Prologue. Alex
Floating in the sublime imagery of my favorite dream, soaring weightlessly in a poetry of touches, glances, my heartbeat racing with excitement and a feeling of happiness, overwhelming and unending... I am dreaming of a girl, always the same girl. Time after time, I live an alternative life in my dreams where I am not alone, where there are two of us, but we are one, we are united, we are whole...
We walk and sleep together, laugh and make love, wash one another in the shower and swim in the sea, share apples and kiss... We kiss endlessly, for hours, and I can feel her lips against my own, can taste them, can sense their reticence and their compliance, impossible to predict. I never know if she will give in to me, if she will succumb, when it will happen and why. She owns me completely and unconditionally, and I... I don’t try to resist because I’m in the happiest, most exquisite place in the world, cocooned in a feeling so sweet, so intense that even when I wake up and open my eyes, I can literally hear the quickening beat of my heart as it rushes in a mad gallop towards my happiness...
CHAPTER 1. A Man’s Solution
‘A man capable of actions is doomed to be loved.’ - Coco Chanel
Never before has my husband Timothy seen me so crushed.
Frightened, he pushes his resentment aside and asks, ‘What happened? Is he dead?’
‘No,’ I reply. ‘He’s alive and very much kicking. I’m tired, Tim. More tired than I’ve ever felt in my life. Please don’t ask me anything today. Or tomorrow. Just give me a few days, okay? I’ll tell you everything, just not now... As soon as I feel more like myself again.’
After everything that has happened, my heart feels like an old rag tossed and torn apart by playful puppies. It is still there but is now unrecognizably tattered and dirty. However, my soul is as tenacious as a cat, and I know it will lick its wounds and recover.
I still find the first month extremely difficult. Images flash before me of hospital beds, disease, weakness, and the icy breath of death in my face, but I stubbornly take no notice and drive them away. I stay strong, although no one will ever know the effort it takes, and I do my best not to think about the humiliation in which my mission ended, as if it had never happened at all. Life taught me long ago not to dwell on things capable of ruining me. It’s safer that way, better for my sense of self. It’s my defense mechanism against everything bad.
After that first month, it becomes easier. Life settles down, work takes over, and I fall back into my usual day-to-day routine. Only in the evenings, while reading my daughter her bedtime story, do I find myself losing track of the words, my thoughts drifting far away to an enormous glass house on the other side of the world.
Three months later, I’m back to being a fully-fledged member of society – whole again, both physically and mentally. Nothing has been forgotten, but the painful events are far enough in the past not to hurt anymore, covered over by the veil of time and the images of my current life. And I now genuinely do appreciate Timothy – understanding, forgiving, predicable, uncomplicated, reliable Timothy. Our home is filled with a sense of warmth and comfort; only peace and tranquillity reside in it.
*** ‘Feel Me’ by Mecca Kalani ***
It happens on a sunny, but cold, wet evening in March.
Nearing home, I see a car parked on the other side of the road – a black Porsche. A pain penetrates my heart and it’s a bad sign, very bad. Nothing good ever happens in my life when I feel it; it’s there to warn me, prepare me.
I step out of my car and glance over at the Porsche parked nearby. The wind pulls at my silk scarf and hair, blowing them in my face, obstructing my vision. It had rained during the day and the weather was only starting to brighten up now, close to seven in the evening. The sky is still awash with slate clouds, but the horizon is clear, and the orange glow of the setting sun is blinding.
The car door opens on the opposite side of the road and... it’s as if time stands still, plunging the world into a deafening silence. All I can hear is the booming of my heart because, although I can’t see, I can feel and sense HIM.
It takes me a moment to calm myself and, pulling the scarf from my face, I squint to see if my sixth sense is right: dressed in a black leather jacket, there is Alex, standing in his usual pose, his back leaning against the side of the car, waiting for me to walk over.
But I don’t want to. I don’t even want to know him.
Once my daughter is out of her car seat, she immediately runs into the house. I take the grocery bags out of the boot, lock the car and follow her without looking back.
I still think I have a home.
As soon as I feel the warmth of his painfully familiar fingers touch my wrist, the something inside me stops jabbing and starts tearing me apart instead.
‘Don’t go inside,’ I hear him say quietly.
Turning around, I finally see what I was so afraid to: he has recovered in the last few months and is back to himself again, but somehow even more beautiful than before. The illness has left behind a special kind of wisdom in his eyes and even more feeling, a deep knowledge and truth unreachable to others that makes him see the world differently and discern something in it that the rest of us can’t.
Alex says nothing for a while, waiting for me to look him in the eye, but I am unable to tear my gaze away from the side of his head and a lock of hair curled into a black, shiny semicircle hanging just below his ear – it finally grew back.
‘I told him,’ he says softly.
My heart rips free of the veins and arteries connecting it to me and plunges in free fall before hitting the wet dirt at my feet.
‘Told him what?’ I whisper so that God won’t hear us.
‘Everything.’
‘What do you mean “everything”?’ My voice is shrill now, cutting through the March air like a butcher’s knife.
I can’t see the perfect features of his beautiful face, or the strength that has returned to his body, or the mesmerising way that the wind is playing with his hair. All I can see are his dark brown eyes filled with spirit and determination. His voice is quiet, but it makes the most important decisions for me, unasked.
‘How we were together for two years, how we used to meet up, how you were in love with me, and how you were with me. I told him I am taking you away. Forever.’
It is too much. I want to be smart and I try to read useful books, the kind that teach you how to manage anger, how to hold it back. I practise, I practise all the time, and it’s going well. So well, in fact, that I’m rather proud of myself.
But not this time.
I lash out and, with all the force of the pain, fear and anxiety caused by his illness, the hatred over my humiliation, and, more than anything, the regret over my now-destroyed family – my loved ones, my support, my quiet haven that sheltered me from harm and the only thing that has given me joy lately – with all this force behind it, I strike his face. Alex bends over, covering it with his hands, and, when he takes them away, I see blood. It is flowing from his nose, oozing from his split lip. He tries to wipe it away, but he is bleeding too heavily.