by Y. Medhin

Their voices are quiet, undemanding, the mild tones of the gracefully aged, flowing and ebbing against their sensitive ears, whispering their message, begging for forgiveness in the same breath that they forgive. Nothing is harsh in this new world to which they have journeyed through much pain and sorrow. Her lines are softer now, the curves less firm, and his skin is shy where her hands touch him. Their eyes are feelers, visual hands caressing as only eyes that have endured the halcyon of life can caress, feeling without touching, laughing without sound. Joy is in the air like an umbrella shielding the lovers from the hurt of the world. All is beautiful, nearly surreal. And poignantly temporal.

They don't think of this.

The bed is large, mahogany like her skin, dark against the stark whiteness of the bed linens and his pale skin. There is no approach, only the dance, for the approach was over and done with in their youth, in their myopic, foolish, selfish youth where everything was possible because tomorrow was always only a day away. Moons became quarter, half and full several hundred times over before they met again. But the approach was finished in their youth. Only the touch remained, standing there in their peripheral world waiting for Time to swing it into full view so they may caress without touching, so they could laugh without sound -- and love without demand for return.

And to this they came, knowing yet innocent, willing and anticipating with dread, their unlikely destiny, from which they had run in their youth and to which they stumble in the afternoon of their life. Neither one is happy. Both are ecstatic. And the electricity in the room is palpable in the air, sparking invisible, igniting in places only they can feel.

He bends his head to her cheek and she raises her lips to his face responding to a choreography flowing in her blood and beating its syncopated path through her heart. Limbs are reacquainted, lips touch and part and touch again and hands caress away years of neglect and misunderstanding while the eyes look on, applause in the very contraction of the pupils, delight in the flurry of the lashes. This is a banquet of the senses, the music is silent and strong, the fires smolder then spark and smolder again, heating the flesh, making this nimble or that heavy with the passion of their intention.

And the spiral begins its slow ascent into the heavens of their mind, touching loose their control until their world comes crashing down in the sweetest pain they will ever know. His flesh quivers against hers and her breath skids out to fan against his hot skin. He is unwilling to let it end and presses himself into her, denying the moment of separation the acknowledgment of his mind. They are one in this infinitesimal moment in time, a woman and a man, familiar strangers, the playthings of the Fates, at the mercy of their own destiny. For the moment they are the victors, the battle-worn soldiers who can find no respite until they exhale their last breath - no 'little death' could elevate them from this, their moment in the agony of life. And still, they smile.

He does not drift off to sleep as he normally would have done with his lawfully wedded wife. Nor does he hurriedly disentangle himself from the feminine heaviness that holds him a willing prisoner in a world of perfect heat. He waits while his breathing eases off into infrequent shudders of remembered pleasure and closes off his mind completely to try and stave off the barrage of guilt that is searching for a weakened stone on the wall protecting his conscience.

She is less at peace and more at peace than he can ever be, aware as she is of the tragedy and the ecstasy of their act of complete love. She is a little like the thorn bird, impaling herself for the song of love, but, unlike the bird, dying only to live again, and dying only a little at a time, the worst kind of demise, one with no ultimate reprieve, no sign of peace on the edge of beyond - nothing but the shocking white electricity in her blood, the gradual fall from the heavens of her mind into the stark, unappealing reality of her act.

She closes her hectic eyes against the smooth, moist skin she can remember kissing with her tongue, savoring in her mouth its salty residue and kissing it again, this time with her lips as if to seal their contact there. The ache is already trembling in her heart, unfurling like the petals of an angry flower, to spray its venom of disquiet into her blood until she cannot avoid the poison of her act and must turn to confront its bitter price. Her wealth is tangled in the years of regret whereby she cannot tourniquet the flow of poison effectively without damaging herself. She lies in the path of her own actions with nothing in sight to which she can run and hide or use as a bulwark. There will be no reprieve and she resigns herself to that fact.

They are speechless. Words are soldiers of foreign power that can gradually wear away the thin veneer of contentment, knocking softly into that invisible wall which proclaims, without authority, a security invincible to the enemies of dreams. But these two are soldiers indeed, caught in the endless loop of war against destiny and propriety, fighting to meet one while trying to appease the other. This war will see no victor for it is not meant to be won. And there will be no vanquished.

At last his conscience pricks him out of an assumed sense of guilt and, striving to relieve her of his weight, he raises his body and shifts it to her side allowing the cold, hungry hands of their microcosmic world to invade their separated skin. She shivers and automatically begins to curl into him. She is not ready for separation. She is not prepared for the coldness that consumes the place he has just abandoned. And still she stops herself in mid-motion. She is uncertain that he will welcome her body against his now that there is no hunger to fuel his actions. And she will not risk rejection, not this time.

Then, into this, her arrested movement, he turns himself, less afraid than she, more desperate. He cannot lose even a second of her warmth - not yet, not until he must. There were no promises made here, none expected, but there was that longing hanging between them like a heavy, severed limb seeking a warm body with which to connect. Neither knows what to do with this heaviness, with this insistent tug upon their soul, so they acknowledge it because it is there and reject it because it is painful. He understands her hesitation, her lack of trust, because he had done this to her - to them. He understands that he must be the initiator in all their daring acts of communion and he understands he must bear the full brunt of their sin, yet knows she will assume her own share. And he will not be denied, this time, the enfolding warmth of her womanness. He will not walk away, this time, with the limpid, painless grace of youth into the arms of another because, this time, destiny holds him in place while his transgression against propriety mocks his aging face.

But still, he can smile - with a little less confidence, and considerably less mirth, but his lips curve nonetheless, in a show of automatic grace under nearly unbearable pain.

He inhales the musky scent of their mingled sex - she calls it funky and that is what he loves about her, her frankness - and slides his hand up her damp back into her hair and gently presses her face into the throbbing jugular of his neck. As though she is clairvoyant, she opens her mouth and marks the pulse of his desire with the rough tip of her tongue. Against the decree of his age, he is aroused again and smiles with his eyes closed when he hears her husky, knowing laugh.

And this is what he had given up. For the very empty return on propriety observed. But still, he can smile. She is here, in his arms, soft against his growing need, leaning into his soul, allowing him to glance into the heaven he had walked out of before.

Later, much later, she lies in his arms, replete, too weak to think ahead to the consequences of a stolen night spent in the arms of a lover not her husband. Somewhere at the back of her mind, her subconscious is mounting a defense against the army of guilt knocking, pounding at the soft wall of protection. Tomorrow is soon enough to blink at the painful light of a less kind day and begin a journey of regret and penance conducted with eyes that skid and shy away from the trusting faith of that husband, the one she has betrayed in the name of destiny, the one to whom she must return for the sake of propriety. Her eyes close firmly and she drifts away into the muting darkness of sleep.

Midnight: he is awake. His heart is tripping over itself, imagining the ever mobile arm of time as his enemy, for tomorrow, as always, is only a day away. And tomorrow he cannot belong here. And tomorrow, she cannot belong to him. And tomorrow he cannot ask her to stay because tomorrow is the other thief which must steal her away. Tomorrow, he will have to rise and disentangle himself from his lifeline. Tomorrow, he must rise and cover his nakedness from a world that can only poke and prod, and widen his pain into a gaping, bleeding wound. Tomorrow he must leave that severed, tugging limb swinging in the no man's land of their own making, to dance and jeer at them or, if seized by all that futile emotion, to cry with them.

Tomorrow.

It hung there. Only a word. Only the end of this, his preferred world. It hung there, mocking him, laughing its blank-faced laugh at him, telling him in this shrieking silence - I am coming. I am coming.

Tomorrow: when she awoke, daylight was with them and tomorrow had turned into today. She didn't turn over to let him know that she was awake; she felt certain he already knew. Her body was arranged indelicately against his, having taken certain liberties in the absence of guilt in sleep and winding itself around its lover. Her arm was flung across his chest to his shoulder and she could feel beneath her thin-skinned inner elbow the chatter of his heart. Her torso was half-tucked beneath his, her naked breasts against his naked ribs, and her legs held one of his in a scissored clasp, revealing more than she wanted to admit.

It is time.

They are trapped in the locked fangs of their emotional cowardice, illicit lovers caught in a choreography they've created by default and cannot control so they dance the dance of their life. Slowly, as though the movements of separation causes them physical pain, they start apart and, limb by limb, cease to touch one another.

Physical disconnection is the first hurdle.

He wants to speak into the noise of the rustle of unfamiliar sheets. He wants to stop the shattering of his life, to hold the impossible seam together, to find a way, right or wrong, to make this union work. At the same time, his mind goes into a frenzy attempting all sorts of alternatives to the disintegration of his peace. His soul hangs heavily onto his spirit knowing beyond knowledge the hopelessness of challenging the Fates.

Then finally, there is no more contact.

Hold me....

She gathers the sheets to her breasts, Eve reborn, covering her nakedness from the man meant to gaze upon it. Tears stand in her eyes.

....I'm crying;

She avoids looking at him as that may very well be her undoing. She throws her eyes to the ceiling, looking beyond its rough whiteness to the sky where she longs to be, at last, well above her mortal deeds and foibles. Well away from her mortal needs.

Hold me....

He wants to speak. He wants to say the precise words that will make everything perfect as never before. He wants to turn to her, snatch her back into his soul and caress away the years of lack and need. But they are awake now and there is nothing right between them after the awareness. All the glory of the night, the recognition and the forgiveness, all belong to yesterday. Now, his tongue is the weighted enemy in his head, so burdened with words of love and guilt, it is incapable of moving, unable to articulate his need, his desperation. He does not want to leave. And he doesn't know how to stay.

....I'm dying.

This takes courage and the years have honed hers into a fine-tipped lance. She knows he will not beg her to stay or ask her to leave. So she must be the one to start the collapse of their temporal heaven.

Her words sound frigid, even to her own ears, edged with something he cannot define, but the meaning of which he knows only too well.

I don't want to end this, her voice implies even as her words, "I have to go," contradict her. "I know," he says, speaking to her heart, disregarding the harsher words.

"I won't see you again," she says. Not this way.

"I know," he replies.

"I mean it," she says, angry now that he is not fighting this, the severing of their...souls, as he should be. She is furious at his complacency.

"Don't!" His word flies out into the fractured air between them, flutters suspended, begging for definition. Then he continues: "Don't. Don't be angry. Don't leave here like this."

And now it is spoken. Leave. Leave. The Don't leave, alone would have hurt her heart. The Don't leave like this, stiffened her resolve. There was still, apparently, about the manner of her lover, the old easy, painless gait of youth, still dewy on his skin, still allowing him to walk away with a Don't leave like this. And it had started out with, Don't.

That is the phrased momentum that pushes her out of all that lifetime of warmth into the frozen air. She does not cover her nakedness quickly. She knows it hurts him to have to look - and look he does, indeed - but she is glad with that teeth-gritting gladness only those who love hard can comprehend or explain, that he is hurting as she is. They are equal in their pain and that allows her the further cruelty of a carefree smile:

"I promise I won't finish the hot water."

He watches her hips swing away from him, her curved shoulders straight and back, her dorsal skin flawless with two please-touch-me-kiss-me dimples at the beginning of the swell of her buttocks. His eyes follow the slim length of her legs to the back of the knees where he remembers his lips lingering to tickle her 'funny' spot. When the bathroom door closes behind her, interrupting his visual feast, he shifts his legs, suddenly uncomfortable. And restless.

She bathes slowly, careful not to scrub too hard, perhaps afraid that she may erase from her skin the memory of his touch. The memory of his smell. And there's that smile again, blurred by the water but no less harsh with its bitterness.

There's no regret.

There is guilt. Recrimination. Stabs of anxiety. But there's no regret. She has at last sated a hundred lifetimes worth of hunger.

She lets the water run down the back of her head, her neck then her shoulders and back until it splashes down the back of her legs and disappears into the drain. She is reliving his touch. This water, this impersonal, controlled deluge of water is his hand. Touching her. Learning her. She throws her head back and opens her mouth to take in its tepid spray. To allow it to suffocate her scream into a pitiful gurgle.

Then she remembers her promise and shuts off the water. His hands.

He hears the sound of the water cease. He rises, like her, not bothering with his nakedness. He is at the bathroom door as she is coming out and they pause, looking at each other, saying with their eyes what they will not let their mouths utter. There is terror in their eyes, questions they cannot ask. Then he steps aside, she slides past him into the bedroom and the danger is over with the click of the bathroom door latching shut.

He is lost in the bathroom. The perfume of her scent still lingers beneath the scent of the soap and the cloying, steamy air. He locates a towel she had used and feeling hopelessly pathetic, presses his face into its dampness and inhales. Ah. Her scent is still there. He sits heavily on the lid of the commode, the towel still held up to his face. His eyes remain shut and he begins to relive in minute detail their one night of unsanctioned love together.

In the bedroom, she regains her momentum, dresses quickly like one afraid to be caught in a compromising position and exits this strange room she has never seen before and never wants to see again. The streets are just beginning to gain life. It's too early yet for the rush-hour traffic to fill up the cracked and gouged and poorly patched asphalt. She stops obediently at a light then strides across, her movements heavy but curiously hurried. She moves like one in a dream - with little control. She is on automatic. A horn blares, jarring her to a stop, before the taxi squeals past her. She stares after it, now standing safely on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the building she has just left, the looming, gray edifice behind her. She does not look back; this time there had been no good bye and she cannot bear to turn back. She hunches her shoulders against nothing and walks, head bent, her vacuous eyes focused on something no one else can see.

He knows (and he knows because he feels it in the marrow of his bones, in the birth place of his soul), he knows that she has left the room when he steps out of the bathroom, shaved and showered, a towel wrapped with careful negligence around his waist. He knows she is gone, but he looks around the room anyway, his heart a melted block of something at the pit of his stomach. Tomorrow is well and truly here. And she has left him.

She is certainly stronger than he is, he admits. He couldn't have done that, just gotten up and left like that. He raises a hand and runs it through his thinning, graying, damp hair and then across his chest to his left shoulder where it lingers while his eyes stare at the rumpled bed. How had something that had taken so long to become real again disappeared so quickly? He wants to scream out the question, but he knows that the gods have long since stopped listening to him. No one will answer that visceral question and so it withers, unanswered, in his mind.

He takes in his breath slowly and lets it out slowly, concentrating on the act like a man trying to prevent his own death by virtue of his strength of hold on life. But he is a lost man with no direction to follow, only the old traditional path to the tried and true. His lover - his love - is gone. Just like that. How could she do it? Why couldn't he? And so there is nothing left to do but follow her out into that cold, cold place he called his life, to continue the charade with practiced ease, to smile on queue, laugh, respond appropriately. With her, there was no pretense. Only emotion. And now this emotion, faced with no place to go, was turning back on him, crashing into him, hitting, gnawing, demanding...satisfaction. The pain was a welcome distraction. From the pain.

Oh.

The sigh issues itself forth. A small release when an explosion would have been more appropriate. He lists forward like a damaged thing then straightens up on a deep breath. He longs for the luxury of a quiet mental collapse so he would not have to deal with this. This. This what? This enormous nothingness? This emptiness trying to consume him whole? If he went forward he would be swallowed by it slowly. If he went back he would find nothing in its colossal void. And though he longs for nothingness, he fears it even more. For one got nothing - from nothing. Trite. But true. Like his life. Though it did not seem trite - to others. Or true - to him.

He was the deceiver. Only to be deceived in turn, cheated by life. And who could he hold culpable in this charade. But himself. And he was the coward in the scene. He could never pay his dues. So now he had - nothing.

Oh.

For that mental collapse, he would give anything. But his life. And that won't do.

It grows dark in that room before he knows himself. He shivers for he still has only the towel for warmth, dry now and stiff. Like his soul. He is sitting on a chair although he couldn't tell you how he got there. Only that it hurt. Where? Everywhere. Everywhere. And, so softly only she can hear him several days later and a hundred miles away, back in her suburban life, he utters her name.

Sarah.

Through the window she can see them all, the harvest of her life, sitting around the bleached pine table she had picked out with him, her husband. They are laughing at something she could not share because she is standing outside, shut out by the latched windows and the closed doors. For that moment she is happy to be isolated from them, happy that she won't have to look away from her husband's eyes so she could lie effectively. Happy that she won't sully them with her act of betrayal. Happy because she still feels something for them that is separate from a night spent in glorious infidelity.

Then her man glances up and he sees her standing out there looking in, staring like the homeless and hungry at a feast laid just out of reach. Something in that bleak expression frightens the man more than loving her does. He feels that, if he doesn't get up now and go out to her and haul her bodily into his arms and press her to the reality of his heartbeat, he would lose her. To the same monster that has made his love for her his greatest fear. His insecurity.

He stands up and she sees him and knows he's seen her. She tries to smile but her facial muscles will not play accomplice to her duplicity. This is the man to whom she is tied - by all the legal strings in life. This man, the one looking at her with anticipation mingled with some kind of excitement in his face, is the father of her children, the children who are still laughing at that bon mot someone must have voiced sitting around the bleached pine table in her country kitchen in her home - in her life.

This is the man who has lived with her the past decade and a half. He is the one who had cried with her when their first child was born. And had stood by her when God had seemed unkind. He was the constant: The faithful lover, the patient father, the loyal friend. The one who trembled at her touch - still. This man, staring at her with eyes full of (and now she sees what she'd assumed to be excitement for what it actually is) fear - stark fear. This man was the one to whom she had said, I do. For better or for worse. And a promise is a promise (and sometimes a promise is everything) and she had promised him her life as he had promised her his.

And here they stood, lovers for over a decade, friends, parents until they die, so bound together with common ties that she wonders now how it was, even if only for a moment, she had thought she could give this up, blame destiny - why not? - for her frailty of character and carry on with flagrant disregard, not for propriety, no, but for the responsibilities she had accepted and, after all, loved.

It was dark now. And the cold was penetrating her woolen cape. Then, in the air, carried to her on the wind, came her own name.

Sarah.

She turns her head in recognition. That voice! She hears, too, the pain embedded in its strangled whisper! The profound melancholy. Her heart trips, but it does not fall. She sways, holds steady, then sensing the tug of her mate's love, his desperation, turns to him, her eyes devoid of the longing, and now full of reassurances. He is coming toward her, his stride long and strong and she moves to meet him half way.

They embrace in the garage where a naked bulb casts about odd shadows. He takes her shoulders in his hands, strongly, and looks into her eyes. They cannot lie and he reads in them the truth. His eyes close slowly, in quiet, aching relief, for he saw in those eyes, remarkably, love. He pulls her back to him and she comes forward (out of the past - at last) willingly, wrapping her arms about him. He rests his chin upon her head and asks softly:

How was your trip?
Fine. Fine.
Will you go again? He asks again, softly. Hesitantly.
No. No, I don't think so.
He says, Welcome home, with a sigh and a telling tightening of his arms about her.
Yes. She pulls her head back, as if for a kiss, but there are tears in her eyes. She says, softly, simply, Thank you.