The Long Way Round
A/N: Plot belongs to Amy Ngew's "The Scent of A(nother) Woman" (Part I and II) This is basically a re-working of the three central characters' stories from their own perspectives, round-robin style, starting with the lawyer, followed by his wife, followed by the secretary, and on it goes until the end. More of an exercise to get me writing than anything else.
Nor was he especially handsome. But I loved his face. He had the face I love. You may be smitten with many faces when you live long enough and possess a responsive heart. But there is only one face you love. It is always the same. You recognize it among thousands. - Klaus Mann
There is butter on my tongue. It coats the roof of my mouth, smoothing out the consonants of my words as I lean in closer to her ear and whisper the obligatory eight letters that to date have become leached of their meaning. Have I tipped them out of the words themselves, or has she? No, iteration will invest them with some semblance of commitment, I am sure. I read an acknowledgement in the answering, amorous look in her eyes as we clink glasses. I loosen my tie, compliment the food. She is wearing the lipstick I gave her a week ago. I imagine kissing those lips goodbye, and rinse the picture out from my brain.
*
My heart swells. It’s funny, I’d never thought it possible, but the organ literally leaps an inch and a half up the blueprint of my body against its cage of bones. And I get this stupid grin on my face that, judging by its frequency, threatens to sink into permanent laugh lines. After all this time we’ve known each other, there is no reason for me to react like this. It’s only dinner. And perhaps a movie. And perhaps his hands on me with the lights dimmed. I’m staring. It’s impolite. It’s just like me to be a stickler for manners while he chews, mouth slightly open, and it is this carelessness, this fearlessness that I must have fallen for.
*
The interview went well. I pull my arms out of the sleeves of my windbreaker, a strange complement to the starched blouse that has come untucked over the course of the long ride home. He used to stare at me when I arrived at the door, windswept and wild-eyed. And I had enjoyed being given the once over. Now, he simply inclines his head from where he sits before the television, remote in one hand and a sweaty glass of soda in the other. I might walk over to kiss him hello, or I might not. The carpet threads suffer my prolonged indecision, before I finally turn away and cross over to the kitchen in quick strides to pour myself a drink.
***
Because this is what domestic bliss tastes like. The wine spreads over my palate, and I look around at our house, beautifully furnished, with none of that gaudy chintz that plagues designs nowadays. And I am looking at the wife who has made it possible. It is in moments like these that regret the shifts and indecisions of earlier on. I do love her. She moves closer to me. I do love her. Love is a conscious reminder. I bring back to mind the Ferris wheel, the evenings spent strolling hand in hand along the waterfront, cheap trite demonstrations of affection now that I spell them out in a list, yet what is anything worth at all but for the emotions we invest in it?
*
I say it again earnestly like a refrain. We are happy, I told my mother over the phone today, married life is gorgeous. If she was sharp she would have picked up on it. The ostentatious word choice, I mean, not the trembling timbre of my voice. Or perhaps the repetition. Who is to say that marriage is the end of freedom as singletons know it? I am still free to do as I like; I have so much spare time on my hands. I can still feel, within the bounds of this strange estate. Only once in a while do I miss the feeling of design plans blooming from the tip of my 2B pencils, the rush and risk of inspiration, the tide of time turning as I create something entirely new.
*
He has waved away the domestic helper who has been busy arranging rose petals such that they appear to be strewn carelessly on the bed. They perfume the room with a sick, cloying heaviness. It is just like the way he does things. He beckons me over. I step out of the lace negligee that he had given me earlier in the evening. Funny thing they share, father and son. I am sitting on his lap. It’s a strange, awkward position. I do not like sitting on older men’s laps. He takes my face in his hands and kisses it. I quicken my pulse, bring a blush to my face. The heart, after all, is like any other muscle; it needs conscious and consistent exercise.
***
I dangle the proposal draft in front of her cubicle and drop it into the tray, rambling off instructions for modifications and adjustments, and throw in a harmless jibe for good measure. You get it, right, I ask, fingers crossed. She rolls her eyes as her fingers continue to fly across the keys. And then the meaning of the joke dawns upon her and she stops typing, lips slightly parted. A smile blooms upon her face and vanishes just as quickly before she laughs, a brash lonely sound, and I find myself laughing too.
*
I’m sitting on a bench by the sidewalk, watching the world wind down. Eloquent epiphanies that accompany people-watching elude me. There is no way to explain whither goes the wind, or the tears, or the dust that rises from the ground and settles on my glasses. A group of noisy schoolgirls chase each other down the street, shrieking, their carefree laughter almost contagious. I was young once. Their footsteps fade into echoes. I should make my way back home. He’s not coming back for dinner tonight; he called ten minutes earlier to say so.
*
My new boss has this strange saviour-complex. I tripped on a stray cable today and he grabbed my arm even when I had already steadied myself. It’s not as bad as it sounds. For one, he isn’t a perv who would have taken the opportunity to grab something else and then act gallant about it. In fact, he looked sheepish, like a boy caught with his homework unfinished or his laces untied. I wanted to kiss him then, those schoolboy lips. It would have marked a moment, there. He wants to save me, but I don’t need saving. His sorry self is his own business. I don’t care, so long as he helps me maintain this job and its endless paperwork that keeps my sanity intact and distracts me from the thin silver circling my finger.
***
I’m beginning to find that I have nothing to say to her. A little voice by the side of my ear, whispering that there is nothing in my day which will interest her, nor anything from hers that is of importance to me. All right, that is an obvious exaggeration. What pervades our conversations is a bland, banal boredom. Every night at dinner I listen to her account of her day with polite attention, as she does with mine, albeit with the adoring eyes. I start to feel sorry for inciting such unwarranted attention, but with such cold reception on my side, her persistence seems to me like she’s doing it deliberately just to make me feel bad for not feeling as warmly as she. It makes me resent her feelings, and dread dinnertime, where I am made to feel like a sinner when after all, I am only human.
*
We had our first argument today. Well, it wasn’t really an argument, just a disagreement of sorts. It was over the vase of roses that I bought for the dining table. He took one look at it first thing in the morning and told me, in an odd voice, to take it away. I argued that it blended in with the decor perfectly, and insisted it remain where it was, more out of stubbornness than anything else, really. And I expected him to parry my reply with another, but he just fell into some queer quietness, and stared at his coffee cup like there was an answer in it. I longed for his voice to be raised, braced myself to be berated, hit even. Pain is better than nothing. So I smiled until he left the room and I took the roses in my arms and chucked them in the bin. And that was when I noticed that one rose was missing, and thought, perhaps, he had pinched it to give me as a sort of belated penance. I fold my fingers together and smile, meaning it this time.
*
Work has been ridiculously hectic today. Boss has been acting up, in PMS mode, nitpicking at every little error I make, causing me to make even more mistakes. I don’t work well under intense scrutiny. At least the day’s over. I push the stray papers together in no particular order at all; I’ll weave them out tomorrow and they might just make sense. And that is when my hand brushes against a wilted red rose, its petals faded and tinged with brown, its scent long gone. The note tied to it reads, innocently, made me think of you. I finger the rose appreciatively, but it’s really kind of creepy, so I drop it into the wastepaper basket. I keep the note, though. It’s nice to be thought of, even by a creep.
***
Mugs chink against each other, the foam from this cheap piss beer spilling onto the counter top. I sip at it, grimacing. The firm can afford far better. After all, we’ve clinched the deal, right? In all honesty, much of tonight’s success can be credited to the hard work I’ve put in. To my right I can hear the delicate clink of champagne glasses among the girls, who simper and make small talk before taking to the dance floor. The crowd throbs in time with the music, bodies twisting about one another in a sick parody of movement. It is far too hot in here. I set my drink down and turn away from the bar, and I spot her making her way right into the middle of the throng, bare arms up in the air. Has she lost that cute little jacket so early in the evening? She tosses her head back, and I follow the line of her throat down to her bosom and that little bit of skin above her waistline. Leaning against the counter, I watch her dance, body to body, lights, sounds and colours melding into a strange sensation at the pit of my stomach, the sick, sweet taste of fear that something’s coming to seize you in the night.
*
I am nursing a mug of Earl Grey; it decorates the table with concentric circles every time I set it down, painting a lopsided flower of sorts. He had said he would be late, but I did not expect it to be this late. Not a call, not a word, and the clock says four twenty-three. Something prickles at the back of my eyes. I imagine all sorts of traffic situations with his body rent apart, the ambulance lights flashing lurid red against the night sky. Suddenly the door opens and he stumbles through, alive and whole, and in an instant he is in my arms, breath heavy with alcohol, mumbling something about the darkness of the night as his hands cling to my shoulders as would a child. Rage and relief tear at my nerves in opposite directions and I find myself murmuring soothing nonsense, his head on my chest, and sleep nowhere near even though it’s practically morning.
*
Dance, move, the night is young. There is a body pressing up against me from behind, the idea of it is revolting but I make no protest, simply showing my knowledge of it by leaning back and curving into some foreign embrace. There’s a certain thrill in it, falling into arms you’ve never had to learn. The girl in front of me twirls her hands in the air, like a synchronised swimmer who’s used to drowning. Sweat drips down my back. I let myself go into the music, the pounding bass line replaces my pulse, and I forget.
***
That was after they split up, remember? And her eyes lift slightly away from me to greet the wall behind me, the way she usually focuses on something in the distance when recalling some long-forgotten fact, what I inwardly call her data-searching face, it’s just a running joke we’ve got going. Oh, she says, oh, right, pointing her martini glass at me, grinning, right, now I remember. Yes, she says, that was a good song, God knows when they’ll ever get back together, there’s nothing like their sound that can be found today. And I nod, drinking deep from the whiskey in my hand as if it’s soda pop, buoyant, awake, alive.
*
I drowse. The bed feels weightless. It rocks me to sleep. In my dream I see his face adorning the faces of every man down the street, different permutations of the same face, features distorted and in disarray. Eyes where noses should be, and mouths gaping at some mortal lack I cannot satisfy. I have a bag which I clutch to my body. I keep my eyes on the concrete. I can feel their curious stares; they are wondering perhaps why I have not an extra pair of ears. I could draw them out of existence, bend pavement to ceilinged sky to make this street an endless loop from which none of us can escape, not even me.
*
I unlock the door to the apartment and slip inside. There’s no need for quiet; I can hear his snores from the living room. He has left the windows open. The night wind breathes in, and the curtains billow and dance like a saucy young thing. I am not drunk. I turn the night’s conversation over and over in my head. Something uncanny about the way his tastes echo mine. Something strange that I cannot place. Perhaps we’ve loved before, shared time and space before. I stumble clumsily into the coffee table and slump onto the sofa. It holds me. Love holds me. I inhale and close my eyes, and I can see his words branded onto my mind as I fall asleep.
***
I wake up. She curls in next to me, a shell by the sea. My head throbs from last night’s drinks with the secretary. She stirs, sighs a little, and falls back asleep. It is in these moments that I rediscover what I love most about her, her vulnerability and utter dependence on my better judgement. She murmurs a question, something that sounds vaguely like, you sure you’re going to work? you look terrible, and toys with my hand as an invitation back to bed. I shake my head and say that I feel perfectly fine. My vision swims, and I steady myself by holding on to the bed post, shaking the blurry sight of her in bed out of my eyes. How is it that the greatest chasm between lovers is neither time nor distance, but a secret that marks what you find behind this line of disclosure as mine and mine alone, where you shall know no more than what I choose to paint to you, the pretty picture that is our imagined future.
*
I let my head sink back into the pillow. I’m not a child; I know when I’m being lied to.
*
We finish up the last section of the proposal together; he intends to implement some of my ideas even though they were given half in jest. I’m typing up the last flourishes with him suggesting formatting amendments behind my shoulder. I can feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, clocking the time as it ticks past eight and my stomach rumbles. He smacks my shoulder amicably, laughs at some joke that dissipates as soon as it takes form. Then his face turns serious and he asks me to hang out with him again, tonight, says he has a pair of concert tickets he got for free at some draw. I raise my eyebrows, wordlessly indicating the wife. It seems to have become unspoken between us now, the oblique way we refer to her in the third person. Something so estranged about it, yet so reminiscent of familiarity.
***
And out of the melody rises the wrath of the sea, or the grief that sickens us all. It tempts me with the suggestion that she might just be the one to save me. I would give my life to her if I could, and I wish it were romantic or simpler but it is not, it is as tangled as the vines beneath the sea yet exalting at the same time, and searching, always searching, in vain, for some anchor or hold. I reach for her hand but draw it back at the last moment. It’s too early, too soon. I would not give over this precious understanding for something as tenuous as amorous attachment. I am taken, and so is she. It’s a reassuring position to be in. And all we want to be is a little safe, safe from love, safe from jealousies. A strange fickle thing, the human heart.
*
The television glows an unearthly blue, casting grotesque shadows upon the wall. Here in the dark I am wrapped up in blankets. I feel snug and warm, safe from the world and its vicissitudes. The drama playing out on the screen is predictable. Everyone cries when they have to and make up the next day. Their faces express vivid, uncomplicated emotions. Joy is unsullied by disappointment, hatred untainted by heartache. He walks into the room and sees me, says hello in a hollow monotone. I lift my face to him but he looks right through me like I do not exist, his eyes a shuttered island closed off from my despair.
*
Another night, another masquerade. The bed springs squeak their protest, punctuating Céline Dion’s soaring vocals. Why did he choose to put on that particular song? I had wanted it to be solely mine, an unsullied impression of last night’s dally by the waves. But I suppose I can just shrug it off. Thankfully it’s only a shrieking female vocalist. Anyway it’s nothing but a stupid song. I resist blinking until my eyes begin to tear. It’s easy, you know, such physical demonstrations of weakness. They excuse moments of inattention; they help you get by. My mind splinters even as my body acquiesces. Long ago, it would not have mattered. But now I find that my heart cries, and it hurts, it hurts as bad as someone taking a blow to the chest and then falling, I’m falling. And why do I even care?
***
The red card on my desk screams for my attention. I can’t believe she’s giving her life to that useless bastard, that mockery of a male specimen. How can he keep her fulfilled? What does he have other than that damned inheritance of his? She would never be happy. I think of her daredevil streak, her hair like a flag in the wind with her legs astride that motorbike. I would treat her different; I would cradle her dreams as if they were something precious. She is one to be treasured, and now to be thrown away so carelessly. It pains me to think of it. My hand reaches to my phone in this time of duress, and I find myself speed-dialing my wife, of all people, making small talk, asking her (since when do I do so?) what she had for lunch, and what are her plans for the afternoon, suffering an abysmal wretchedness for it all, this tragic life that leaves us all alone.
*
My fingers dance on the touch-screen, repeatedly locking and unlocking my phone. The end credits of yet another television serial roll over the TV’s face. Rays of light peek in through the gap between the heavy curtains. It is another typical, uneventful afternoon. My nerves alight at every beep, every flash on this little device; each message is a crutch on which I lean and hobble to the finish, a lifebuoy thrown to keep me afloat for the day. Each reply is carefully worded before I hit ‘send’, a missive of my abject wanting. The way I clutch to him like a lifeline, it’s pathetic. It’s time to wean myself off him, to ration my indulgence in his scanty attentions. I push the offending object into the farthest corner of the table. Suddenly my phone rings, and it’s him, and I grab it hungrily, whispering, breathless almost, hello.
*
So, the game is on. I stuff the remaining invitations into my handbag as best as I can, but they bob up against the opening and I have no choice but to leave the bag unzipped. Walking up to the apartment always gives me a gnawing sense of dread: what will I find in there tonight? It’s a bit like kinder surprise, the parental advisory version. The air in corridor hangs still, waiting for something, a little like love, perhaps. No surprise then, when I find my clothes and books and stuff and shit dumped in a heap two metres away from the front door. I abuse the buzzer, pound my fist on the door. I am in here, I cry. Funny, shouldn’t it be the other way around? I look down and the red cards stare up at me like a bad grade on a report card, a lurid mockery of my predicament. I chuck them in the bin on the way out. Just a little dust in my eye, that’s all.
***
She stalks in, barely missed by those jaws of the lift. Our eyes meet for an instant that I try to prolong, but she looks away pointedly. We had met in the lift that very first day; I was late and she had arrived early, her long hair up in a severe bun, the one time it was dressed like that. Here we are, months later, in the same elevator, yet in circumstances vastly different, our ascension up the levels a mockery of my determined free fall. I only want things to be as fresh and as perfect as when we first met, my marriage intact, her defiance of convention thrilling as the night wind whipping your face riding pillion on a motorbike, and is that too much to ask? Something about lines that I meant to explain, lost to me now. Still I want to touch her face so bad my hand shakes. It’s wrong to desire like this, breath catching on nothing, but what can be done when my longing is visceral, pure instinct beyond reason, beyond words, the unmistakable lurch of your stomach when you lean too far over the edge that warns you, it’s over, it’s done, and still you cannot help falling.
*
People tell me he’s having an affair. The suspicion rings in me like reverberations in a bell after it has been struck. I dismiss it as one would do a joke, shaking my head for ‘no’, and meander about my shame as I offer reason after reason for the improbability of such a thing. Yet what I cannot bring myself to do is to name the sin. It seems like if it remains a nameless fault it could be an easier transgression, anything other than what it is. Honesty is a dangerous thing. It scalds you with truths you would rather not know. I stop asking friends for advice; it’s hardly becoming, the way my story spills out in the middle of trivial tea-time conversation. I don’t need an outsider to inform me about what he’s having on. Better than what anyone tells me, I know it in my bones, the way a dog knows if it is spurned. I read it in the hunch of his back as he curls up on the bed, inches apart from me but miles away, the muscled wings of his arms folded in readiness for flight. Affair or no, I can tell that he wants to be anywhere else but here.
*
He crushes my arms in his hands; it’s the first time we’ve touched this much, and I shiver. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear a thing. The only thing that occupies my mind is whether to lean into his chest or not. I almost do, but something in me resists. I had wished it was more, that we had connected on a level beyond the physical, a meeting of minds perhaps. I push him away but his hold is resolute. He shakes me, hard. My teeth rattle. If we had met five years ago I might have dissolved but now it merely irks me, and the last thing I need is to fall apart only for some guy to put the pieces back together the wrong way round, for him to tell me what to do and how to do it, who says he understands, in that snivelling way that guys do, when all they want is a good fuck, I tell you, it disgusts me.
***
My fingers cling to the wheel. Sweat beads into a discomforting blanket on my palms. My hands are shaking. I don’t trust myself. I signal and veer left. A horn blasts somewhere near my blind spot. Funny, I’ve always been a good driver. Someone once told me that honesty was a dangerous thing. Who was it, and why can I not put a face to those words? I have been honest; I have been honest, have I not? Even when desire has knocked, have I not abstained from straying? My mind is racing. Her accusation is unfounded. Have I not been perfectly constant? Cold, yes, but constant. The lights blink treacherously in the distance. I get this insane urge to slam on the brakes, to end it all in flames, go out with a bang, isn’t that what they say? And yet my foot stays on the accelerator, my arms lead me safely out through exit 5A, and the memory of her breath on my neck keeps me going, I am going to meet her, and my problems will untangle at the sight of her straight black hair, her nimble fingers, and all will be well, as sand sifts from sediment, yes, all will be well.
*
There is no way I can continue living here. Every perfect surface he touched has been ruined by his betrayal. I believe in it wholly, even though he reasoned till he was red in the face. I know now the truth in that idiom. It’s inappropriate, isn’t it, how I’m laughing at it. It’s not only yesterday that our romance has begun been spinning way out into the region of the tragicomic. Only now do I feel free to mock, as if I’ve achieved some distance from this sham of a marriage, even though I have not moved an inch. With effort I manage to steer myself into the room, opening the closet from which I begin sifting out items of clothing that I am somehow going to find useful, someday. I drag out the travelling bag from the top of the cupboard. How am I going to stuff two years worth of living (breathing, fretting, my fingers twisting into some new worry) into a suitcase this small? I laugh again. I must be going insane. No, I am alive, that’s all. See, I move, I breathe. I’m breathing, taking in gulp after gulp of air, and then and only then does it hit me that I am crying, stupid, heavy sobs that I am much too old for, the tears falling down into the useless fabrics in my lap.
*
Our drinks are sweating rings into the counter top. I want to take a sip, but he has his head on my shoulder. I sigh and let him rest it there, when troubles come and my heart burdened be and all that, saying soothing things. How can it be that people see any use in comforting one another, when it doesn’t even make a dent in the situation? He should be at home ironing things out with the wife, not weeping into my shirt sleeve. You think I know anything about tears? Truth is, I hate it when men cry. Some distant memory from my childhood, I guess. You see, I don’t go into it; I just let it congeal into a manufactured grief. God, that image is disturbing. The envelope sits quietly in my bag. See, it is patient, it is kind.
That is, until he kisses me.
***
Her name is Linda. When we kiss she smells like a rose in winter.
Yesterday I walked past her old cubicle and a wave of nausea hit me; I had to close my eyes and take deep calming breaths before I could drag myself back to my room. Half a year on and you would think I would have gotten over her, over them both, the whole fiasco damned into some dark recess never to be revisited. But memory tricks itself into place, and refuses to budge no matter how hard we rage against it. I’ve learnt my lesson this time. I’ve learnt about constancy. You see, I’m just looking for somebody to love, somebody who’s her, anybody at all who’s willing to bear that same face and the rest I can simply work it in in my head. I’m not even asking her to- It’s not that much to ask, is it?
*
I’m back in my old room, surrounded by pink floral wallpaper I put up myself at fifteen. An object of beauty takes on many other shades of meaning as we mature, so that that beauty ages into something beyond its original flashy façade. It is the way with old buildings, and so I believe it shall be with me. There will be someone, someone who finds grace and favour in my constant misgivings about myself, my petty worries, my unworthiness that suffocates any hope for happiness. The small print of the classifieds glares defiantly at me, but I am determined to plod through them undaunted. I turn to page one, the first page, always a good place to start.
*
Another love that’s gone to waste, another light goes from your face, Ed Sheeran sings, easy-going acoustic belying heartache and regret. But wasn’t heartbreak for children, teenage angst we outgrew as easily as we did our canvas shoes? I walk down the busy street, boots clicking on stone, arm swinging in rhythm with the music. I still turn heads but it no longer bothers me. What is love but a perverse daisy chain of hearts clamouring after each other, one after another? The gate creaks as I swing it open. It’s just me, again. Maybe there’s no one waiting for me in the dark. And that, after all, could end up being a very good thing.
Nor was he especially handsome. But I loved his face. He had the face I love. You may be smitten with many faces when you live long enough and possess a responsive heart. But there is only one face you love. It is always the same. You recognize it among thousands. - Klaus Mann
There is butter on my tongue. It coats the roof of my mouth, smoothing out the consonants of my words as I lean in closer to her ear and whisper the obligatory eight letters that to date have become leached of their meaning. Have I tipped them out of the words themselves, or has she? No, iteration will invest them with some semblance of commitment, I am sure. I read an acknowledgement in the answering, amorous look in her eyes as we clink glasses. I loosen my tie, compliment the food. She is wearing the lipstick I gave her a week ago. I imagine kissing those lips goodbye, and rinse the picture out from my brain.
*
My heart swells. It’s funny, I’d never thought it possible, but the organ literally leaps an inch and a half up the blueprint of my body against its cage of bones. And I get this stupid grin on my face that, judging by its frequency, threatens to sink into permanent laugh lines. After all this time we’ve known each other, there is no reason for me to react like this. It’s only dinner. And perhaps a movie. And perhaps his hands on me with the lights dimmed. I’m staring. It’s impolite. It’s just like me to be a stickler for manners while he chews, mouth slightly open, and it is this carelessness, this fearlessness that I must have fallen for.
*
The interview went well. I pull my arms out of the sleeves of my windbreaker, a strange complement to the starched blouse that has come untucked over the course of the long ride home. He used to stare at me when I arrived at the door, windswept and wild-eyed. And I had enjoyed being given the once over. Now, he simply inclines his head from where he sits before the television, remote in one hand and a sweaty glass of soda in the other. I might walk over to kiss him hello, or I might not. The carpet threads suffer my prolonged indecision, before I finally turn away and cross over to the kitchen in quick strides to pour myself a drink.
***
Because this is what domestic bliss tastes like. The wine spreads over my palate, and I look around at our house, beautifully furnished, with none of that gaudy chintz that plagues designs nowadays. And I am looking at the wife who has made it possible. It is in moments like these that regret the shifts and indecisions of earlier on. I do love her. She moves closer to me. I do love her. Love is a conscious reminder. I bring back to mind the Ferris wheel, the evenings spent strolling hand in hand along the waterfront, cheap trite demonstrations of affection now that I spell them out in a list, yet what is anything worth at all but for the emotions we invest in it?
*
I say it again earnestly like a refrain. We are happy, I told my mother over the phone today, married life is gorgeous. If she was sharp she would have picked up on it. The ostentatious word choice, I mean, not the trembling timbre of my voice. Or perhaps the repetition. Who is to say that marriage is the end of freedom as singletons know it? I am still free to do as I like; I have so much spare time on my hands. I can still feel, within the bounds of this strange estate. Only once in a while do I miss the feeling of design plans blooming from the tip of my 2B pencils, the rush and risk of inspiration, the tide of time turning as I create something entirely new.
*
He has waved away the domestic helper who has been busy arranging rose petals such that they appear to be strewn carelessly on the bed. They perfume the room with a sick, cloying heaviness. It is just like the way he does things. He beckons me over. I step out of the lace negligee that he had given me earlier in the evening. Funny thing they share, father and son. I am sitting on his lap. It’s a strange, awkward position. I do not like sitting on older men’s laps. He takes my face in his hands and kisses it. I quicken my pulse, bring a blush to my face. The heart, after all, is like any other muscle; it needs conscious and consistent exercise.
***
I dangle the proposal draft in front of her cubicle and drop it into the tray, rambling off instructions for modifications and adjustments, and throw in a harmless jibe for good measure. You get it, right, I ask, fingers crossed. She rolls her eyes as her fingers continue to fly across the keys. And then the meaning of the joke dawns upon her and she stops typing, lips slightly parted. A smile blooms upon her face and vanishes just as quickly before she laughs, a brash lonely sound, and I find myself laughing too.
*
I’m sitting on a bench by the sidewalk, watching the world wind down. Eloquent epiphanies that accompany people-watching elude me. There is no way to explain whither goes the wind, or the tears, or the dust that rises from the ground and settles on my glasses. A group of noisy schoolgirls chase each other down the street, shrieking, their carefree laughter almost contagious. I was young once. Their footsteps fade into echoes. I should make my way back home. He’s not coming back for dinner tonight; he called ten minutes earlier to say so.
*
My new boss has this strange saviour-complex. I tripped on a stray cable today and he grabbed my arm even when I had already steadied myself. It’s not as bad as it sounds. For one, he isn’t a perv who would have taken the opportunity to grab something else and then act gallant about it. In fact, he looked sheepish, like a boy caught with his homework unfinished or his laces untied. I wanted to kiss him then, those schoolboy lips. It would have marked a moment, there. He wants to save me, but I don’t need saving. His sorry self is his own business. I don’t care, so long as he helps me maintain this job and its endless paperwork that keeps my sanity intact and distracts me from the thin silver circling my finger.
***
I’m beginning to find that I have nothing to say to her. A little voice by the side of my ear, whispering that there is nothing in my day which will interest her, nor anything from hers that is of importance to me. All right, that is an obvious exaggeration. What pervades our conversations is a bland, banal boredom. Every night at dinner I listen to her account of her day with polite attention, as she does with mine, albeit with the adoring eyes. I start to feel sorry for inciting such unwarranted attention, but with such cold reception on my side, her persistence seems to me like she’s doing it deliberately just to make me feel bad for not feeling as warmly as she. It makes me resent her feelings, and dread dinnertime, where I am made to feel like a sinner when after all, I am only human.
*
We had our first argument today. Well, it wasn’t really an argument, just a disagreement of sorts. It was over the vase of roses that I bought for the dining table. He took one look at it first thing in the morning and told me, in an odd voice, to take it away. I argued that it blended in with the decor perfectly, and insisted it remain where it was, more out of stubbornness than anything else, really. And I expected him to parry my reply with another, but he just fell into some queer quietness, and stared at his coffee cup like there was an answer in it. I longed for his voice to be raised, braced myself to be berated, hit even. Pain is better than nothing. So I smiled until he left the room and I took the roses in my arms and chucked them in the bin. And that was when I noticed that one rose was missing, and thought, perhaps, he had pinched it to give me as a sort of belated penance. I fold my fingers together and smile, meaning it this time.
*
Work has been ridiculously hectic today. Boss has been acting up, in PMS mode, nitpicking at every little error I make, causing me to make even more mistakes. I don’t work well under intense scrutiny. At least the day’s over. I push the stray papers together in no particular order at all; I’ll weave them out tomorrow and they might just make sense. And that is when my hand brushes against a wilted red rose, its petals faded and tinged with brown, its scent long gone. The note tied to it reads, innocently, made me think of you. I finger the rose appreciatively, but it’s really kind of creepy, so I drop it into the wastepaper basket. I keep the note, though. It’s nice to be thought of, even by a creep.
***
Mugs chink against each other, the foam from this cheap piss beer spilling onto the counter top. I sip at it, grimacing. The firm can afford far better. After all, we’ve clinched the deal, right? In all honesty, much of tonight’s success can be credited to the hard work I’ve put in. To my right I can hear the delicate clink of champagne glasses among the girls, who simper and make small talk before taking to the dance floor. The crowd throbs in time with the music, bodies twisting about one another in a sick parody of movement. It is far too hot in here. I set my drink down and turn away from the bar, and I spot her making her way right into the middle of the throng, bare arms up in the air. Has she lost that cute little jacket so early in the evening? She tosses her head back, and I follow the line of her throat down to her bosom and that little bit of skin above her waistline. Leaning against the counter, I watch her dance, body to body, lights, sounds and colours melding into a strange sensation at the pit of my stomach, the sick, sweet taste of fear that something’s coming to seize you in the night.
*
I am nursing a mug of Earl Grey; it decorates the table with concentric circles every time I set it down, painting a lopsided flower of sorts. He had said he would be late, but I did not expect it to be this late. Not a call, not a word, and the clock says four twenty-three. Something prickles at the back of my eyes. I imagine all sorts of traffic situations with his body rent apart, the ambulance lights flashing lurid red against the night sky. Suddenly the door opens and he stumbles through, alive and whole, and in an instant he is in my arms, breath heavy with alcohol, mumbling something about the darkness of the night as his hands cling to my shoulders as would a child. Rage and relief tear at my nerves in opposite directions and I find myself murmuring soothing nonsense, his head on my chest, and sleep nowhere near even though it’s practically morning.
*
Dance, move, the night is young. There is a body pressing up against me from behind, the idea of it is revolting but I make no protest, simply showing my knowledge of it by leaning back and curving into some foreign embrace. There’s a certain thrill in it, falling into arms you’ve never had to learn. The girl in front of me twirls her hands in the air, like a synchronised swimmer who’s used to drowning. Sweat drips down my back. I let myself go into the music, the pounding bass line replaces my pulse, and I forget.
***
That was after they split up, remember? And her eyes lift slightly away from me to greet the wall behind me, the way she usually focuses on something in the distance when recalling some long-forgotten fact, what I inwardly call her data-searching face, it’s just a running joke we’ve got going. Oh, she says, oh, right, pointing her martini glass at me, grinning, right, now I remember. Yes, she says, that was a good song, God knows when they’ll ever get back together, there’s nothing like their sound that can be found today. And I nod, drinking deep from the whiskey in my hand as if it’s soda pop, buoyant, awake, alive.
*
I drowse. The bed feels weightless. It rocks me to sleep. In my dream I see his face adorning the faces of every man down the street, different permutations of the same face, features distorted and in disarray. Eyes where noses should be, and mouths gaping at some mortal lack I cannot satisfy. I have a bag which I clutch to my body. I keep my eyes on the concrete. I can feel their curious stares; they are wondering perhaps why I have not an extra pair of ears. I could draw them out of existence, bend pavement to ceilinged sky to make this street an endless loop from which none of us can escape, not even me.
*
I unlock the door to the apartment and slip inside. There’s no need for quiet; I can hear his snores from the living room. He has left the windows open. The night wind breathes in, and the curtains billow and dance like a saucy young thing. I am not drunk. I turn the night’s conversation over and over in my head. Something uncanny about the way his tastes echo mine. Something strange that I cannot place. Perhaps we’ve loved before, shared time and space before. I stumble clumsily into the coffee table and slump onto the sofa. It holds me. Love holds me. I inhale and close my eyes, and I can see his words branded onto my mind as I fall asleep.
***
I wake up. She curls in next to me, a shell by the sea. My head throbs from last night’s drinks with the secretary. She stirs, sighs a little, and falls back asleep. It is in these moments that I rediscover what I love most about her, her vulnerability and utter dependence on my better judgement. She murmurs a question, something that sounds vaguely like, you sure you’re going to work? you look terrible, and toys with my hand as an invitation back to bed. I shake my head and say that I feel perfectly fine. My vision swims, and I steady myself by holding on to the bed post, shaking the blurry sight of her in bed out of my eyes. How is it that the greatest chasm between lovers is neither time nor distance, but a secret that marks what you find behind this line of disclosure as mine and mine alone, where you shall know no more than what I choose to paint to you, the pretty picture that is our imagined future.
*
I let my head sink back into the pillow. I’m not a child; I know when I’m being lied to.
*
We finish up the last section of the proposal together; he intends to implement some of my ideas even though they were given half in jest. I’m typing up the last flourishes with him suggesting formatting amendments behind my shoulder. I can feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, clocking the time as it ticks past eight and my stomach rumbles. He smacks my shoulder amicably, laughs at some joke that dissipates as soon as it takes form. Then his face turns serious and he asks me to hang out with him again, tonight, says he has a pair of concert tickets he got for free at some draw. I raise my eyebrows, wordlessly indicating the wife. It seems to have become unspoken between us now, the oblique way we refer to her in the third person. Something so estranged about it, yet so reminiscent of familiarity.
***
And out of the melody rises the wrath of the sea, or the grief that sickens us all. It tempts me with the suggestion that she might just be the one to save me. I would give my life to her if I could, and I wish it were romantic or simpler but it is not, it is as tangled as the vines beneath the sea yet exalting at the same time, and searching, always searching, in vain, for some anchor or hold. I reach for her hand but draw it back at the last moment. It’s too early, too soon. I would not give over this precious understanding for something as tenuous as amorous attachment. I am taken, and so is she. It’s a reassuring position to be in. And all we want to be is a little safe, safe from love, safe from jealousies. A strange fickle thing, the human heart.
*
The television glows an unearthly blue, casting grotesque shadows upon the wall. Here in the dark I am wrapped up in blankets. I feel snug and warm, safe from the world and its vicissitudes. The drama playing out on the screen is predictable. Everyone cries when they have to and make up the next day. Their faces express vivid, uncomplicated emotions. Joy is unsullied by disappointment, hatred untainted by heartache. He walks into the room and sees me, says hello in a hollow monotone. I lift my face to him but he looks right through me like I do not exist, his eyes a shuttered island closed off from my despair.
*
Another night, another masquerade. The bed springs squeak their protest, punctuating Céline Dion’s soaring vocals. Why did he choose to put on that particular song? I had wanted it to be solely mine, an unsullied impression of last night’s dally by the waves. But I suppose I can just shrug it off. Thankfully it’s only a shrieking female vocalist. Anyway it’s nothing but a stupid song. I resist blinking until my eyes begin to tear. It’s easy, you know, such physical demonstrations of weakness. They excuse moments of inattention; they help you get by. My mind splinters even as my body acquiesces. Long ago, it would not have mattered. But now I find that my heart cries, and it hurts, it hurts as bad as someone taking a blow to the chest and then falling, I’m falling. And why do I even care?
***
The red card on my desk screams for my attention. I can’t believe she’s giving her life to that useless bastard, that mockery of a male specimen. How can he keep her fulfilled? What does he have other than that damned inheritance of his? She would never be happy. I think of her daredevil streak, her hair like a flag in the wind with her legs astride that motorbike. I would treat her different; I would cradle her dreams as if they were something precious. She is one to be treasured, and now to be thrown away so carelessly. It pains me to think of it. My hand reaches to my phone in this time of duress, and I find myself speed-dialing my wife, of all people, making small talk, asking her (since when do I do so?) what she had for lunch, and what are her plans for the afternoon, suffering an abysmal wretchedness for it all, this tragic life that leaves us all alone.
*
My fingers dance on the touch-screen, repeatedly locking and unlocking my phone. The end credits of yet another television serial roll over the TV’s face. Rays of light peek in through the gap between the heavy curtains. It is another typical, uneventful afternoon. My nerves alight at every beep, every flash on this little device; each message is a crutch on which I lean and hobble to the finish, a lifebuoy thrown to keep me afloat for the day. Each reply is carefully worded before I hit ‘send’, a missive of my abject wanting. The way I clutch to him like a lifeline, it’s pathetic. It’s time to wean myself off him, to ration my indulgence in his scanty attentions. I push the offending object into the farthest corner of the table. Suddenly my phone rings, and it’s him, and I grab it hungrily, whispering, breathless almost, hello.
*
So, the game is on. I stuff the remaining invitations into my handbag as best as I can, but they bob up against the opening and I have no choice but to leave the bag unzipped. Walking up to the apartment always gives me a gnawing sense of dread: what will I find in there tonight? It’s a bit like kinder surprise, the parental advisory version. The air in corridor hangs still, waiting for something, a little like love, perhaps. No surprise then, when I find my clothes and books and stuff and shit dumped in a heap two metres away from the front door. I abuse the buzzer, pound my fist on the door. I am in here, I cry. Funny, shouldn’t it be the other way around? I look down and the red cards stare up at me like a bad grade on a report card, a lurid mockery of my predicament. I chuck them in the bin on the way out. Just a little dust in my eye, that’s all.
***
She stalks in, barely missed by those jaws of the lift. Our eyes meet for an instant that I try to prolong, but she looks away pointedly. We had met in the lift that very first day; I was late and she had arrived early, her long hair up in a severe bun, the one time it was dressed like that. Here we are, months later, in the same elevator, yet in circumstances vastly different, our ascension up the levels a mockery of my determined free fall. I only want things to be as fresh and as perfect as when we first met, my marriage intact, her defiance of convention thrilling as the night wind whipping your face riding pillion on a motorbike, and is that too much to ask? Something about lines that I meant to explain, lost to me now. Still I want to touch her face so bad my hand shakes. It’s wrong to desire like this, breath catching on nothing, but what can be done when my longing is visceral, pure instinct beyond reason, beyond words, the unmistakable lurch of your stomach when you lean too far over the edge that warns you, it’s over, it’s done, and still you cannot help falling.
*
People tell me he’s having an affair. The suspicion rings in me like reverberations in a bell after it has been struck. I dismiss it as one would do a joke, shaking my head for ‘no’, and meander about my shame as I offer reason after reason for the improbability of such a thing. Yet what I cannot bring myself to do is to name the sin. It seems like if it remains a nameless fault it could be an easier transgression, anything other than what it is. Honesty is a dangerous thing. It scalds you with truths you would rather not know. I stop asking friends for advice; it’s hardly becoming, the way my story spills out in the middle of trivial tea-time conversation. I don’t need an outsider to inform me about what he’s having on. Better than what anyone tells me, I know it in my bones, the way a dog knows if it is spurned. I read it in the hunch of his back as he curls up on the bed, inches apart from me but miles away, the muscled wings of his arms folded in readiness for flight. Affair or no, I can tell that he wants to be anywhere else but here.
*
He crushes my arms in his hands; it’s the first time we’ve touched this much, and I shiver. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear a thing. The only thing that occupies my mind is whether to lean into his chest or not. I almost do, but something in me resists. I had wished it was more, that we had connected on a level beyond the physical, a meeting of minds perhaps. I push him away but his hold is resolute. He shakes me, hard. My teeth rattle. If we had met five years ago I might have dissolved but now it merely irks me, and the last thing I need is to fall apart only for some guy to put the pieces back together the wrong way round, for him to tell me what to do and how to do it, who says he understands, in that snivelling way that guys do, when all they want is a good fuck, I tell you, it disgusts me.
***
My fingers cling to the wheel. Sweat beads into a discomforting blanket on my palms. My hands are shaking. I don’t trust myself. I signal and veer left. A horn blasts somewhere near my blind spot. Funny, I’ve always been a good driver. Someone once told me that honesty was a dangerous thing. Who was it, and why can I not put a face to those words? I have been honest; I have been honest, have I not? Even when desire has knocked, have I not abstained from straying? My mind is racing. Her accusation is unfounded. Have I not been perfectly constant? Cold, yes, but constant. The lights blink treacherously in the distance. I get this insane urge to slam on the brakes, to end it all in flames, go out with a bang, isn’t that what they say? And yet my foot stays on the accelerator, my arms lead me safely out through exit 5A, and the memory of her breath on my neck keeps me going, I am going to meet her, and my problems will untangle at the sight of her straight black hair, her nimble fingers, and all will be well, as sand sifts from sediment, yes, all will be well.
*
There is no way I can continue living here. Every perfect surface he touched has been ruined by his betrayal. I believe in it wholly, even though he reasoned till he was red in the face. I know now the truth in that idiom. It’s inappropriate, isn’t it, how I’m laughing at it. It’s not only yesterday that our romance has begun been spinning way out into the region of the tragicomic. Only now do I feel free to mock, as if I’ve achieved some distance from this sham of a marriage, even though I have not moved an inch. With effort I manage to steer myself into the room, opening the closet from which I begin sifting out items of clothing that I am somehow going to find useful, someday. I drag out the travelling bag from the top of the cupboard. How am I going to stuff two years worth of living (breathing, fretting, my fingers twisting into some new worry) into a suitcase this small? I laugh again. I must be going insane. No, I am alive, that’s all. See, I move, I breathe. I’m breathing, taking in gulp after gulp of air, and then and only then does it hit me that I am crying, stupid, heavy sobs that I am much too old for, the tears falling down into the useless fabrics in my lap.
*
Our drinks are sweating rings into the counter top. I want to take a sip, but he has his head on my shoulder. I sigh and let him rest it there, when troubles come and my heart burdened be and all that, saying soothing things. How can it be that people see any use in comforting one another, when it doesn’t even make a dent in the situation? He should be at home ironing things out with the wife, not weeping into my shirt sleeve. You think I know anything about tears? Truth is, I hate it when men cry. Some distant memory from my childhood, I guess. You see, I don’t go into it; I just let it congeal into a manufactured grief. God, that image is disturbing. The envelope sits quietly in my bag. See, it is patient, it is kind.
That is, until he kisses me.
***
Her name is Linda. When we kiss she smells like a rose in winter.
Yesterday I walked past her old cubicle and a wave of nausea hit me; I had to close my eyes and take deep calming breaths before I could drag myself back to my room. Half a year on and you would think I would have gotten over her, over them both, the whole fiasco damned into some dark recess never to be revisited. But memory tricks itself into place, and refuses to budge no matter how hard we rage against it. I’ve learnt my lesson this time. I’ve learnt about constancy. You see, I’m just looking for somebody to love, somebody who’s her, anybody at all who’s willing to bear that same face and the rest I can simply work it in in my head. I’m not even asking her to- It’s not that much to ask, is it?
*
I’m back in my old room, surrounded by pink floral wallpaper I put up myself at fifteen. An object of beauty takes on many other shades of meaning as we mature, so that that beauty ages into something beyond its original flashy façade. It is the way with old buildings, and so I believe it shall be with me. There will be someone, someone who finds grace and favour in my constant misgivings about myself, my petty worries, my unworthiness that suffocates any hope for happiness. The small print of the classifieds glares defiantly at me, but I am determined to plod through them undaunted. I turn to page one, the first page, always a good place to start.
*
Another love that’s gone to waste, another light goes from your face, Ed Sheeran sings, easy-going acoustic belying heartache and regret. But wasn’t heartbreak for children, teenage angst we outgrew as easily as we did our canvas shoes? I walk down the busy street, boots clicking on stone, arm swinging in rhythm with the music. I still turn heads but it no longer bothers me. What is love but a perverse daisy chain of hearts clamouring after each other, one after another? The gate creaks as I swing it open. It’s just me, again. Maybe there’s no one waiting for me in the dark. And that, after all, could end up being a very good thing.