hand on the wall and rested his head on the door, listening to the squeaking wheels of the linen cart recede and he cursed himself again.

Her name was Beverly. She was two floors down. She liked to sit in the garden. She was three years younger than him and, like him, had outlived her family. She collected chop sticks, a remnant of the years she had spent in Japan. She knit to keep her hands busy and she read to keep her mind active. She thought he looked like Burt Lancaster. She smelled of lilacs.

She asked him to tea.

He lifted his head from the door, checked his pockets once more, opened the door and stood looking into the hallway, smiling to spite himself. "I may be old" he thought, "but I'm not dead yet.", and he pulled the door shut behind him and ran a hand through his hair the way that Burt Lancaster used to.