The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd

by Robert Davies

  IN the morning I woke slowly, and it was difficult just pulling myself out of bed. Could a dream, regardless of its content, create so debilitating an aftereffect? I thought about Aline that morning with silent gratitude there would be no need to explain myself and the obscene moments in a dream that reflected my own depraved imagination. I felt dirty and dishonest, but that is the inevitable burden after suffering creepy dreams and images of things we would never do in our “awake” lives.

  WHEN DUSK CAME to end the afternoon, Aline called suddenly and I stared at my phone for a moment before answering. To my great relief, she simply wanted to know if I had dinner plans, and when I reported none she suggested a “date” at her favorite place in Liverpool. There was no particular reason, she insisted, and mostly because she hadn’t been on a “dress up” dinner date in a while. I agreed quickly, of course, and when I pulled into her drive near seven o’clock, the tension I created for myself seemed to fall away like water draining from a bathtub.

  We chatted about ordinary things on the hour ride up to Merseyside and none of it seemed odd or forced. Instead, Aline showed only anticipation for an evening out and it went that way for a long time—two people on the same path, if for very different reasons, adjusting and finding those places where one fits neatly with the other. We settled into it and found a sort of equilibrium that seemed natural, learning more about each other in small but continuing increments.

  We sipped wine in the restaurant bar while waiting for our table, and through it all Aline’s history remained elusive and she spoke mostly of her childhood in details that became fewer and less defined when topics shifted to her adult life. I wondered where and when the difficulties for her began and by what event; was it something specific, or a slow burn to an unfortunate conclusion in Scotland? I knew better than to ask and I wasn’t concerned enough to worry about it anyway.

  WEEKS PASSED, THE customary pace was established, and with it, an informal schedule by which we each knew how to go over the hill—she to my house, or I to hers. In town, we had become an “item” and a few knowing smiles from shopkeepers seemed to apply a final, approving gloss to it all. Aline, they said, was changed. Now, she wore a smile for no reason and stopped to chat about things that would never have concerned her before. In my private moments ideas of something more flirted with me from a distance, but I ignored them with a determination not to screw it up with unwanted expectations. It stayed that way until a message chimed its arrival in my phone late in the night to pull me from my sleep.

  Uncaring for the time difference between us, Vienne forwarded an amusing meme about Buffalo Sabres fans’ historic dislike of rival Toronto and I laughed out loud as the back and forth process consumed thirty minutes. Trying to sleep again would be a wasted effort and it occurred to me in a comical moment I had no books with which to become bored in the late hour. I stood and pulled on my robe, looking again at the clock that showed another twenty minutes until midnight. In that second, I thought of the Air Canada gate in Montreal and a call to Aline I didn’t place. Was she still awake, I wondered? Could I soothe myself with the sound of her voice without seeming a needy, selfish pest? Once more I flirted with the idea, but unwilling to reverse what was built in those first careful moments. Instead, I decided to follow a hidden, more private course.

  In the darkness, with no others around who might notice, I would be secure and alone. No one needed to know anyway, and without hope of a return to sleep, I dressed quickly and slipped out through my back door on an angle toward the woods. It seemed childish but I stepped slowly around occasional patches of snow in the cold air.

  A penlight that once dangled from my key fob lit the way with its artificial blue glow, and it seemed fitting as the moon above bathed the forest in similar tones. Past the hillside and along the dry creek bed I wandered until I reached the bottom edge of Aline’s field. I simply wanted to see her house, even from that distance and look for a lit room to reveal she might yet be awake.

  As I cleared the trees and angled left in sodden grass she was there, waiting motionless in the moonlight. It startled me and I stopped to aim my light at her for a moment before replacing it in my pocket—the night’s strange glow was more than enough, and she walked slowly toward me. As it was on our first encounter months before, Aline appeared out of nowhere and at precisely the right moment. When she stopped in front of me, all of it seemed expected and inevitable.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied.

  “Me neither. I was going to call you but I chickened out and decided to take a walk instead. You saw my flashlight?”

  She moved closer.

  “I knew where you were.”

  Her words were soft and spoken with ease, but I didn’t hear the hidden meaning. Instead, I reached for her if only by instinct and we held each other for a moment. She was dressed in her robe with heavy boots and a winter jacket that made for a mildly amusing picture, but before I could comment she pulled me close and kissed me. I wish I could say I understood, like a film star in a romantic movie perhaps, but all I could do was stand in that moment and give in to the powerful sensation. She took my hand and turned for her house without a word. I walked beside her in silence while we crossed the lawn, aiming for her back porch. I could smell fragrant shampoo when she laid her head on my shoulder for a second or two until we went quickly through her door. She turned, only for a moment, but her expression changed. I’ve seen it many times since, but the first remains prominent in my memories because it was so unexpected—almost feral.

  Aline turned quickly and walked backward to her front room, pulling me by my outstretched arms until she stopped and moved a low table away to leave a wide throw rug in front of her fireplace clear and uncluttered. It sounds strange to say it now, but it was the sort of thing we might do before a wrestling match and not the slow, romantic ballet sex becomes when its first moment arrives.

  In the orange light of her hearth, watching as she pulled the robe from her shoulders, I saw ornate, swirling tattoos, just as they appeared in my powerful dream. They were not uniform and mostly in the distinctive shapes of ancient, Celtic art—random triads and elaborate knots—but none connected deliberately to another. I couldn’t understand how those same designs across her body could be nearly identical to the scenes of my shocking dream days before, yet it was a stunning replay and I let myself live within it once more.

  She watched me as she went, but still I couldn’t speak. Her movement was not a burlesque-inspired strip for the purpose of building anticipation; instead, her thigh-length nightgown and panties were simply in the way and she nearly tore them from her body.

  I stood before her, motionless like a repentant waiting for judgment, until a flurry of movement left my own clothes in a heap near my feet, and I waited until her fingertips found me.

  Aline moved like a serpent writhing and molding its shape to fit the world around it. I felt breathless—captive to the moment—as time became static and irrelevant. She said nothing and I couldn’t speak. We moved together, first with a deliberate, almost violent cadence but later rising and inexorable like water below the decks of a sinking ship.

  I couldn’t recognize it at first, but the air changed around us, moving from the breath of a stone oven in this moment to a crackling, electric swirl in the next. Her face changed, too, swapping a gentle smile beneath lovely eyes for a sneering and twisted expression of purpose and determined power. Her teeth clenched as she pulled my face to her with a hiss and a handful of my hair to direct me wherever she wanted.

  She commanded me to taste her and breathe in her scent, but I heard a faint warble of laughter in that same moment and it was the first time I understood how captive I had become. It didn’t matter the demand or perversion, I waited eagerly for anything she ordered me to do. I don’t remember when we moved at last to her bed but the clutching and groping became desperate and even violent. She bit my lip and I saw my blood on hers as she grinned a
nd said in a deep, guttural growl, “You’re mine! Love me proper now.”

  The shuddering explosions followed again and again as if made without limit and I worried my pounding heart would burst out of my chest or the ringing inside my ears might leave me deaf. They didn’t, and all I could see was her glistening, naked body moving in the twilight as she twisted me into position so that we could begin again. The sound of wet skin on skin in a steady cadence was loud and alone in the silence until I heard whispered words coming at me as she held my head with a firm grasp. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination until I saw her eyes close as she bucked back and forth above me and the strange whispers became a chanting song. The words were foreign, but I didn’t care or worry for anything beyond the moment and each breathtaking convulsion. Her sudden, strange language offered no clue and I wondered in a brief moment if she was pouring out another product of her old difficulties—speaking “in tongues” by another name.

  There was no line of demarcation; no discernable starting point. I didn’t know if each forceful thrust was my doing or hers, but the physical pleasure was, in the last moments, a compulsion bending me to its will. Desire and primal lust overran any sense of romantic connection between us and still I couldn’t stop myself from obeying any command. Her thighs closed tightly against my ears in this moment but turned into pounding spurs like a jockey compelling a horse in the next. Everything was slippery and hot to the touch and I could think of nothing else.

  When she pushed me onto my back and moved slowly into a tight straddling position, her hair fell forward like a golden tent around my head and all I could see were her narrowed eyes and the sound of breathing through flared nostrils with each movement. Again, the images swirled through in my mind and I could smell an unexpected odor, like wet moss clinging to the branches of an old tree. I had no time to consider its meaning but I remember it clearly today.

  Through it all, what should have been tiny gasps and polite moans of two joined by the power of love became something else: gravelly shouts and warbling screams anyone else might regard as the voice of pain. I never once thought to stop or slow and she gave no hint of a reason I should. No experience in my life could match the fury and desperation holding me to her like a vise until finally it began to slow. I can’t say how long it continued until we finally gave in to exhaustion, but the trees outside stood motionless in the early dawn light.

  We were breathless, pouring sweat, and still she watched me in the final seconds as her expression eased and the lovely, gentle face returned. Calling our first night earsplitting sex is the easy, boastful description today, but it was much more than that and months would pass until I understood the difference—and an explanation why.

  Mo will be disappointed when she discovers I didn’t go further in the details of my first time in bed with Aline for their narrative. It isn’t for the sake of modesty but because Aline asked me not to. Mo will see the brief, generalized description and convince herself my hesitance is made from a defiant need to protect and secure a private place where no one else should be allowed to go—a place reserved only for us. She wants to believe it was undeniable attraction and the emerging power of love that brought us together that cold night, but Burke knows better. We all understand it was much more than a romantic interlude, but Mo will shake her head and insist it was that unseen force which makes one devoted to another for a lifetime. She’s right about some of it, of course, but she will refuse to allow the rest of the story to shatter a charming illusion. Miss Persimmon is a scientist but she’s also a hopeless romantic; I’ve never been able to figure out how she reconciles the divide between fundamentally competing interests but that’s who and what she is.

  WHEN I WOKE in late morning, the snow was dissolving in a steady, cold drizzle. Aline shifted herself closer and pulled me close.

  “Let’s stay here a while,” she whispered and it was obvious she wanted to revisit the passionate moments from the night before. “I’ll start breakfast later.”

  When it resumed, the moments were unlike before—gentle and with an ease the way most people imagine lovemaking should be. The moments were abbreviated, but noticeably absent were the powerful thoughts and fierce, passionate images that took me over and released what anyone else might call animal nature. I said nothing and Aline’s manner was once more the way it had been a day before. I felt dehydrated and as I drained two full glasses of water, she laid her head softly against my shoulders. Whatever spell carried us to another, surreal place only hours earlier, it was gone and the calm returned.

  My moonlight walk hadn’t been made for those reasons or the base instincts of sexual desire; I went over the hill simply to satisfy a private need and to look the way parents do when their children are fast asleep. I had no expectation or deluded idea of knocking on Aline’s door, but when she met me unannounced in her field, explaining myself became needless. Had she woken and felt a parallel compulsion of her own, I wondered, unable to sleep and driven by the same desire in an impossible moment of shared thoughts? It didn’t matter and I was relieved when we continued afterward without the awkward “talk” to define boundaries, make excuses, or to ensure no repeats because the encounter was only “in the moment.”

  We spent most of that day together watching television and planning my next trip up to her shop. I wondered if our late-night rendezvous would come up and when it did, Aline seemed to regard the previous evening’s raw exhibition only in tones of affection and not tied to lurid details or wondering when we intended to do it again. Once complete, our first intimate moment—no matter its intense push against the borders of acceptable behavior—brought us finally through to a calm and understanding place that needed no analysis or qualifying argument. It simply was and we were free to follow our new path together without slobbering declarations of love or pornographic overtures aimed at this pleasure or that.

  There was no effort made to establish rules or make pledges of devotion others find necessary in exclusive relationships because they weren’t required. Aline was in no hurry and neither was I, so we picked up where we left off the day before and simply enjoyed breakfast together. She asked me to rinse some blueberries and I gave in to a silly impulse to shoot her with a spray from the faucet. She squealed a little, but a battle for control of the sprayer was on and she didn’t let up until the front of my shirt was soaked. It sounds childish today, but I enjoyed our rough-housing and loud laughter that ended with a hug and a truce.

  With order restored, I watched her again. It was interesting, although a bit dull to describe now, but seeing her at domestic tasks like any other girl without the mystery and unknown worries I’d assigned to her only months before was somehow expected and soothing. She prepared the eggs as I would; she tucked a dishrag in her waist and hurried from the stove to the refrigerator, and it occurred to me in a sudden and enjoyable moment whatever landed her in a mental ward was no longer in control; Aline Lloyd had taken her life back.

  AFTER A WHILE, the unanswered questions about Damon’s finances came up again in a phone conversation with Vienne. She had decided it was a problem for a future day and since most of the contents from his safe deposit boxes had been secured locally, or at a bank in London, there was no special hurry to investigate further. I was prepared to take it up again, but I admit relief from that duty was very welcome. We agreed a more involved, direct approach to managing our newly acquired business interests was needless as the property rights and ownership holdings Damon had secured were largely self-regulating. We were always given the option of attending financial meetings each quarter, but neither of us felt a pressing need to go, particularly with Liam Donnelley’s banking friends to keep an eye (however expensive it turned out to be) on such matters.

  We spoke in abstract terms about the changes our sudden wealth had brought, but it seemed Vienne was enjoying the money more than I. She bought a suitably expensive high-rise condo in Montreal’s fashionable Ville-Marie neighborhood and, in a parking garage nearby,
one of the severe battlecruisers Mercedes-Benz offers in its seemingly endless line of sedans. Not for the image, she insisted, but because it was “that damn nice” to drive. She wondered if I intended to splurge a bit as well but my defense of the used Nissan X-Trail I’d bought in November—one of the cars American soccer moms drive these days in order to avoid looking like soccer moms—only made her laugh. “You can afford a new car, Evan,” she said. “Live a little!”

  I promised to upgrade before summer, but I think she knew it was mostly big talk with no intention of backing it up unless and until somebody forced me. She asked how it was going with “the mysterious neighbor girl” and I hoped the question had been asked only in passing. After I first told her, my description was colored by the things I thought I knew. In those earliest days I avoided a suggestion that Damon had bolted from the place in part because of difficulties with Aline. When I explained things had changed dramatically, and a growing relationship had become something more, Vienne went suddenly silent.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “Are we still talking about that same girl from before—the crazy one who did time in a looney bin?”

  She couldn’t know but it was irritating to hear the words.

  “Yes,” I replied, “but it turns out she’s nothing like that. I had it wrong and she’s not crazy at all.”

  “Then why was she institutionalized?” Vienne asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know the specifics, but I think she went through a bad time and needed to reset. People shut down sometimes, Vienne. Everyone has a breaking point and just because Aline reached hers doesn’t mean she’s crazy!”