untitled short story i wrote last week… surprise!
Her bare back was turned to his when the light, beaming through un-tilted blinds, wedged open her alcohol soaked eyes. It should have been a red room, but it was blue. Dark India blue. Why was it that color? The room with her marriage bed in it was the same shade of ocean. She was getting lost in it in the seconds that her lids could stay open. The beams were scattered by the mass of a hanging plant by the window. The smoke that was still clinging to the air had made her waking seem like dreaming. The soft curve of her chin kept an eye on the lightening sky outside while Porto-Vecchio came alive.
Last night she met this man. An event that would have been nothing less or more than completely unextraordinary except that she had been married for a year. Her marriage was something that if brought up in conversation was quickly averted. Things had started to fall apart for them quickly after the wedding night had become past. Any amount of guilt that she felt rumbling around in her gut, but perhaps that was just the hangover, could not erase the adolescent jubilee of happiness that she began to feel when recounting her most recent acts of debauchery.
Last night she had been seventeen again. She had even regressed back to her stoner phase and found herself smoking a joint on the bed of a cute guy after a relentless night of bar stools and bad pick up lines. There were even a couple of moments where she had become overwhelmed with the paranoid feeling that her mother was going to come in through the door. Their idle chatter eventually had given way to mindless, but honest, laughter and before either of them had realized they were too close to each others faces not to kiss.
She didn’t move from the bed as she flipped through the flashcards of her short-term memory. Perplexed by herself she stared at the forms her fingers were making within the mess of cloudy air and crumpled bed sheets. Her hand looked like a lotus rising out of a milky sea. She watched it float and softly pulse in the stillness of the morning. She had aged like a porcelain doll – perfect as marble and not at all. Except for the bits of silver glitter stuck to her skin, she was flawless cream. She was dazzling in the dim and smokey den.
She had always been the beautiful one that the unattainable leads of bands and perfect forms in the modeling industry fawned over. She humbly accepted this. It didn’t matter to her that they complimented her looks because Io was disinterested. She was like a snake, cold and impervious to their advances – she was fixed and possessed by some other devil than one that would be won by flattery alone. She was always aware of who was looking, who was easy to have and leave, and who was a challenge. Io loved a challenge, or at least ones that she engaged in willingly. Last night had been a maze of glorious fun for her for she had become bored with her newly wed life. Her individuality had been slipping away with every second that she felt she could not be free. She was no longer Io. She was misses, Mrs., miss, and something else entirely than she ever thought she’d be. Everything about her life had become contrived. The fake dinners, the fake adultness of it all. Why couldn’t she retain her wild nature beyond her childhood without feeling as if she had failed at growing up? So she made a plan to fix her discontentedness.
She started by telling her husband that she was going to spend the night at her friend Masha’s house and that they were going to have a Golden Girls marathon and make stir-fry. It was actually a very clever cover considering that it was a normal Friday routine for Io and Masha to eat and watch shows. They called it Stir-Friday. This Friday was to be stirred up and served up in a completely different manner. Io packed a bag with a lavender wig cut to look like a flappers bob, a black sequined tube dress and a pair of slouching dark blue boots she had purchased on a trip to Italy when she was in college. She hadn’t grown in years. Once every bit of her false persona was packed away she made her way out of the blue bedroom and into the narrow apartment hallway, only stopping for a few seconds to talk to Martin, her dearly beloved.
“I’m going to spend the night at Masha’s – I think we’re going to make some beef and vegetable stir-fry tonight…want me to bring you anything back?”
“No thank you, love. Actually, I think I may take a flight to Cannes for the weekend. There are some supplies that I need for the restaurant, we are running low.”
“Call when you are coming back and please be safe. You know how I hate flying.” And then they shared the most non-passionate peck the world has never seen. Then Io walked towards the door in a slightly defiant manner, pressing her legs firmly into the ground, while yelling back “Oh! And don’t forget the Roquefort.” And then she was free of her cage.
The hallway outside of her hallway didn’t seem as long and torturous as usual and the brown hues of the carpet, walls and ceiling actually made her smile a smirking grin and she skip-stepped on her way out of the rustic apartment building. The stairs to the street didn’t exist for her. The streets and signs and people and shops and endless noise didn’t exist for her. She was enveloped in her scheming. How she would enter the bar, how she would sit, how she would sip and let her eyes linger on whomever she wished.
She dared not move in the lying bed, but willed her top leg (the left one) to scratch her right calve, and feigned sleeping for fear of meeting the faceless man – why could she not remember his face? He was so incredibly handsome and witty that she needed no convincing in going through with her plan. He was also a flirt and made her laugh so hard she forgot who she was. She had donned the wig, the dress, the boots, and did her makeup to the nines. She had seen the clubs sign: Via Notte, she had the door opened for her, and she had sat at the bar with such poise while the drinkers, dancers, ravers bounced and swooned all around her. She was a snake in windswept grass. She curled her fingers around a vodka martini which was delivered to her, but which she hadn’t ordered. The cold glass left an icy circle on the metal bar; it was one of the hottest nights that had ever dared happen in August. Io crossed her legs and turned her bar stool, making sure to turn her gaze towards the crowd only after she had decided which way she was going to look. She chose her mark and shot a glance sideways and hooked eyes with a tan and slender, tall man. He smiled and realized she was sizing him up. His smile was like a lions roar and made her eyes widen. She wanted him instantaneously. His smile continued as he turned back in to the crowd. She wanted to pounce, to seduce, but she restrained herself. Instead she devised to deduce her next step. The open-air club invited the moonlight and flashing lights to co-mingle with the sweet and salty night breeze. She inhaled, filled her bones, her blood with the changeable nature of the sea. She moved with swift side winding motions, melding with multiple dance partners across the floor. She had felt his eyes on her the entire time. She didn’t need to look to know.
She liked to whisper to herself, especially in the morning…so not to wake her bedmate she imagined herself whispering to herself. “You could have gone back. You could have…but I didn’t. I made the right decision, yes I did. Who is this man? Does it matter? I have to go back to Martin no matter what…this man is so much more exciting. It was almost too easy to lure him back to the bar. He dubbed me his modern-disco-Cleopatra. His sea-glass aqua eyes…those I remember. It only took a kiss on the edge of his mouth for him to ask me back to his place. He rolled up that joint just like Martin used to before we got serious. We used to play and run around and not worry about every little instance…everything that we ignored earlier in our relationship and didn’t matter now gets blown out of proportion and matters the most. I wonder what Martin is seeing in the south of France…Corsica is always beautiful this time of year…he would really appreciate that plant at the window. He loves green and growing things.” She talked to herself to remind herself that what she was saying was real. “He doesn’t leave his office very much anymore…I think I’m in love, but not with him…I’m in love with this man and I don’t even remember his face, but he’s exhilarating…should I look at his face or should I just leave?” She had looked around for some semblance of where her sequins, blue Italians and purple hair had gone. They were spread across a white woven rug. “I have this rug…where am I?” She raised her head and peered from side to side, laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes tight. “I must still be dreaming.” She was not dreaming. The blue walls and tin ceiling she had picked out at the local hardware and paint store. Her and Martin had painted the walls themselves when they had first started to move into the apartment. She had said it could be their reminder that they still had to travel the world. Together? The tall bookshelves covered the entire wall next to the window. The shelves were jam-packed in odd configurations and had everything from Dr.Seuss to Dante within their borders. The three lovebirds in the black Victorian metal cage chirped and fully cemented the hellish reality she had found herself in. “I have cheated with my husband on my husband, and he has cheated on me with me…he doesn’t know this yet. I hope he stays asleep for a while longer. If I stay and confront him he will never trust me again, but how can I ever trust him? But now I know…and he could never know. I don’t think I love him…and he seeks other women’s company.” She stopped mouthing words and started silently moving out of the bed. Untangled her curly ash-brown hair from his fingers and tried not to pull the sheets as she slipped out from between them. She stowed away her clothes, grabbed a pair of jeans and a white tank top from her drawers and headed to the living room to change. She was half furious with rage and almost grateful that she had caught herself and Martin cheating. Her hand was shaking when she left him the note: ”Meet me, when you wake up, at Tropicana. I’ll be waiting at the bar. We have to talk.” She didn’t sign her name. He would know it was her.