THE KISS

 The Kiss

Elton Chase was taking his evening walk in the park and was halfway around the loop when a woman's lyrical voice halted him in front of the bench on which she was sitting.

"Excuse me, sir.  Do you remember rock and roll?" asked the elderly woman who sat alone.  "And Elvis Presley?"

"Oh, yes," he replied, and smiled wistfully.  "Don't we all remember Elvis?"

"Remember all the protest our parents made over him?  They said he was destroying the youth.  And his music was sinful and evil."

The poor lady is a bit addled, Elton thought.  His mother had been like that in the months before she died.  He was surprised and grateful that he still had all of his faculties.  He was, after all, eighty-one years old.

"Oh, I'm sorry for imposing on you, sir.  It must be very annoying to have a perfect stranger get on your ear uninvited.  But I'm old you see, and the only friends that I usually would talk to are already in their graves.  Sometimes I even talk just to myself."

"I'm old too," Elton said, "and I often talk to myself."

He took the liberty of sitting next to her on the bench, and got a better look at the woman.  She was quite attractive for someone who might also be in her eighties.  And then, after a startling instant of sudden recognition, he proclaimed, "My gosh, imagine this!  Why I know you.  You're Dorothy Craig.  And do you know that I've thought of you almost every day of my life for the last sixty years?"

A brief look of fear crossed the woman's pretty face, but fear quickly turned to curiosity, and then to recognition.  "Oh, my.  Can this be true?  Elton Chase?  After all these years.  And I can still see the boy in you."

"I think not.  It's been a very long time since I've been a boy."

"Oh, it has, hasn't it?  It's been a long time for everything.  Imagine us meeting like this in our old age.  Such a coincidence."

"Maybe not such," he said.  "I walk here in the park every night.  I live right across the street in the Rosedale Seniors House."

"Why so do I.  For a month I've lived there."

They both looked across the park at the four story red-brick building on the other side of the avenue.

"Then it's not such a coincidence, is it?" Elton said.  "I took an apartment there because I thought it would be some kind of comfort to live in a building that had once been our high school.  Is that maybe why you live there?"

"Not exactly,"  Dorothy smiled at him affectionately.  "It was my daughter Margaret's doing," she explained.  "I was living with her until she started her second marriage.  Her first marriage had ended very badly, and I did not want to be an impediment her second time around.  Margaret knew that Rosedale High School had been converted to apartments for seniors, and she thought I would like the idea.  And I do."

"Well I'm very glad you're here.  It's a joy to see you again."

"And you too, Elton."

"Dorothy, do you remember that party at Betsy MacFarlane's house?  We were just kids.  And we played that silly game."

"Oh, yes, I certainly remember that.  It was called 'We Dare You'.

"Right. And the other kids voted that you and I should do a joint dare.  I was ordered to kiss you in front of all of them.  Remember?"

Dorothy nodded.

"Well, it may seem bizarre, but I think about that challenge just about every day.  And I regret very much that I did not kiss you when I had the chance.  Everything might have turned out differently if I had."

"But you did kiss me, Elton."

"That was no kiss.  That was just a quick peck on the cheek.  I mean I should have really kissed you.  Like a man kisses a woman."

"Elton, we were only sixteen."

"We were old enough."

        "Perhaps."

"I didn't dare kiss you.  Because I was afraid you might resist me, or even scream."

"Now you know that wasn't the reason," she replied gently.  "It was just that you were too shy.  And I certainly wouldn't have gotten upset.  Actually I was disappointed that you didn't kiss me like a man kisses a woman.  It would have been my first time too."

"If I had only known that," he lamented.

"Kiss me now, Elton.  Kiss me like a man kisses a woman."

What?  Why that would be so ridiculous.  I'm an old man and she's an old woman.

And yet!  He suddenly felt those long-inactive juices tingling in his body.

"Close your eyes," Dorothy said.  "Please.  Just for a moment."

Elton closed his eyes.

"Now open them, dear Elton.  And you will see me as the girl I once was, just as I now see you as the handsome boy you were."

Elton opened his eyes and gazed at the beautiful teenager girl with long sandy hair and the wonderful brown eyes that could pull a guy's heart out of his chest.

"Kiss me now, Elton.  Kiss me like a man kisses a woman."

The jogger arrived at dawn, just as the light of day was  seeping into the park.  He had only begun his trot along the rotary pavement when he saw the couple on a bench far down the path.  They appeared to be locked in a passionate embrace.

When the jogger reached the bench, he gasped at its occupants, and immediately pulled out his cell phone.

The police arrived quickly.

"I don't understand it," the sergeant said to the other officer. "This boy can't be more than seventeen. And the girl about the same.  For a couple of kids to die just like that.  And no signs of violence.  And look at the way they're dressed.  The boy's wearing mouse-trap shoes for god's sake."

"Well, what do you think of this, sergeant?"  The other officer handed him the driver's license that he had removed from the boy's sport jacket.

"Date of birth is March 11,1940," the sergeant said as he studied the license and noted that the photo was of an elderly man. "This kid had no ID of his own, but I can see a strong resemblance to the old man.  Guess he must have snatched his grandfather's license, don't you think?"