It was snowing ever so lightly on London’s streets as he stepped out of the building where he worked. His footsteps left large tracks in the thin layer of white as he made his way to Argyle Street. It was cold and the wind cut into him as he quickly buttoned his jacket up to his neck. A group of university students were laughing and sliding about trying to make more of the snow than there was on the ground. A couple was standing under a streetlight, and they began to kiss. He noticed them as he walked by. He remembered that feeling.
Christmas had passed and he was back in the office with plenty of work to do now that it was the New Year. His work wasn’t typical. He created a monthly television program. It would begin in his mind and then it would come together as his underlings followed his direction. There were people; to conduct interviews, set up camera crew shoots, screen and log all of the footage, and report what had been gathered back to him. He did his fair share of interviews and travel. And he loved that his job required flying to faraway places and working there for a time. He got a little apprehensive whenever he passed through customs and had to pull out his worn passport. He always wondered if there would be any blank space left for another stamp.
It was the bleak midwinter for him now. And he felt the shift in his mood; it was a dismal feeling that lay dormant until he had no choice but to address it.
And so on this late January night, as he made his way to the tube station in the snow, he thought about her again.
When they first met her smile became the catalyst for a million fantasies.
He had convinced himself that these fantasies were harmless since they existed in his mind only. He felt predatory when he thought of her. But he was in love too, and that was something he had not expected. He felt excited and nervous when she was near him but also comfortable and safe. It was a sublime duality he wished he could capture forever and keep in his pocket.
He had to handle these feelings carefully, because he was married. So he felt that writing to her would be an easy and innocent way to try to get to know her. So he used, words. At first he wrote to her regarding business assignments. Then as he got to know her he would cleverly include more personal sentences between the formal lines of correspondence. It took her a while to realize what he was really telling her with these words. She was naïve and the fact that he was married certainly aided in her denial.
As the years went by she developed her own feelings for him. And when he finally requested a meeting with her outside of a work assignment, she knew he would address what was going on between them. She expected him to explain what he was feeling or at least his intentions.
The scene was: New York City’s Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station.
He had flown in from out-of-state and asked to meet her during a stop over. When he walked through the swinging doors of the bar carrying two large suitcases, she felt like crying. For some reason the sight of him with those suitcases represented the effort he was going through just to see her. He had one hour and then it was right back into a taxi and back to Newark, New Jersey to catch yet another flight.
He was on his way home to England to see his dying father. But he wanted to see her first.
Twenty-five minutes and two Cosmopolitans into their meeting, she realized he wasn’t going to bring up this unspoken thing between them, and since he had to leave shortly, she just said it.
“You have to stop writing these emails to me. They are conjuring up feelings that I shouldn’t be having for you.” She blurted it out.
He stared at her, reading her face carefully.
She looked down.
She was nervous and anxious and possibly lovesick.
He was elated.
It had worked.
He had begun to work his way into her heart, with his carefully chosen, and beautifully arranged words.
He remained calm in his demeanor despite what he was actually feeling inside. He couldn’t let her know how ecstatic he was.
What he really wanted to do was to kiss her.
Remain calm remain calm, he told himself.
“Are you afraid, that I might push you into doing something you don’t want to do?”
“Yes.” She replied.
She would have said ‘Yes’, to anything.
She felt confused and unsure of what was happening. Maybe she misunderstood what he had been writing; after all there had been no declaration of love, there had been no invitation for an affair.
“You need to stop writing these things to me.” She stated again, hoping somehow the sentence would re-affirm what she believed he was doing.
He was courting her, wasn’t he?
He had been carefully and methodically courting her all along.
He looked at her some more without saying anything. He didn’t want to ruin the moment. This was the moment that she admitted to having feelings for him. His blood was moving through his veins at an abnormally fast rate.
“We’ll continue this conversation when I get back.” He calmly replied finally.
They stood in the summer heat trying to hail a taxi. When one finally arrived, he opened the door pushed his luggage in and turned to her and kissed her on the lips.
The kiss was a promise.
They would discuss things again, they would see each other again, and he would continue. He got into the backseat and waved and watched her as she stood with her hand in the air on that New York City street corner. What a beautiful sight he thought.
Now he watched the snow come down at a steady pace as he sat on the 159 bus. It trudged along, but he was in no rush to get home to his wife, since his kids would be sleeping already. His journey home gave him more time to think about her. It was like a meditation. He would think of her when he was away working too.
After a long day of interviews and shoots he would end up lying alone in some hotel room bed in another country. He would imagine her next to him. He would dream of her, and she would be real and giving, smiling and gentle and his again. They would talk about everything, and never grow tired. He could smell her skin and how she would sigh when he kissed the back of her neck. She was loving and beautiful. And then he would wake up alone.
Many times he imagined bumping into her on the street or in some airport, but it never happened.
As he turned the key to open his front door he pretended that he was coming home to her. Such a lovely wife he thought. She would cook his favorite meals and he would cook for her.
But his real wife was waiting for him. She said ‘Hello’, casually as he walked into the house and then:
“You really need to fix that hinge on the cupboard door. And I am going to see my sister at the weekend so you’ll have to rearrange your work schedule to drop us off if you have to travel.”
They never embraced, they never kissed, and it had been years since they had sex.
He brought home the money and she took care of the children and he was ‘Him’ to her.
It was a business partnership. It worked. There were no arguments, no major issues, and there was no love. And he would never leave. He didn’t have that gene.
At night in the bedroom he shared with his wife, after she uttered: “Goodnight,” she would turn her back to him. And the space between their two bodies in their large bed would be enough for him and his imagination. Sometimes in that space, where no love existed, he would think of the one woman he loved.
He would close his eyes, collect his memories and collect regrets.
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