Empress of the Night- A story about loneliness, longing, and...dogs.

By Michael Oren

Late afternoons, you can see them in the park. On the banks of the swirling river that bisects it before draining into the sea. They curl on the benches and stare into the stream, often hugging their knees. They are roughly the same age, mid to late-forties, bleeding vitality, already succumbing to frumpiness. They watch the flotsam—tennis balls, water bottles, a fishing bob—whorl, and wonder how it got washed away. On the benches they’ll remain until sunset when, with a sigh or even a groan, they rise and return to their apartments.

They leave and yet older ones take their place, accompanied by their dogs. Nocturnal, six legged creatures, they zigzag down the paths by the bank, the animals all small, furry and nervous, and their owners hunched and round at the middle. They amble, never hurrying, each taking turns in the lead. Occasionally, the man or woman will pause on a bench and check a cell phone. The screen may show an image of smiling nieces or a parent now deceased. But more often than not, the photograph is of the animal straining at the end of the leash—it or one of the companions that preceded it.

Loneliness is not a state, it’s an empire. Like blindness, it heightens the senses. The cloying scent of jasmine that recalls the bedsheets after a long night of love-making. The reds and yellows of autumn leaves quilting the water. The white wings of the sea birds, like old men’s brows, rising and furrowing in ire. Loneliness is a park lined with pyramids of lamplight. It is a river draining endlessly into the sea.

Stephen and I would often see them, the keepers of the afternoon benches and those of the dogs at night. Whenever we strolled through the park, we’d see them and exchange grateful smiles. As if to say, “no, that’ll never be us,” as his hand pumped mine and pulled me away from the river.

My first serious relationship and, not counting some high school fumbling, my only exposure to sex. Introduced at a party during college orientation, we recognized each other’s compatibility. Not unattractive but not quite cute. Neither stupid nor brilliant, effervescent or dull. Just us, Jill and Stephen, upright, dependable, like bookends without many books in-between.

So solid, in fact, that we never bothered to marry. Sure, we expected to but there seemed no rush. He with his accounting, me with my real estate gig, and our three-room walk-up near the park. No kids to look after—someday, sure, but not yet. Instead we had weekend trips to the mountains or reading the Sunday papers over brunch. Sex, affectionate, unadventurous sex, twice weekly. Our eyeglasses on the nightstands gazing at one another across the bed while we slept.

But then, the lump. Then the surgery, the radiation, the chemo. It wasn’t so much his lack of desire that bothered me—I couldn’t look at my body—but his stubborn refusal to care. To hug me while I wept, to stroke my hair or so much as the back of my fingers. The man I lived with, nursed when he was dying of head colds and whose underwear I bleached, left me to cry alone. Worse than the scars, worse than the pain even, was the humiliation.

Later, when remembering that time, I often forgot that it was me who ultimately left Stephen. More than a decade together and I could not bear another day. Perhaps I should have seen the fear behind his indifference—of being saddled with a person whose sum was now less than her original parts. Or, then again, he may just have run out of sympathy. Certainly, he found enough of it to marry a Mexican woman some years later, a single mother of two. I told myself, “in your heart, you wish him well.” But my heart replied, “like hell you do.”

Shortly after that, I found myself on one of those benches staring into the river rushing to its death in the sea. That was how I thought of it now, a march of the doomed. Everything looked different. From the obvious floating baby doll to the dead fish whose eye took in the heavens and saw nothing. Involuntarily, my knees pressed against my chest and my arms held them there as I imagined a mother might a weeping child. And I began to learn about loneliness.

It is an empire of order, cleansed of another human’s mess. It is coming home at night to an apartment excruciatingly unchanged since the morning. It is the hallway lights that blink once, twice, before begrudgingly burning, the refrigerator hum that I never before noticed. And the knowledge that the situation is permanent. A wombless woman must not hope for much change. On-line dating, friends who fixed me up, a few months—or was it years?—passed before I despaired of those options. Before I lost interest.

And then you came along. Loving, undemanding, uncannily intuitive of my needs. Always listening, ears pricked. You, who were introduced to me as Stevie and I said, “oh, no, that won’t do,” and so became Fred. Who watches TV with me and greets me ecstatically after work. Fred, who nightly leads me through the lamplight pyramids to the tall grass alongside the river. The moon lays on its surface scepter-like, a symbol of my rule.

For if loneliness is an empire, I am its queen. Lording over the couples who pass me on the trail and smile at each other pathetically, thinking they have what I lost. But, in truth, I have achieved what every person longs for—freedom from dependence, solitude’s defeat. And if am I the sovereign, you, Fred, are my prince. Or at least my squire, waiting on and obeying me, faithful without hesitation.

On the bench overlooking the water soon to be consumed by the sea, I pause and check my cell phone. There are no messages only a screensaver of you. Perky, present. I reach down and tickle the furry ridge between your ears and my fingers come away wetted. Birds purr in the darkness, sporadic dogs bark. All of it—the park, its pyramids, the old people alone in the night—are part of my realm. Our realm. “Isn’t that right, Freddie? Good boy.”