The Dizziness of Freedom - Chapter 2
Cardinals chipped their cheerful songs from the ring of old oak trees that shaded the property. Nestled in the heart of the oaks, set considerably back and sheltered from view of the main road, was a substantial but unpretentious home -- a two-story ranch, like so many other Florida homes built in the 70s. Gentle beams of sunlight fell across the manicured lawn. Each blade of grass casting its shadow onto the one in front. In the house’s large front windows, closed curtains rebuffed the delicate morning light. Overhead, clouds sauntered lazily through the sky as if they were getting a slow start on the day. Someone’s John Deere hummed from a few houses down, far enough away to be the kind of soothing white noise.
Dorian threw open the elegant front door of his home and thumped out onto the wraparound porch. He was dressed in a loosely-cinched robe and carefully holding a coffee mug that bore the face of comedy actor Don Knotts. Knotts was dressed as his iconic character Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show, and the caption under the image read: Not Much Gets By Me! Dorian stepped off the porch with a yawn and made his way casually down the long cobblestone drive, occasionally slowing and closing his eyes to savor his expensive kopi luwak coffee. With his eyes closed and tilting his head towards the morning sun he’d swallow the heavenly beverage and sigh with relief. The comforting light fell on his face and neck and chest, causing the gray hairs on his flabby chest to twinkle.
At the end of his driveway, Dorian checked in both directions before stooping at the road’s edge to pick up his daily newspaper. Hardly anyone ordered news to be delivered these days, but Dorian had the time to enjoy reading the paper every morning on the balcony of his master bedroom, reclining in a wicker chaise.
With the newspaper tucked tight into his left armpit he reached into his robe pocket and produced a small plastic bag. Dorian began to whistle while shaking the bag open. The tune was unidentifiable. It could have been a mix of The Andy Griffith Show theme and the intro for some nineties sitcom. Dorian pulled the bag over his hand up to the wrist before bending down to scoop up a pile of dog shit with his improvised glove. The turd was of impressive magnitude, but with some determination, he managed to get the whole thing in his plastic-bagged hand. He carefully inverted the bag, still whistling, and started down the street, his steel-toed Red Wings echoing against the fences on either side of the neighborhood street. The smell of dog shit hung around him like a miasma.
Each property he passed was more opulent than the one before. Extravagant landscaping shrouded the properties from the street view, offering only tantalizing glimpses through a veil of well-maintained shrubbery. Landscapers of the undocumented variety dotted all of the lawns, raking leaves, mowing high-quality Saint Augustine grass, and trimming privacy hedges. Dorian periodically raised his bag of shit in a friendly wave as he passed the working men and women.
Stopping six houses down from his own, Dorian, turned to look across the road. There stood what he considered easily the best property in the neighborhood. The house was a beautiful Victorian tucked almost all the way at the back of an elegantly landscaped lot. Lush vining ivy climbed the walls of the house with the help of thoughtfully placed wooden lattices. A brick driveway wound unhurriedly through the lawn from the house’s striking, scarlet-red front door to an iron gate, which was currently closed to keep out uninvited vehicles.
Dorian took a moment to admire the property and then, still whistling, sidled around the driveway gate to another smaller gate that was ajar and onto the lawn. One of the landscapers looked up from pruning a shrub and Dorian gave the man a sly wink. The landscaper returned his gesture with a wink of his own and went back to pruning.
Moving purposefully to the south side of the house, Dorian set down his newspaper and coffee cup on a humming air conditioning unit. He pushed the bag of shit into his robe pocket and looked up. The second-floor window was high. Dorian wobbled gently to keep his balance as he craned his head back and forth trying to judge the height. He didn’t think about his stories much anymore, but the image of a character he had created flashed across his mind. It was so clear the character felt real. His dark hair draped over his shoulders. The unsettling juxtaposition of his intense eyes and slight grin intrigued Dorian’s readers for decades. A dust-covered sirape, dark pants, and a pair of worn boots finished the character's look. He stood relaxed. Surrounded by the blackness of Dorian’s mind and then he was gone.
The wooden trellis creaked when Dorian slipped his foot into the first diamond-shaped hole of the structure. He hooked the arch of his steel-toed work boot securely over the edge of the opening and tested it for stability before hoisting himself upward. Last time, he’d made the mistake of attempting the climb barefoot. He hadn’t made it even three feet up on that attempt and had spent an hour picking splinters out of his toes later that night.
The boots were brand new, and he could tell if he’d taken them much further than his short walk down the street, he’d be in for some world-class blisters. But he only needed them a little while longer, and their support made a world of difference as he climbed the lattice up to the master bathroom window. He could smell the sort of green smell that non-fragrant plants give off, trying to ignore the trailing vines that tickled his face and arms and focus on his weight distribution on the delicate structure. Occasionally he failed to resist the urge to swipe a vine out of his face, and every time he would waver, almost lose his grip, and then throw himself forward against the wall, wrapping his arms through the lattice up to his elbows. At one point in his ascent, a section of the lattice snapped under his weight. His unsupported leg panicked, searching wildly for another foothold. It finally found one and Dorian paused to recover his composure.
He looked down and then up, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He was close, barely close enough to stretch his arm all the way up, and grab the window ledge, but there was a gap of maybe two feet between the top of the lattice and the ledge. His heart was still flying from the broken lattice and he wanted to climb back down as fast as he fucking could. His chest rattled and his breath came out in ragged bursts. He spat over one shoulder, shutting his eyes against the sight of the lawn far below him, and then reached up and gripped the ledge with one hand. With the last reserves of his core strength, Dorian wriggled his way up as far as he could until he was waist-level with the bottom of the window, feet perched on the very top edge of the wooden lattice.
The french window of the master bath was open outward a crack to take advantage of the unseasonably cool morning air. Dorian could just fit his hand in the open space. He pulled it open further, toward himself, and as he did so shifted his center of gravity in the opposite direction. His round upper body swung out over the ground and he had to grab the open window with both hands to keep from falling again. After several minutes of graceless but determined maneuvering, Dorian dragged his middle and lower thirds over the window ledge and slid face-first onto the cool marble floor of the bathroom. He lay on the cool bathroom floor panting.
From his hard-earned resting spot, he surveyed the elegant bathroom in search of people or potential obstacles. Everything was bright white and glistening marble. Color-coordinated towels were stacked in several convenient locations within arm’s reach of the walk-in shower and jacuzzi tub that occupied a good deal of the bathroom’s real estate. Over the tub, a bay window framed the property’s riverfront view. It was the view Dorian had wanted for his own home, despite his realtor’s cheery insistence that all those windows on the front of his house made up for the fact that it wasn’t a riverfront property. Dorian smelled potpourri and saw a large bowl near the sink with dried roses and other flowers he couldn’t identify. He wasn’t whistling, but his heart was singing and his chest was pounding with excitement.
Scrambling to his feet, Dorian crossed to the walk-in shower. Shampoo bottles and loofahs and exfoliating scrubs packed the shelves. He pulled out his bag of dog shit and went to work, scraping bits of dog shit into the shampoo and exfoliating scrubs and any bottle he could open. An expensive-looking bottle of conditioner smelled of coconut and vanilla, and then Dorian ruined it. Using the bag as a glove-like he did when he picked the shit off his lawn, he pushed the poop into the small nozzle, winced at the aromatic blend of coconut and shit, and continued to the next bottle. Have you ever tried to put Play-doh into one of those tubes they give you so it comes out a certain shape? You push it in, but there’s always some excess that doesn’t fit and gets cut off and stuck around the hole. That’s how Dorian was approaching his task: smashing the poop into the opening, shaping it into little poop cylinders with the mouth of the bottle. On a bottle of Dove moisturizing body wash, Dorian felt resistance as he smashed his smelly brown Play-doh into the bottle. He located a partially-digested bird feather in the turd, used it to clear the top of the bottle, and then shoved a little more in, carefully placing the feather in the bottle like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. The showerhead splashed on, and the spray of hot water washed all the fecal indications of Dorian’s presence from the marble tile.
A sound outside of the bathroom door startled him and he quickly finished, cleaning the bottles with a sheet of toilet paper and flushing it down the toilet.
When his feet were on the ground again he grabbed his coffee and newspaper and made his way back out to the street, where more of the neighborhood residents were beginning to emerge for their newspapers or morning runs. A pair of older ladies passed him on their daily power walk, and Dorian flashed them a genial smile before picking up his walk where he’d left off, drenched in sweat, the smell of dog shit still clinging to his robe. He took a long sip from his mug and began to whistle.
