Admittedly, he was early – two hours early, to be precise. Nevertheless, he watched the door in the mad, forlorn hope that she'd turn up way in advance of the time. This was crazy. This was the sort of ridiculous loved-up behaviour in others he'd have strongly counselled against. And yet here he was; the fool. Waiting. He knew things were going to get very messy. One way or another, it would hurt.
He knew it, that this was an exercise in self-destruction, a wild stab in the dark with someone he didn't really know all that well. But it excited him beyond distraction, a heart-thumping –heart-stopping– sickly feeling of mesmerism. Any movement, any song, any thoughts, any thing, was all about her, about him, about them. This was an insult to his intellect, and yet here he was, sitting in the café stirring his coffee spoon; her coffee spoon.
It wasn't that he was looking. He'd been a single man for quite a while, but had been relatively happy. A good job in IT with a modest income suited his lifestyle: he had not sold his soul, and neither did they want it. He had even taken up the violin again, after many years of eyeing the old black case sit idly on the shelf over the door. He had enjoyed it, taking pleasure from getting things right, the bowing, the fingering, the phrasing, actually thinking about it. He played through his childhood pieces, only now he seemed to understand them, if such a thing was possible.
Up until then he'd had fairly predictable weeks; a work-TV balance punctuated by the odd Tuesday night here, a regular Friday night there, mixing with his good faithful friends who wanted nothing more from him than his back-slapping company. But after meeting her, quite by accident at a friend's party, the earth began to move. Not that he noticed at first – a chance meeting in the town, then the odd phone call, followed by a lunch, then dinner, then an all-day outing... The seismic scale of these events only dawned on him after a week or two of their regular meeting. By then it was too late.
She was vulnerable, soft, and very, very pretty. At first, he'd been caught off-guard by her attention, but then realised that perhaps she'd genuinely meant all the things she said. When they sat together, in the car, at the cinema, in the park, there was a meeting of minds, a fusion of bodies, and an awful lot of gormless grinning.
It immediately caught the attention of his friends who, of course, saw in him a change he barely perceived in the mirror. He still went out with them, but his attention was at times a little dreamy. They ribbed him, until they found out who it was. Then the laughter stopped.
"She's married, isn't she?" "Her husband, it's not that big bloke who owns the Audi dealership, is it? Not someone to cross, eh?"
Indeed, it was her. Indeed, he should not. For although they'd been estranged for more than a year, and she'd moved out for more than six months, the big bloke who sold Audis was enraged. Incandescent! Even though he'd had girlfriends and affairs throughout the years, unpredictably and irrationally, he now felt an extraordinary loss. She had given up on her attentions for him, thinking them lost and the marriage broken, and had found a Mr Ordinary who neatly fitted the bill.
If that wasn't bad enough, the big man had turned up at his place of work to warn him off: didn't he know that she was his woman he was fucking around with and that he needed to back off or he'd come and get him. This sort of warning was not taken lightly, but accepting the delivery he'd noticed that the big man had moist eyes. He knew that those tears, if they were to run, would actually have been about himself, a weeping only found in maudlin self-pity. It was at that moment that all the fear in the room evaporated. As the door slammed, and he returned to the interrupted server resetting task, he sat back and smiled – a silly smirk of silverback victory: she'd made her choice, and he, the other guy, the loser, had better get used to it!
The clock ticked slowly, far too slowly to keep staring at the hands. He wished it would speed up, to take away the stupid empty minutes, so that she would step through the door and sit opposite him. For the moment of truth was upon them. She was to deliver, in person, the notice of divorce. She told him she hoped for a quickie, but it was likely to drag on, because he'd fight. He'd fight, not only for himself, but also to bitterly keep as much away from her as possible. He'd fight because he could not back down, he could not admit his weaknesses and double-standards. And then... then she was to meet him for a coffee.
And here he sat. This already messy business would surely get messier. But it was worth it, wasn't it? For the past few weeks he'd seen only flowers for weeds, blue sky for clouds, diamonds for sand. But as the hours drifted, and the expected time for her arrival passed, torrential outpourings of doubt clogged his happy-free thoughts. Had she been serious? Had her resolution been only skin deep? Or had he pulled a rabbit from the hat; perhaps some real tears, perhaps a confession of remorse and the deep will to change, perhaps he'd touched her in the old-fashioned tender way that had been presumed dead and long forgotten, perhaps she had seen in the successful businessman a living remembrance of the young man she had once tenderly described over dinner and again a little later back at his place after sex.
He ordered his fourth coffee. He waited. He waited.
Recent Comments