I feel sick, disgusted, and... hurt. Everything that has managed to blossom in the last few days, to shake up and rewrite my original programming, instantly withers, dries and crumbles. I can physically feel every one of my cells shutting down, slamming closed, hiding, leaving just questions behind.
What am I doing here?
Why am I here?
Why am I not with my family?
How and when did I allow this complete stranger to get so close, to grow into me?
Alex seems to hear my thoughts because he tears his gaze away from Amber. Our eyes meet and they contain an ocean, a chasm, of regret. I see his face change. The withdrawn, sexy mask he was wearing for the game to which I wasn’t invited slips away to reveal fear and... torment. His pupils dilate as he realises what has just happened and is still happening. His expression changes so quickly that I’m barely aware of it and, in that moment, it seems to me that he’s crying, not with his eyes but with his heart. His beautiful face is trying to talk to me. It is shouting out to me how loudly and inconsolably his soul is weeping. He is just too smart not to understand, too insightful not to feel that, a moment ago, I made a decision.
He jumps up, runs over and pulls me by the hand, asking in a firm voice if I’d like to go on the slides, but I can clearly hear the shards of pretence in this self-assurance cutting his throat and vocal chords to ribbons.
We go on the slides, but we don’t speak, and we don’t kiss. Alex is expressionless and I am too. At one point, he finds himself on his own and, thinking I can’t see him, he covers his face with his hands, then immediately drops them, and his eyes look drained of energy somehow.
Mark is sitting at the table alone, calmly sipping his cocktail. Alex suggests we go back and eat something, but I tell him to go without me, saying I want to swim some more, that’s why we came after all, but I actually need some time on my own to quickly come up with an escape plan.
I go down yet another slide, but I feel nothing, not a single emotion. I am immersed in myself, so deeply immersed. I come to the surface and discover Amber right next to me.
‘Can I speak to you for a second?’ she asks softly.
‘Of course,’ I say, and I even try to smile.
‘It’s just that you’re wearing a wedding ring and he isn’t... Forgive me for asking, but who is he to you?’
At that moment, I realise the boundlessness of my own stupidity. I mean, who goes to see their lover without taking off their wedding ring? It’s just that I’ve worn it for so many years, I’ve forgotten it’s there. The ring has long been a part of me, just as my husband Tim has too, obviously.
Amber continues, ‘I really like him... There is so much pain in his eyes, so much torment. He needs love, a lot of love, to help him heal. If you don’t need him then step aside. I can make him happy!’
*** ‘I Want You’ by Kings of Leon ***
I am shocked by her frankness and honesty, but Amber is right. I haven’t needed him for the most important stuff like she needs him, I have just been using him. Selfishly, despicably, vilely using him for my own pleasure and, until today, I was planning on continuing. I had so many crazy thoughts yesterday and today about listening to him, about giving him what he has wanted for a year now, but...
I don’t know what to say to her, but it turns out I don’t need to say anything because Alex suddenly jumps into the pool and quickly swims over to us.
‘Everything okay?’ he asks stiffly in English, directing the question more at Amber than me.
Amber looks at him with her huge eyes full of desire and what seems to be love, and I watch as Alex metamorphoses once again: his eyes narrow, his gaze becomes glassy and his face inanimate.
I answer him firmly in French as though lashing him with a whip.
‘Why don’t you speak in a language that would be easier for the girl to understand?’
With these words, I quickly head back in the direction of our table, wondering on the way how much it would cost to buy a return ticket if I bought it today prior to departure, because there was still one more long, unbearable day before I was supposed to leave.
I flop down onto a sofa, lean my elbows on the table, head in hands, and figure out the sequence of steps that will lead to my escape. Suddenly, Mark, already quite drunk, turns to me and, pointing at Alex and Amber, who are still in the pool talking, says, ‘A tactical error! You shouldn’t have left them alone!’
‘Why? Does he really have so little control over himself?’ My voice sounds like it could cut through metal.
‘Things happen...’
‘So what am I supposed to do, exactly? Stand in between them and listen to what the two lovers are talking about?’
‘Lovers???’ Mark bursts into hysterical laughter. ‘Are you out of your mind? He’s in love with you! WITH YOU!’
‘So what’s that about, then?’ I say, nodding towards the pool. ‘He and I don’t have a future together, Mark. We all know it. What if this is the encounter that will lead them both down their one true path? What if I’m not supposed to be here and my bad timing is stopping it from happening? Everyone can see that there is a connection between them. What if she’s the girl he’s been looking for?’
Mark isn’t laughing anymore. His face is serious, although he’s pretty drunk.
‘You’re wrong. He found the girl he was looking for a year ago. And he spent a long time looking for her. Do you know how many women like Amber he’s had? You’ll never understand, not even with your extraordinary intelligence. They are never ending. Never. There is an endless flow.’
‘He needs someone more beautiful than me, more feminine...’
I have never said what I’m really thinking out loud before, but Mark seems trustworthy somehow, and, anyway, I am not even aware of how willingly I am being truthful and opening up my soul to him. I mean, Alex and I never speak openly with each other.
‘You’re more beautiful than Amber,’ Mark says suddenly, looking me in the eye.
And there is something I can’t quite grasp in his gaze, something I didn’t see either during our card game or at the airport, and I start to lose track of what’s happening. I mean... I just figure that Mark likes me and it’s nothing to do with sex. I feel sick and desperately want to go home. I think I’m about to burst into tears and hate this Alex who has barged his way into my life; no one is better or purer than my Timothy.
Alex and Amber have been talking for a long time, or rather Alex has. He seems to be explaining something to her and she’s staring up at him, as if in worship, with her beautiful amber eyes.
Finally, he heads back over to us, the water dripping from his blue t-shirt making him look particularly pitiful. Alex takes my hand gently and looks into my eyes as if searching for something, and my heart feels a modicum of relief: he has come back and is the same as always, just very upset.
‘We’re leaving, Mark,’ he tells his friend quietly without a hint of anger.
Mark nods in silence. These two guys don’t even need to look at each other to understand everything. I can feel an incredible bond between them, the kind where people finish each other’s thoughts.
*** ‘Where Is My Mind’ (Fight Club Soundtrack) HQ by Pixies ***
Sitting in the car, I frantically try and work out how to ask my lover to take me to the airport, but it’s difficult because absolutely nothing has happened to justify my escape. Glances and a long conversation are not enough of a reason. We are not in love and nor are we husband and wife to have any claims on each other. But I don’t want to go back to his apartment, and I have no desire to be touched. How can I explain what I’m feeling? That I understand everything? That I’m sick of this mess of human desire, attraction, weakness, uncertainty?
‘Could you take me to the airport, please?’ I ask simply.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your flight is not today.’
Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought about that. So I’ll have to spend the
night in his apartment. Or I could ask him to get me a room, maybe.
‘So tomorrow, then?’ I ask quietly.
‘Your flight isn’t until the day after tomorrow and you know it.’ I can almost hear the wounds in his throat and vocal cords reopening, can hear them bleeding.
‘Yes, I know, but I thought it might be better if I left a little earlier...’
‘Why?’ His gaze is suffocating me. We’re stopped at a traffic light and it is taking an unbearably long time to change from red to green.
‘It’s time for me to go home...’
And Alex – always so composed, so well brought up and with such refined manners – finally shows his temper: he explodes, his face twisted in hurt and anger, and slams the steering wheel with his palms before turning away.
When we start moving again, I see his profile and his expression says: ‘I’m a man and men don’t cry, but I’m still human, so I’m being ripped apart on the inside.’
And I know why. There is something that’s important to him, really important given how upset he is, and it is something he asks me about with enviable regularity, always reminding me, never letting me forget what he wants.
Alex is a smart man and, on this visit, completely unexpectedly and unplanned, I have been closer to giving him his much-desired ‘Yes’ than ever before, because there were moments when it didn’t seem quite so misguided and reckless: when the tears were falling down my face at Notre-Dame; when we made love that morning and Alex allowed me to touch his hair for the first time, wanting to show me how good he felt; when we were walking through Paris, the happiest people in the world; when we were flying down the blue tunnel slide, kissing.
It’s like I’m on a swing and, when Alex pushes me, I fly really close to the ‘Yes’ mark, almost touching it every time, but when life pushes me, I reach the ‘No’ mark easily with room to spare.
*** ‘Feels Like The End’ by Mikky Ekko ***
I spend the next day walking around Paris alone. When I return, Alex is working, his tablets, laptops and sketches covering the glass table in the kitchen. Seeing me, he looks genuinely pleased and walks over to hug me. I don’t push him away, although I want to, but I don’t hug him back, either. He feels it and understands, letting me go and looking at me with eyes full of pain.
Later that night, I hear his mobile ring again and again, but he doesn’t answer. I quickly decide that it must be one of his many women calling and he doesn’t want to talk to her while I’m here. I mean, all the doors are open and I’d be able to hear everything. Eventually, Alex can’t take it anymore.
He accepts the call and shouts angrily, ‘Stop calling me, Mark! Just forget I ever existed, you idiot!’
Immediately after this, I hear his expensive phone shatter as it hits the floor or the wall.
And that’s how I know Alex is at his breaking point.
He is too complicated for me to love, too beautiful and too sexy to risk calling my husband, but he has a heart and this heart didn’t choose its shell. So I go into the kitchen, where I see his mobile lying broken on the floor among fragments of black plastic, a white chip in the plaster of the grey wall, and Alex sitting with his arms crossed on the table, his head resting face down on them. I quietly walk over and hug him gently from behind, resting my head on his back and pressing my cheek against it. Bit by bit, I feel the tension leave his body, like a weight being lifted, slowly but surely. I hear his breath quicken, my palms feel the accelerated beat of his heart in his chest, and I realise how unhappy he is, how difficult it is for him to recognise the hopelessness of the situation, his own powerlessness to change anything.
‘You know, there are two things I have never tried, and I think now is the time,’ I say.
Alex stares at me in silence for a while, but curiosity is stronger than resentment and, eventually, he asks, ‘What are they?’
‘I have never got really drunk and I have never tried smoking weed,’ I tell him, a hint of solemnity in my voice.
I like this game I have suddenly thought up. It might be a temporary fix, but at least it will break the ice.
‘Not once?’
‘It needs the right person, someone who can be trusted completely and who will agree to it!’
Alex lifts his head from his arms and, for the first time since yesterday, we look at each other without pain, his eyebrow raised meaningfully.
And we drink. We drink and we smoke, sitting on the floor in the dim light of aromatic candles. Alex is reclining against the kitchen’s glass wall and I’m sitting right next to him in a kind of armchair he has constructed from pillows and blankets. Our conversation is far removed from what people usually talk about in such situations; it doesn’t fit with our desire to melt our brains, to soften them so much that they can’t think at all.
‘No matter what I say or do, you’re not going to change your mind, are you?’
‘No...’ I say, exhaling smoke the way Alex just taught me.
‘But we’re so good together. I have never felt this happy with anyone... not even close. I know you feel exactly the same, so why? Why can’t we just be together?’
And his words seem to echo in the smoke-filled kitchen – or is it just in my mind? – ‘Just be together...’ No, it’s Alex repeating those three words aloud, ‘Just be together...’
‘Because life is too complicated...’
‘I need a family.’
‘A family is not what you imagine!’
‘I know what a family is.’
‘No, you don’t. It’s not bathing in the moonlight in the Mediterranean Sea, or lying around in the sun, or romantic trips to Paris, it’s the everyday. It’s the routine of endless problems and worries, childhood illnesses, forever rushing, the constant shortage of money and the dilemma of what’s more important to spend it on. It’s getting up at six in the morning no matter when you went to sleep or how you’re feeling, and bedtime at ten in the evening because it’s time for the kids to go to sleep. And so, tired and irritated, you’re already starting to share responsibilities and have grievances with each other: who works harder, who spends more time relaxing, who is more tired. Squabbles are followed by arguments and resentment, and your own grievances always seem worse and more painful than theirs and you’re itching to slap them hard enough that they’ll feel it. In the end, it kills everything; there’s nothing left. You’re not even attracted to each other enough for the most basic of quickies once a month for the sake of your health. There’s just no spark left.’
Alex takes a long drag on the joint, exhales, passes it to me, then says: ‘You’re making a huge mistake, basing your opinion on your own experience, which, as far as I can see, didn’t work because you got married far too young. I know it can be different.’
‘How can it be different?’
‘When two people love each other, care for each other, protect each other. When the man makes sure the money never runs out and that there’s enough for whatever is needed and, in return, the woman gives him her tenderness and affection. When they have children who grow up surrounded by love. When the sight of their parents kissing is as familiar as the fairy tales that are read to them at bedtime by their mother or father, whoever wants to spend more time with the kids.’
‘It’s a fantasy, Alex! No family I know is like that, and if it ever was, then it ceased being so a long time ago under the weight of all the reasons I just gave you. Everyone has their own problems. It’s like Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Except I have never come across a family that is purely happy, even for a short time!’
‘Well I have, and my family will be like that! I will make my wife happy, just as she will make me happy!’
‘Yes, and she will no doubt be happy until you get bored and start looking around. But chances are you won’t even have to do that, because variety is always ready to come knocking at your door and turn your head with its amber glow. Your happy wife will enjoy watc
hing all this, and then, one day, her heart – exhausted from all the boundless happiness and somehow broken – will no longer be able to endure the torture and something irreparable will happen. So it is just a short step from your ideal happiness to desperate unhappiness, and you’ll think to yourself: how? How could this have happened when I gave her everything? She had enough money, and I always read to our child at bedtime! Because, Alex, absolutely everyone has problems. If it’s not one thing, then it’s another.’
‘But problems can be solved...’
‘Yes, they can be, but while they’re being solved, the thing you spent so long patiently searching for is dying hopelessly!’
After a long silence and yet more damage to our ability to think clearly and control our words and thoughts, Alex asks suddenly: ‘You’re not going to... make love to me anymore?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘It feels like a lot has changed.’
‘Nothing has changed, Alex. I have always known that this is what you’re like.’
He doesn’t try to deny it but stays silent. Then suddenly again, as if he no longer has control of his tongue, he blurts out, ‘If we never do it again, then I want you to know that what we had in bed, I have never had with anyone before, ever.’
‘I can safely say the same, although I have less to compare you to, considerably less.’
Alex no longer tries to persuade me, set me alight, surprise me. Realising that I have made up my mind, he relaxes. And a definite full stop has been put to my inner doubts by a fragile girl with large amber eyes and a beautiful name.
We stand hugging each other for a long time in the airport’s departure lounge. I don’t have any more time, I need to go – check-in for my flight will be closing soon – but we can’t seem to let go of each other. Somewhere, there’s a passport control officer patiently waiting for me, though... If we could just tear our arms away, take a step back from each other, but what seem like simple actions are actually extremely difficult, almost impossible. We are being pushed together, compressed into each other by an unknown, irresistible force.
Monogamy Book One. Lover: This is one love for life and beyond time Page 15
