Illegal Liaisons (4 page)

“Your course sounds more interesting.”

“You don’t want to know how much they pay.”

“You wouldn’t want to do what you don’t like.”

He squinted at Andrea and saw more of her: brown hair and beautifully sculpted lips.

“Look at that pâté,” she said, and he reluctantly turned his eyes to the table. “Some people love it.”

“It’s
foie gras.”

“I think you’d feel like those overstuffed geese in the Commission.”

He turned his eyes from the pâté and looked at her again. Final promises to phone were being exchanged among the group of officials but he was suddenly short of words. The silence between them grew thick.

“Are you …” Jonathan began but right then somebody stopped short beside them.

They both turned. It was the head of cabinet for the Commissioner.

“Simon, meet Jonathan.” A professional smile appeared on Andrea’s face. “Jonathan is a writer and a lecturer in creative writing. Jonathan, this is Simon …”

The man’s handshake was energetic. Although Jonathan knew nothing about male beauty, he immediately knew that this man, although over fifty, put most men in the shade. And that his high rank had little to do with it.

“Andrea, we should be going,” the man said in excellent English.

“An Englishman, from Eton,” Jonathan quickly surmised.

“… Simon,” Andrea finished, “my partner.”

That night, Jonathan reached for Megi but he didn’t like the taste of her lips. They ended swiftly; Jonathan got up and went out on to the terrace for a cigarette.

He gazed at the clouds rolling over the dark mass of sky. He had immediately taken to the weather in Brussels, warm with an undertone of damp. He loathed southern climates, the vertical sun and blind stubbornness of heat.

“Simon, my partner.” There was not a single woman at that strange party – and that included Megi – who had not stared at the man. Jonathan stubbed out his cigarette. Childish unease signalled its presence again, the tiresome “I want,” just as when Andrea had been leaving with Simon and Jonathan had taken the chance to look at her beautiful backside again. And now the sway of her hips was irking him like the hook on which a stupid pike – Jonathan – had let itself be caught.

Daily life slotted back into its course. Jonathan unpacked more cardboard boxes until he felt the days themselves had become rectangular. Reach for a box, open, pull out the contents … Finally, the vision of a trip to IKEA acquired the exotic taste of escape and Swedish meatballs offered an opening into the wider world. Sitting at a plastic table, he savored the thought of the jaws of their home in Brussels, hungry for equipment and objects, snapping at a safe distance.

On the way home, he stopped off to buy some bread rolls. Megi couldn’t get used to croissants and preferred ordinary bread, while the children loved the little rolls with a slit down the middle which they had immediately called “bums.” Jonathan asked for six bums and a take-out coffee.

He was just leaving the counter when he started. He had “met” Andrea a few times since their first meeting – running across the road, glancing at her watch, getting off a tram. But it was never her. He didn’t blow the impression she had made on him out of proportion; he often allowed himself to fantasize about women he hardly knew, rewrote scripts for which in real life he had neither time nor courage. It was one thing for his cock to dive into the hole of an appetizing thirty-year-old, another to wrestle with questions about whether the sex would lead anywhere.

Jonathan’s principles, too, acted like a bucket of cold water. He was too young for a bit on the side; that was fine for old men needing to invigorate themselves or bores with the mentality of elderly pensioners. Women found him attractive; he’d had quite a few before Megi and knew he could have one at any time. And even though monogamy wasn’t easy, when fantasies of other women – or the women themselves – became too pressing, he repeated Stefan’s maxim: “If you can’t knock her up, forget her’. In his case, “can’t” had meant “didn’t choose to.”

As for an honorable attitude to a woman who belonged to another man, he had to admit that abstract male honor stood on a par with the fear of catching HIV.

When he saw Andrea, real in the light of day, he assured himself it was the sight of a familiar face that made him happy. As a seasoned traveller, he believed that a new place only became home when you bumped into people you knew on the street. And there – a few weeks and he was already meeting someone!

She noticed him, stopped hesitantly.

“Jonathan,” he jogged her memory. “We met …”

“I remember. Fairy tales – and a creative writing course.”

She was wearing a pale blouse and a skirt with a slit that aroused his imagination.

“A croissant, please.” She leaned over to the salesgirl.

“A croissant at twelve?” he asked. “Isn’t it time for something more substantial?”

“I’m just off to lunch. I’ve got to eat something before.”

“You must be going to lunch with dwarves if you’ve got to eat first.”

“There you go, you’re already writing fairy tales!” Tiny wrinkles appeared around her eyes and disappeared. Jonathan thought he would like to gaze at that smile for longer. There was something exciting about her face, both sexy and intelligent.

“I’ll write one if you promise you won’t touch the poisoned apple on the way,” he muttered.

Andrea glanced at the croissant with suspicion. Her blouse was covered with crumbs as she bit into the pastry; a few fell down her neckline.

“I’ve got some rolls for a rainy day should anything happen.” He lifted the bag of “bums’. “Would you like one to take with you in case the dwarves serve in-flight portions?”

She shook her head.

“My dwarf’s from the Commission. I want to get him on my program. I don’t eat much when talking business.”

“I get angry when I don’t eat.”

“That’s incredible, I’m just the same! Other people seem to cope with hunger in a civilized way but I get livid. I’ve even got a complex about it.”

“You shouldn’t,” Jonathan reassured her. “After all, we’re beasts of prey. The skin of a lamb but beneath lurks a wolf.”

“Sounds like a disease,” she grimaced.

“
Homo homini lupus
in Latin.”

She smiled again and he remembered the coffee he was holding. He drank a little without taking his eyes off Andrea. She pushed the hair from her forehead with a gesture that told him she didn’t mind his gaze.

“Do you live nearby?” she asked.

“A few streets away.”

“How’s your creative writing course going?”

“I’m working on a survival course at the moment. I mean, we’ve just moved.” He indicated the jeans in which he had kneeled to assemble the wardrobes, beds, and shelves.

“And you’re no longer looking for a job in the Commission?”

“I haven’t even started. Since you said I’d feel like a goose …”

This time she didn’t smile, as if the joke had run off track and was bouncing over a road full of potholes.

“I’ve got to run,” she said, glancing at her watch.

“I’ve overdone it,” he thought.

And then something happened that made the hairs on his hands stand on end. Andrea pulled herself upright, shook the croissant crumbs from her blouse, and walked up to him to say goodbye, kissing him in the French manner on both cheeks. But Jonathan forgot how many times they kissed in Belgium and after two kisses leaned over for a third; she, disorientated, paused as she turned her head and, instead of offering her cheek, touched his lips with hers. Jonathan’s reflex was to move his lips a centimeter (something shouted silently in him, “I want!”) and their
lips joined, quivered with warmth and moisture and started to search for each other.

The following morning, after taking the children to school, Jonathan sat down in a café and checked his email. Those organising
L’Atelier d’écriture
had invited him to an interview in a week’s time. Megi said he should try as long as he could manage to fit the job around his domestic duties. He couldn’t count on her – she had masses of work. He congratulated himself on having already at least found a nanny.

He was opening the document with the notes he had taken with the course in mind, when Andrea appeared in his thoughts. The film of their meetings began to roll again; the recollection of her warm lips sent a hot wave through him. It was unusual in that this film had no continuation, unlike his transitory fascinations with other women during his recent decade of monogamy. What would have been the beginning of a script leading to explicit consummation broke off at an innocent kiss. It left him in a rapture he could not recall – or perhaps he hadn’t felt before.

He flicked at the casing of his laptop. There was something narcotic about the woman; the very fact that he was dreaming about the smell of her and not her rump was a bad sign.

His cell rang. Jonathan started, immediately on edge.

“It’s me,” he heard.

“Megi?” He barely calmed his voice. “Your number hasn’t come up.”

“I’m calling from work. Listen, I’m not going to manage to take Antosia riding today. I’ve got to hand in the report by tomorrow.”

“I’ll take her, no problem.”

“Thank you, darling!”

Pssss … The air started to go out of his scented visions of Andrea.

“Are you there?” asked Megi.

“I love you.” He heard his own voice.

“And I love you,” she reassured him hurriedly. “I’ve got to finish. Got a meeting.”

Jonathan arrived at the school too early. The playground was still empty, although a hubbub had started in the building like in an enormous beehive. He sat down on the wall next to a few mothers.

“… a trip to the farm, they’re asking parents to help look after the children,” a beautiful Italian was saying in a heavy accent. At a distance it sounded as though she were speaking in her own language. “But I can’t go. I’m frightened of poultry and farm animals.”

“Do you swell up?” The Japanese woman spoke English like a five-year-old, syllable by syllable.

The Italian fell silent for a moment, disorientated.

“I’m not allergic,” she explained. “I simply panic.”

The Japanese woman froze and Jonathan observed the Italian; madwoman or not, she really wasn’t bad.

“And I find live fish repulsive.” A third woman joined in, her accent flat, Finnish. “And stuffed animals.”

“I dislike open spaces,” admitted the Japanese woman, “and closed rooms.”

Jonathan considered the technical aspect of this paradox and heard the familiar voice of the farmer from Ohio.

“
Dupa
[ass/pussy],” the American greeted him.

“Good afternoon,” replied Jonathan, making room for him on the wall.

“How are things with you?”

“Great. And you?”

“What a day, what a day …”

“We’re looking for parents who might be willing to go with the children to the farm,” the Italian began, as she approached them with the Japanese woman. “The school’s arranging a trip but they need someone to keep an eye on the children. With all those animals about. Maybe you could help?”

“Me?” the farmer made sure.

“You,” the Japanese woman nodded. Unintentionally, the concentration with which she spoke English made her sound cruel.

Once in the car, Jonathan asked the children how school had gone. They started telling him as he wondered how old Andrea could be. Probably over thirty, the age at which true women blossom, when the manner of a woman is superimposed on the looks of a girl – the thing that excited him most.

He overtook a Peugeot which was manoeuvring clumsily and registered the noise coming from behind.

“Stop arguing,” he muttered automatically.

“Then tell him to stop copying me!”

“I’m not copying her.” Tomaszek was cross.

“And what did you do today, son?” Jonathan changed tactics.

“We copied squirrels,” answered the boy.

“Ha, ha,” said Antosia. “Hiding nuts?”

Jonathan pulled away from the lights. Andrea was shapely and slim while also being so appetizingly full-figured that he wanted to squeeze her.

“No, no!” Tomaszek grew more and more annoyed. “We walked behind them, you know, behind them …”

“You followed them?” Jonathan prompted.

“Exactly!”

He didn’t even know whether she had any children. He knew it had not left a trace on her figure; nowadays forty-year-olds looked better than twenty-year-olds. Megi, having given birth twice, had a better figure than before. Why then, when thinking about his wife, had he for some time been changing the letters in the word “sexy” to “sensible”?

Andrea had small breasts and beneath them a narrow waist and round hips.

“Daddy, the lights.”

“Yes, yes, the lights.”

“They’re green,” Antosia explained patiently. “You can go.”

“Oh, right!”

Objectively, it was easy to admire Andrea. She was beautiful, intelligent, witty, and delicate. Her legs were not very shapely but they were very long. The few wrinkles only added to her charm. The trophy wife of the guy chased by most of the women in the Commission.

She could have anybody. He was an idiot to think about another man’s wife so much.

“So what did the squirrels do?” he asked.

And at that moment a text from her arrived.

When the front door banged shut and the children ran to greet Megi, Jonathan went downstairs and kissed his wife on the cheek. “You haven’t put the shelves up, you haven’t made sure Antosia is doing her homework, you forgot to buy the meat for tomorrow …” he heard.

He discreetly hid the cell in his pocket. He knew the text by heart anyway: “Enjoyed talking to you, Andrea.”

That night he slept with his hands behind his head, his underbelly restless. Why had he flirted with Andrea? Why had he thoughtlessly replied, “Would willingly do so again”?

L’A
TELIER D
’E
CRITURE
was located in a nineteenth-century apartment. The way in was up some stairs, passing the stone sculptures in a little garden.

The woman who met Jonathan had silver-gray hair and spoke perfect French. She set a few subtle traps in their conversation but luckily he knew the French idioms and the books she mentioned. He threw in a handful of titles on literary theory, quoted the contents of articles he had recently read in professional publications until her face lit up. She was over fifty but so attractive that her gray hair seemed merely flirtatious.