Monika snuck out silently from the house. Tony was passed out on the sofa downstairs. They’d fought in the taxi on the way home from the Moores’. Tony had accused her of flirting with James. For God’s sake, he was a teenager. It was a low blow. He was becoming desperate, especially when he’d had a few drinks and a couple of snorts of the white stuff. It was making him paranoid. He had no understanding of what she really needed, and it wasn’t a boy. Nor was it an old man like Jeremy Moore, though he tried his best to push his way into her personal space and get a swollen sticky hand on her whenever the opportunity arose. She felt enormous pity for Alex, who was stuck in a marriage with a lecherous has-been. But then she realised that it wasn’t only Alex who was trapped inside a loveless union.
She walked along the leafy boulevard adjacent to her home and welcomed the breeze travelling lightly on the night. Her skin clamoured for its refreshment and she relished its caress. The van was waiting for her at the end of the road. Henry wouldn’t venture into the lights of the CCTV cameras guarding each of the establishments closer to the desirable residences of her neighbourhood. She saw it parked across the street, under bushes, away from the main drag, and giggled to herself at the illicit deliciousness of her liaison.
She climbed in and he drove away.
Henry knew the city. He took routes that she’d never come across before and she suspected it was because he liked to keep under the radar. He had a mysterious past and one which she wanted to unpick. In that, he was like her: running away from something and towards an alternative.
Maybe she could change his mind.
When he parked, he asked her if she was all right. He asked if Tony had hurt her. She shook her head gently, touched by his concern for her welfare but aware that his unease was more about her being in the company of her husband and not what Tony chose to do with that intimate time. She relaxed back into the seat and smiled at him.
‘I just wanted to see you. I needed to see you,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’ He looked at her, trying to read her face and held out his hand, to stroke her hair away from her face.
She read the power she had over him and glanced towards the back of his van.
‘Here?’ he asked, breathlessly.
‘Yes,’ she said, climbing over the back and into the cavern of Henry’s work life. It smelled like her kitchen when the walls were stripped and bare, and of his body when he lay under her sink, twisting this way and that, battling with a copper pipe, trying to make it bend to his will. He followed her and she began to undress herself. He found her mouth with his and helped her undo her blouse, but they fumbled in the dark and she caught her foot on something heavy. She fell backwards and he climbed on top of her, finding something soft to prop under her body.
The interior of the van was furnace-like and cramped but she’d rather make love to Henry in here, surrounded by grime and dust, than to her husband in a penthouse suite overlooking Central Park.
She groaned as their bodies moved together and Henry pulled her hair softly. It was as if they were stuck together in the cramped space, inseparable and complete. Henry buried his head into her shoulder and she felt the van sway. She heard a slight tear in her skirt but she didn’t care. Her clothes were mere vessels along for the ride, and the baubles at her ears and throat jangled sweetly with the rhythm, as if the links in jewellery were designed for just this.
Sweat covered their bodies and she fought for breath, as the weight of Henry’s body seemed to her more powerful when pinned into such a confined space.
Images of Tony’s face, as well as Jeremy’s, bloated and urgent, melted away as she clung to Henry’s back. They’d created their own existence, in here, in this moment in time. It didn’t have walls, nor was it confined to a title or deeds. It was a thing one touches, like the glancing of Henry’s grip as he held on to her.
It was something in and of itself all at once.
It was peace.