It is ten in the evening and I sit on my side of the bed, looking out into the muddy dark. Beneath swirls the Thames, I can’t see it, but I can hear the oozy drizzle, impregnating the river flow.
Windows weep with rain and I want to retrace the raindrops with my fingertips.
I am bored, but not bored enough to switch the television on.
The winter in London is obstinate.
Perversely melancholic, if you ask me.
I feel like a part of a cloudy drama.
I’m lonely like those millions of driblets, fighting their way under the invasion of umbrellas.
Main door rattles, keys clitter and get deposited into the pot-pourri bowl by the shoe rack.
Oscar is home.
The displays of human incompetence in sustaining life long relationships fascinate me.
Take me for instance.
Oscar and I are together three years.
We are ‘the’ perfect couple, trying for a child and yet we manage to neglect each other par excellence.
I want to spring up and run to greet him.
Wrong.
He hates it.
Instead, I stretch my legs, grab a book from the shelf above the bed, snuggle inside the colourful Indian cover and pretend to be reading.
The handmade cover is scratchy.
I admit, it was too expensive, and I bought it on a whim.
It isn’t comfortable to wrap in, but the thousands of tiny beads mesmerise me.
The book I pick has an agitated yellow hardback.
I don’t know why I bought it.
It must have been my jaundiced mood.
I read a few sentences.
They make no sense and I don’t want to fight the words.
“Hello, Nela.”
Oscar walks into the bedroom and leans down to kiss me.
I suffocate my sudden and urgent need to grab him in the raptorial clinch of a praying mantis and crash his head.
“Hi, darling. How was your day?”
I drown my predatory instincts and pull him on the bed.
“Okay. I have a new case. Guy being battered by his wife. Divorce.”
“Wow.”
“Hmmm, you smell good.”
He leaves me a second too early.
Story of my life.
He looks at the yellow book.
“Good stuff. I leave you to it.”
His walk to the sitting room is brisk.
A minute later I hear the television, blaring out unintelligible litany into my vacant sex life.
I don’t know what I am reading, or why.
What is it that turns the exciting relationship into my mother’s bedtime story?
My thoughts get interrupted by the inarticulate groans, seeping through the apartment, undoubtedly from the television set.
Oscar’s heavy breathing attaches to the moaning.
It quickens and I still remember why.
Oscar is playing a solitaire.
Great.
Sex for one.
Love me or leave me.
I need a romance, Oscar needs a wank.
The television channel hushes up and the moaning is replaced by the monotonous speech.
Yellow Dog returns to the shelf and I draw out a candy pink softback.
Chick lit is the Mills & Boon with spunk.
Spunk is good for retaining sanity.
The pink softback flames my desire for company.
The obvious choice would be Oscar.
But, Oscar is unavailable at present, as his secretary would tell me.
I pick up the phone.
Bee answers after the first ring.
It is midnight.
Queen is playing We Will Rock You into Oscar’s autoerotic dreams.
I stick the green ‘Post It’ note onto the television screen and silently close the door.
The black air is dying of midnight pneumonitis.
It smells heavy, soaked by the steady pelter. Raindrops quiver in the wind; the stars are barely visible, just the allegoric Saturn is striking the murky puddles with its reflection.
I am walking to Bee’s house, I’m cold.
I should have called a taxi, but I didn’t want to wait and risk waking Oscar.
And my forgotten mobile is vegetating somewhere in my Notting Hill atelier.
The neighbours are moving out.
I have no intention of saying ‘good bye’ to someone I met twice in the past year.
I hurry with m eyes downcast.
London is void of emotions, impersonal and cold.
It must be the British weather, draining us empty.
I wish I lived in Spain.
My job is easy to move around, I grab my case filled with thin firm-haired brushes and oil paints, grab a pair of low sitting torn jeans and a T-shirt, and I’m off. I’ll paint anywhere, at any time.
But Oscar...
Oscar needs his office, his secretary, his morning café latte, his afternoon frappuccino, his evening meal, his after-hours screw and his late night workout.
Night is crisp and my feet are sodden.
I realise I have forgotten to change shoes.
The road is deserted. No one is around to see my drenched red Moroccan slippers. I feel like a forsaken Cinderella. Roaming the lonely night, whilst my prince spanks his monkey.
The red leather slippers are my treasure buy from last summer’s holiday with Bee.
Depleted by the dire weather, we rented Riad Maresco of Miranda Innes and escaped for Marrakesh. The batty old writer and her man friend were sharing the house with us. Stoned to the tips of their toes by Moroccan hash, they rummaged through the local markets, dickering over the furnishings and oriental rugs.
The little hidden shops of Al-Magrib are so dazzling, but I was sublimely useless at bargaining.
The shop keeper spoke French, smoked some funny stuff and wore a tarboosh.
It was red and shaped like a flat-topped cone with a tassel that hung from the crown. He looked rather authentic and dressed for tourists at the same time.
His name was Faqih, I couldn’t determine his age.
Maybe forty or fifty. He poured me a cup of a sweet mint tea; I guess he liked my legs.
I offered him the money he asked for and he became quite irritated.
“What a waste.”
He said.
“Belle inutile femme.”
Pardon my French.
Bee lives ten minutes down the road, on the way to Tobacco Dock.
I met Oskie on one of her parties.
I was hopelessly single and he was hopefully unattached.
We’ve had an argument that night, after she found out, that I was opting to have sex with Oscar.
“ He is a wanker.”
She said, when I begged her to let me be.
Rewinding, I guess she was right.
I’ve also had an argument with him.
We smoked some dope and retired into Bee’s bathroom, where he screwed me whilst I held onto the toilet seat and grazed my knees in that frenzied fuck.
He told me afterwards, through the spicy puffs of thin rolled dried leaves of the Acapulco gold, that he reads fantasy and political science.
I thought he was stoned and I laughed.
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
He left upset.
The invisible dogs howl at the silent moon and I muse about the times, just after I met Oscar, when we didn’t own a television.
We don’t have a lot in common, but the attraction was instant.
We didn’t speak much when we met; instead we’ve had sex four times a day for a year, before it slowed down.
We still talk little, and he barely touches me, these days.
--- part of a novel
______________________
Are you a publisher or a literary agent?
