Lady in Red Read online

  With a “ding,” our little bubble in the city’s center was penetrated, bringing us straight back to the noisy intersection of the real world. The buzzing traffic droned all around us.

  “I have to go,” Milo said. He sounded rushed, nervous, unsettled.

  “Wait, I’ll walk with you.” I got up from my chair.

  “Why don’t you stay, sweetie? Enjoy the sun a bit. Have another macchiato. I’m so sorry I have to go. But otherwise you came for no reason,” he went on.

  Again that fucking no reason. He deserved a slap across the face for that kind of idiocy. Didn’t he hear himself? He wasn’t no reason. He shouldn’t consider himself to be. To me, he is everything but no reason, so, stubborn as I was, I joined him anyway. No matter what, urgency kicked in: today, now, became time he knew. He should have known, but for the first time, I would clearly say so. Not subtly hinting at it or typing it in a message. Really tell him. My heart was boiling with the anger of no reason, so I couldn’t possibly put the lid on this for another hour, let alone another week. He rushed down the stairs toward the parking garage, and I followed, in pain, speed walking in my eight-inch heels.

  Milo and I were standing side by side, waiting for the elevator. It was the kind of waiting where every second seems to drag on for an eternity, and the kind of waiting that made me ponder that an eternity with Milo, by contrast, would seem like a second ticking. The doors slid open in front of us, and we got in. My eyes searched his face, and then a wrinkled hand halted the door as it was closing and, with that, my desire returned.

  “Hmm…you always smell so good,” Milo whispered.

  The desire grew to proportions not fit for an elevator cage, and then it turned to hopeless yearning. His eyes glistened in the glare of the ceiling’s spotlights. He clearly enjoyed the fact that he had made things a bit harder on me. How I cursed that old stranger at that moment. Two floors of wishing and cursing could easily have been two years. In my mind they were. The boyish look in Milo’s eyes hadn’t missed its goal. I was heating up, burning in my heart, and broiling below my belly button. I squeezed my thighs together in a vain attempt to stop this. My hands gripped the railing, as if I needed to anchor myself in order to resist my urges. A little bell indicated we had arrived at the end of this hellish ordeal. The old man shuffled out slowly; the doors hadn’t even fully closed before my body was thrown by Milo against the cage’s rear mirror. He kissed me wildly, and his hands were all over me, seemingly everywhere simultaneously. My lips were burning from brushing up against his coarse chin. He pulled my long hair, proving he hadn’t forgotten how much this turned me on, and in response I flexed my leg around his waist. His hips pinned me down in the corner and, right through our clothes, I could feel how capable he was of coping with every possible fire inside me. A second ringing bell made us jump away from each other, giving us time to come up for breath and, naturally, step back into the real world as two wolves among the sheep, neatly disguised in common appearance and socially accepted docility.

  “I’ll get you back to your car, honey,” he said.

  When we reached my car, I got in, and we agreed on a time and place for our next escape. Time had gone by so fast. Another kiss of fire was the sweetest good-bye I could think of, and I gladly took part in it. Another quick groping of my hair, and I struggled to gather courage and honesty. I broke off our fire and took his head in my hands. In his blue eyes, I found a certain unrelenting peace that made me relax and, nearly voiceless, I spoke the words I had feared to say for many, many years.

  “Darling, I hope you know I am incredibly crazy about you…”

  This time the calm in his irises brought me strength, superpower. He was the one holding the key to rip me open, ravish, and ruin me. He held the power to break me up into tiny little pieces and take them with him, cherishing them, shattering them even more. Despite it all, in him I found my peace. So I gave him a kiss of surrender before closing the car door behind me and made my way back into the realm of certainties.

  On the way home, I thought about how it seemed like I didn’t care about reality anymore. That was not true, actually. But this life I got bargained into, I condemned myself to in a vain attempt to ignore the truth that was blazing through my insides, my daylight life, was nothing more than an ensemble of turning, working parts of a system called reality, which included my progeny and my heritage to the world. It was a rational decision, my partaking in the cycle, if you wish. Inside me dwelled an enormous fascination to see how it all worked—how the parts fit together, ticked, turned, and moved on. But what is there to do when there is no how? No why? For a godless creature like me, wonder is the next-best thing to a god.

  Charles was more of a how-and-why person to me. Someone may ask me why we, Estelle and Charles, were “we,” and I could just go on for hours summing up the reasons, the qualities and complementary aspects of our alliance. But eventually it boiled down to nothing but a list, a piece of paper stained with ink, a limited whole: a choice within the lines. My veins, however, pumped in amazement and a desire for a life outside the lines, outside the boundaries of a sheet of paper, hell, for a life free of lines entirely.

  That’s why it was hard to imagine for anyone else but me. I had no reason; I could literally make a list pointing out why Milo was such an epically bad choice, from a conventional viewpoint, that is. But wonder is drawn into my fingertips, calling me to type now that it never is about those lists at all, nor about the logical reasons or the sheer number of them, nor about the paper or the ink. It is about this wonder—the senselessness, the absurdity, the uncalculated quality of irrational, raw passion—just because it is.

  Today is a day of missing. So I cleaned the kitchen while the washing machine was twirling a load. I got the dry clothes out of the dryer, filled it up again with its next task, started a new cycle, and carried the full basket to my ironing board. I ironed and folded the clothes meticulously, with care. From the corner of my eye, I gazed upon my reflection in the kitchen window, and I smiled at myself with horror. There lies a certain comfort in the common acts within a household. They come and go with the certainty of the tides, and it brings me empty-headed peace. The automatic acts, the thoughtless handlings, they make my days bearable. They erode the sharp edges of the real emptiness inside. They let the day ripple to its end until turning into night, when Milo meets me in my cloudy land of longing, bringing me a day closer to our next encounter.

  My dear,

  Maybe I should have just said something. Last week. Last time, and all the times before. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want my words to be rash, or uncertain. I needed to know who I was first. I didn’t want my words to be merely an answer to your question, merely a response to your words. Especially the first time they would flow across my lips. I didn’t want you to take them as an answer. I wanted you to know that they mean more—they are more— and that my words are independent, standing on their own, fearless and unconditioned. I didn’t want them to be diminished or shortened. I didn’t want them to be watered down to a dull, “Me, too.” I don’t want them to lose their power or their magic; I want them to be a moment all their own, because their sweet sound must belong to the moment, belong unmistakably to it and to you. I want you to be able to see them glistening in my eyes, hear them rolling out of my mouth, feel how they slip into your ears. I want you to see how they are flowing straight from my heart over to you, hopefully flowing right into yours. That is what I want. That is what I want when I finally dare to confess what has been lingering on the inside, when the day comes I find the right words and simply say: “I love you.”

  I had written it years ago, during the impasse, but it was no less true now. This is what Milo should have known back then, what he should know now. I could never say it with a simple text message. Even sending this seemed like blasphemous injustice of some sort. I knew what I had to say, and the moment for it was approaching—pending, but not for long
anymore. This time I didn’t want to hesitate or hide behind the dark shades of my oversize sunglasses or twist my words into a less confident version of themselves. I didn’t want him to, either. If I said this, I wanted to look him straight in the eyes. Preferably, he should just stand there, shut up, and say nothing. He should just take it in so I can read the truth in those blue eyes of his. Even if he just turned around and made a run for it, because—let’s face it, I’m a bit crazy—or just maybe, surprisingly, he’d want to stay.

  Once again, I had to learn to miss Milo. Before, it had been easier, although at the time I would never have believed it could possibly be worse. It was hard to wake up in another world with the life I have, without Milo. The soft touch of Charles’s hands folded around me for what must have been a warm hug to him, but to me felt like nothing short of sandpaper tearing up my skin. I was startled by my callousness, my indifference, but I really couldn’t control it. This was something I had known from the start. I remembered how we used to philosophize between the sheets, he and I. I remember asking him once why he loved hunting so much. Charles had smiled, amplifying his cute little dimples. He had said he enjoyed the empowerment it gave him. Feeling the decision in his hands. How his rifle allowed him to make a choice from a distance. On or off. Life or death. This should have been the moment I got up and packed my bags. The power of matter. Charles saw power in all the trivialities of the world, right there, on the surface. He borrowed power and enjoyed it, but all I could see was cowardice and lack of character. He was a petty and dependent boy. What a weakling that made him from my perspective; he was so fundamentally different. He was light years from my way.

  I should have known then that Charles would never get me. He couldn’t see what I saw, couldn’t see where meaning lay for me. Call me insane or crazy all you want, but I believed in loving. It contained all: the good, the bad, the pretty, and the ugly, as well as crude reality, captivating magic, and pain and pleasure tenderly entwined in a cruel enchantment. However breathtakingly beautiful or atrocious the loving might get, the spiritual journey it draws upon is only achieved by loving. Being loved by anyone, yourself or another, boosts confidence, ambition, and lust for life beyond compare. You feel the brimming power of that better version of yourself. But to Charles, with his tiny joys, this was the hallmark of frivolousness.

  Milo, on the other hand, would follow my maze of the mind. I was so sure of it that I didn’t even feel the need to treat him to this discussion. His stance was betrayed by the kind of heart he housed. He worked for a stronger vision, literally, by training, bleeding, sweating, and dying slightly to push the boundaries. After all, being a sportsman is more than a job; it’s a way of life, a state of mind and heart in the figurative sense. Milo saw the banality of matter just as sharply as I did. The weakness of hiding within acts of deriving power from anything other than mental resolve seemed just as ridiculous, pointless, and lazy to him. He, too, registered, albeit subconsciously, the symbolism behind trivial human acts, acknowledging that the delirium of a silence bursting with meaning is far superior to hours and hours of streams of information that add up to nothing more than futile registrations of the past; Milo understood the sweet bliss of sharing a cup of coffee with the right person, or a protecting hand intertwining with one’s fingers while crossing a street. He got it, although he probably didn’t even realize he did.

  The simple innocence of a message’s tone is so treacherous sometimes, its straightforwardness hiding that much heartache and disarray. I unblocked my screen and thought it would be Milo commenting on my earlier confession in the car.

  Went to the doctor. I didn’t feel 100 percent earlier xxxx M.

  In a matter of seconds all of my intestines cringed together to hide in the shadow my heart was casting. Their forced presence stuck to my ribs with an overwhelming determination. Never had communication been this acrimonious. It was the worry, the concern, and the distance. The missing. The loving. The wanting to do something and being unable to. The wanting and being locked out. There it was, the ugly truth. This would never be a possibility, however much I might want it to be. I would never be allowed to be there on those days: the less-good ones, the bad ones, the sick ones. I would never be allowed to help or even attempt to. I would never be allowed to stand by his side until it passed. Never be there to provide the simple comfort of my presence. Never ask if there is anything I can do for him, just to hear him say that I need to bugger off and leave him alone because he wants peace and quiet. No, visibly loving Milo is not permitted. Not in this world, not in this life, at least in my case. I was sober enough to realize what being his perfect mistress—because that was my position—entailed; it hinged upon a few essentials: our passionate loving, our boundless sex, and my lack of recklessness in two distinct areas, more specifically: no denting his car and no denting his family. The darkness rolled dauntlessly into my head and only fed my obscuring despair. I was still holding my phone, anxiously awaiting his answer, when it trembled again.

  It’s a stress thing, sweetie. We talked about that. Need my rest now xx.

  Worries clouded my mind. I was sincerely concerned about Milo. What if this was my fault? My doing? Damn, that’s hubris speaking right there. That’s not really the point, in any case. I didn’t think that highly of myself to even hope I would have that kind of effect on him. But what if I was wrong? What if that was the truth behind the situation? The mere possibility of it was galling, oppressive really. Not out of guilt or romanticism. Not even out of fear. But the sadness. Sadness that all of this might need to end. If that should prove to be true, I would have to step back into the shadows and love him from the distant darkness. If that was the case, I must, because that’s the thing to do. Without hesitation or regret, I would, in the blink of an eye, at the snap of the fingers, just disappear, even if it tore me down in an excruciating, hardly imaginable way. I didn’t need him to be able to go on with my life, not in the least little bit. I could manage perfectly without him. Living is easy. Breathing is easy. Air is everywhere. I’d never use him up that way. I would never inhale him, extract his oxygen, consume him, just to discharge the rest ungratefully and move on, move forward, and go on consuming, never looking back. Yes, breathing is an easy thing to do, an automatic and selfish necessity. From that perspective, life without Milo was definitely a possibility. Though it would be painful, I didn’t actually need him. I could do without him. Finally, there remained the lone issue of whether I really wanted to.

  Chapter Nine

  That night, I hadn’t been able to sleep. Technically speaking, maybe I did, but the trepidation about recent events had clung onto my back, traveling with me into my dreams. The uneasiness failed to let go of me the following morning either. I needed distractions, but everywhere I went, I was carrying that heavy heart of mine. He had kept me in the loop and told me things were going somewhat better. But to say his words reassured me would be an overestimation. If only I could flip a switch and throw my worries out the window. Toss some detergent over my head to take away those stains. Sing them out of me; run them out of me. But I had neither the composure of an athlete, nor the vocal cords of a diva.

  At least I find myself in the fortunate position of alleviating my worries on paper, without anyone, even Milo, knowing about it. If only I had a magic pen to truly write away the pain and fear. Love and writing provide the foundations for me. Without brutal honesty, you are getting no place. So I dive in. Taking the rubble with me only to toss it out with the rest of the filth and confine it to matter: paper and ink. That way they become merely a part of the machine—my worries abandoned in the real world and leaving me with only my love for him.

  The aftermath of this frenzy brought me an idea, a gift for Milo as it were. I knew it would probably be weeks before I saw him again, before a new night of nights would tingle his tastes. I entrusted the Estelle he knew best—wild and untamed—in the pixel world, thinking of him, and coincidentally turning an
unfortunate situation toward the better. The lust of all we were forbidden condensed in all deliciousness in material form, for him. I sent him a picture of my naked body, lying on the bed, dimly lit, wearing only that pair of blood-red Louboutins he adored. It wasn’t like I was sending some embarrassing selfie I would come to regret. No, this picture had been carefully orchestrated, especially for Milo, tailored to his likes, and not cheap or sleazy at all, but rather artsy and mysterious. It was inspiring and Milo would have his fun with it, with this visual proof of my insanity, the insanity he sometimes considered unreasonable, but I was quite convinced he would adore every piece of it. Maybe he’s even craving my craziness a bit. I was hoping I was that lucky; that he secretly longed for me, I mean, even if it’s just sometimes for a little while. Attach, send, gone.

  His answer came instantly.

  How sexy is that?! Anyone would feel better straight away.

  I typed back. That was the point, darling. You inspire me.