The Voyeurs of Elm Street
fiction by Richard Taylor

When I was fourteen, I endured a family tragedy. My older brother Jack was killed in a car wreck, and my father died a year later of a broken heart. I was left alone in my world, left to deal with the terrible wake of death and loss. Sometimes during class at school I found myself crying for no discernible reason, and would stand and walk out. Sometimes I walked alone at night, up this street, down that street, paying more attention than called-for to street lamps that were nestled in tree limbs which made a scratching noise in the breeze, or the crisp, bright field of stars then still visible over Los Angeles, where I was born and raised, before light pollution stole them.

I sometimes sat beside our house, my back to the stucco wall, looking up at the stars, or the way clouds sleeted across the sky, lit by the Moon. There was no house between our residence and the Blakes , our nearest neighbors. It was merely an empty lot. I d grown up with the Blake children, the cerebral Stu, the sadistic Tom, and Lorna, the youngest. Lorna was a year older than me, but even so we d spent more than a passing moment playing. She was just about the most beautiful girl I d seen up to that time, tall, lean, black-haired, with eyes so intensely green they looked like jewels.

Late one Saturday night I was sitting with my back against the stucco wall and watched a car I didn't recognize drive slowly up the street. It stopped before the Blake house and Lorna waited for her date to open her door and escort her to the front porch. Lorna was wearing a nice black cocktail dress and looked very adult. That entry into semi-adulthood had separated us in recent years. I would not really enter it myself until war and Vietnam several years later.

Lorna's date kissed her respectfully and returned to his car. She waited on the porch before going inside to watch him drive away. I got the feeling she d wanted more from her date, not sex necessarily, but certainly more romance. After a time she went inside never seeing me watching from just up the block.

Lorna's room was at the side of the house facing me across the empty lot. I saw her bedroom lights go on. I saw her open the venetian blinds to a horizontal position so that they essentially disappeared. Her dressing table and mirror were opposite the window. I could see all of these things plainly.

I had not gone outside to stalk Lorna. I really didn't think of her much at all anymore. I had more pressing things on my mind, issues that I would not resolve for decades, as it turned out. When she began to disrobe my first response was not to leave, or stay, but surprise. By the time I realized what was happening, she had removed her dress from the date and stood before the mirror assessing herself wearing only panties and bra.

Lorna was unquestionably a beautiful young woman. She was extraordinary in a way that is even more popular today, lean rather than voluptuous, athletic rather than soft and curvaceous. I wondered what she was looking at in the mirror. didn't she know she was beautiful? It occurred to me suddenly, maybe she didn't.

Lorna reached both hands behind her back and unsnapped the bra and removed it. A chill ran up my spine. Suddenly I was catapulted from an introspective idyll into piracy. What I was doing wasn't right, wasn't correct, and at the same time it was fun! I was seeing what I shouldn t be seeing, stealing treasure so to speak, and it was exhilarating. I stood up to secure a better viewing angle as Lorna cupped her breasts in her hands, lifted them, and then released them. They dropped an inch or two and wiggled a moment. She turned her hip this way, her shoulder that way, posing before the mirror. She held her hair back on one side, then repeated the gesture on the other. Too quickly the moment passed. She slipped on a robe, closed her blinds, and ended the evening.

I stood outside in the night for more than an hour longer, thinking of Lorna, yes, it s true, but also reliving the excitement of being a pirate. I was driving past a barrier that read, Road Closed and the thrill of going somewhere I was not supposed to go was wonderful, and not related in any way to death and loss.

The following week I mentioned to my best friend at school what had happened. He snorted laughter. He was intrigued. He asked, Can I come over and watch? I told him I doubted such a rare event would occur twice. He wanted to try, anyway. That Saturday night, long before Lorna was due home from a date, my friend arrived at our house with a loan. The loan was a small case containing what he called opera glasses . They re my Mom s, he said. He d brought his Dad s field glasses from his stint in the Army during WWII. His parents used them at Santa Anita, the nearby thoroughbred horse racing track.

At the appropriate time, another boy dropped Lorna off at her door, kissed her, and drove away. She watched him go, then turned and went inside. Now don t get your hopes up, I told my friend, but a moment later the light in Lorna's room went on, she adjusted the blinds horizontal so that they essentially disappeared, and then turned and looked at herself in the mirror. My friend s binoculars, once used to hunt Germans, were put into play; I brought his mother s opera glasses up to my eyes. Lorna'studied herself in the mirror, and then removed her clothes down to her underwear. She patted her tummy. She turned left, then right, to gain a profile of herself in the mirror.

Oh, man, she s hot! my friend said. I was starting to become uncomfortable. What had started out as a personal act of piracy was now becoming something else. Still, it remained exciting.

Just before she closed the blinds, Lorna pulled her bra down without unsnapping it, twisted it around back-to-front and removed it. My friend whistled long and low. I nudged him to keep the noise down. The room went dark.

The following week at school I discovered that I had become a celebrity. Guys I barely knew suddenly became very friendly. When the moment was right, they would ask if they could drop by Saturday night to take in the show . NO! No show! There s nothing to see. It was all just a fluke. Let it go.

But, come Saturday night, three more friends showed up several hours before Lorna was expected to return from her customary date. We all sat in a neat row, five guys with binoculars (well, mine were opera glasses ) in my driveway, our backs to the stucco wall of our house. We blended into our environment like bird crap on a clean blue shirt. I stood up. Look, you guys can t just sit here. There are too many of you... us... so go find somewhere else to watch from.

One climbed a tree. One slipped behind a hedge. The other took up a position behind the garage. Okay, now the bird crap had become smeared. Good camouflage.

Lorna returned, was kissed, went inside, turned on her bedroom light, and did what was becoming a habit. I spent almost all of my time not looking at Lorna, but at my companions who were going to get me into a lot of trouble, I was certain, but nothing happened.

The following week I became just about the most famous and charismatic student to ever attend my school. Guys approached me and guffawed at shared, but unspoken secret knowledge. I was you dog! I was told, Oh, man, you should charge admission. A more entrepreneurial soul would have done just that.

I tried to pull the chain. I tried to slam on the brakes. Nothing doing. The following Saturday night nine more guys showed up. They parked along the street, but I made them move their cars a block away. At first we all just gathered like a gaggle of geese beneath the tree beside our driveway. Finally, I said, You guys have got to go somewhere, anywhere but here! So they again fanned out, three into the tree, three more in the bushes, two by the garage and at least one on the roof. Somebody brought a cooler of beer. Someone brought a bag of snack food. This was all just prior to Marijuana bursting onto the scene, or someone would have brought that, too.

It was only a matter of time until our sparsely populated working-class neighborhood noticed that an Olympic event was occurring every Saturday night on its lawns, behind its hedges, from its trees, and from my family s roof. That matter of time happened several weeks later. By this time, more than twenty voyeurs had congregated on Elm Street to watch a young woman disrobe before a mirror, and in front of open blinds. I had lost contact with the reasons behind this event. I rarely even looked at Lorna anymore, so concerned was I about being discovered. For blocks around our house, but not within sight in front, cars and hot rods clogged the curbside. Boys were on the roof of our house and the neighbor house, whose owners were on vacation, on the garage roof, in the tree beside the driveway, in the hedges in front of the house and the bushes across the street.

Lorna arrived home, later than usual by about fifteen minutes, kissed the boy at the door (a repeat kisser, I noted, from a previous date), and then went inside. The blinds in her bedroom went horizontal, Lorna turned to survey herself in the mirror, and a kid I d never talked to before the previous week was so startled by her beauty and nudity that he fell from the tree in our yard and landed on our concrete driveway. His scream was loud enough to cause Lorna to turn around and peer out her window, although with the light on she couldn t possibly have seen anything.

A friend of the faller fell himself, on purpose, to see if his pal was seriously hurt, grunting loudly as he dropped. His friend had a sprained arm, as it turned out, and the injured boy s older brother dropped from our garage roof to also see to his sibling s condition, cutting himself on the flashing and yelling and cursing painfully, which caused Lorna to change her angle looking out the window by ninety degrees.

The Blakes front porch light flashed and kids started coming out of hiding like cockroaches with the kitchen light flipped on. Some of them ran laughing and shouting between the houses to get to the far block where their cars were parked. Some of them ran down the middle of the street as if competing in a track heat at school. I said to myself, Oh, crap, this isn t good! and it wasn't.

Mr. Blake, Lorna's father, a man of kindly disposition but no pushover, either, opened the Blake front door and leaned out. What s going on out there? he asked forcefully.

Well, I was the leader, if for no other reason than I lived next door, so I stood up (I d never seen any reason to find another place to observe from, so I d remained sitting against the stucco wall of our place) and crossed the empty lot between our houses. It s me, Mr. Blake, I said. I was just... I had to amend I to We . We were just... Well, we...

You were what? Mr. Blake asked pointedly, suspecting something, although what I wasn't certain because if he was suspecting what really was happening I too would be running down the street screaming.

Well?

Scavenger hunt, my best friend said. He d followed me onto the Blake lawn. We re on a scavenger hunt.

Of course we were. A scavenger hunt. On a dark street. With my family s porch light turned off and only the street lamps, widely separated and filtered by hanging tree limbs to shed light on anyone. Cars with glasspack mufflers could be heard roaring to life a block away.

No, I said, uhm, actually, it s a treasure hunt. Maybe I was thinking about being a pirate again Haarrrr! There s a... uhm, Beach Boys album hidden, with a clue taped to the back, and whoever finds it leads us to the... the next... next leg of the hunt. There is nothing like being caught in some nefarious enterprise to motivate the development of lying skills.

Mr. Blake was not stupid and of course did not believe the treasure hunt story. When my brother died, and later my father, he d gone out of his way to comfort me. If he could find a way, he would allow me some slack. He was having a problem coming up with a response in any case. Then one of the kids in the bushes stood up holding a large rock and said, Found it! The rock looked nothing like a Beach Boys LP, but it was dark and maybe Blake couldn t see what it was. By this time sons Stu and Tom had joined their father just inside the screen door, and behind them, Lorna wearing a robe and looking out with an expression of guileless wonder.

We re going to go inside now, I said.

No one said anything.

We won t disturb you any more tonight, I told them. I might have said ever, but didn't. Night.

I heard the Blake front door shut behind me as my pal and I walked back to my house. A half dozen guys remained hidden and only came out of their spy nests after the Blakes were inside. I didn't invite them in and left the porch light off.

The following week I discovered that I was no longer, You dog! at school. When I saw my fellow conspirators, most of them looked away, while the others pretended I was somehow responsible for them making fools of themselves.

While most of the Blakes treated me like the character Boo Radley from To Kill a Mocking Bird for some time to come, Lorna remained my friend and went out of her way to talk to me whenever she could. One of our conversations drifted to the subject of beauty and I told her just how lovely she really was. She didn't bring up the night of the treasure hunt, nor did I. My compliment lifted her confidence enough that she entered the local town beauty contest, won it, and went on to limited success as a model. Long after we were adults she thanked me for suggesting the whole thing to her.

It has occurred to me that Lorna's interest in me was possibly more than just friendly, that perhaps she was trying to send me a message. If so, it was a message I could not receive then, and by the time I was able to receive it, we d both moved on. I never forgot just how beautiful Lorna was and the near riot that beauty caused one summer in a suburb of Los Angeles.

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