After a lot of hard work, I can finally say that the report on the corporate restructuring is ready. We have spent ages studying how to implement all the additional requests that were made, guided by the illusory idea that the customer is always right – it’s not actually true, but since they do pay our enormous consulting fees, we tend to forgive them pretty much everything. In any case, it should all go fairly smoothly now.
Today is also the last day of the year and in the London office we’d get half a day off. Or even the whole day, if you’re clever enough to wangle it. But we are in Korea, the country that doesn’t even recognize the sacrosanct right to throw a sickie, so I’m not surprised that this morning Mark has gone to discuss the new plan with the customer. Who, luckily, accepted everything enthusiastically.
Mark called the office to give us the good news. The fact that he called Chul Ju and not me didn’t go unnoticed, though. I have been making strenuous efforts to fight off the disappointment I felt when I realized he was avoiding me on purpose.
It’s just gone five o’clock, and the others are on their way out of the office to get themselves ready for the New Year’s Eve party the company has organized, but I’m so tired and demoralized I’m not sure I really want to go.
After everything that’s happened, I feel drained, emotionally and physically. Mark and I are committed to totally ignoring one another as much as possible. If we devoted the same level of commitment to some more noble cause, we could produce exciting results – I don’t know, world peace or something. We are courteous and polite to each other – in short, we’re not ourselves.
“Aren’t you going home to have a rest and get yourself ready?” asks Seung Hee as she turns off her computer. It is obvious that she can’t wait to go to the party.
I sigh in response, envious of her cheerful mood. “I would like to finish this piece of work first,” I explain, even though I’ve actually been staring at the same cell of my excel file for over two hours. I’d never admit this though, not even under torture.
“I know that there is something wrong, Maddison. If you need someone to talk to, remember that I am here for you. You only have to ask.” She gives me a sincere smile.
“Thanks,” I reply, touched by her words. But I’m afraid that I’ll never be ready to talk about Mark. And even if I were, I could never discuss him with any of my colleagues.
Once I’m alone, I try to summon up a bit of concentration, but the silence of the office starts to get on my nerves even more than the chattering of my colleagues. It’s pointless, I might as well occupy my time with something less soul-destroying – something like cleaning the flat.
I’m just about to give up and leave when a noise from behind me makes me jump. Strange, I ought to be the only one still here. Startled, I turn round, prepared to confront the intruder, only to find Mark standing in front of me. I would almost have preferred a thief.
“What are you doing here, Maddison?” he asks gloomily.
“I work here, in case you’ve forgotten. And what are you doing in the office?”
He puts some papers on Chul Ju’s desk. “I decided I’d rather leave the paperwork here. I’m going home now. Are you coming too?”
He seems to find it difficult to get the question out.
“Do I have to?”
I don’t want to make things easier for him – I’m just busting for an argument.
“Of course you do. So let’s both of us go home and make ourselves presentable for the party tonight,” he says, frustrating my desire to have a row.
“Yeah, the party…” I sigh, sounding anything but enthusiastic. For a moment I’d almost forgotten about it. “I promised Thomas I’d go with him,” I announce.
I see him turn up his nose in disapproval.
“Thomas is somebody you really shouldn’t be wasting your time on. Although I do understand,” he reproaches me nastily, “it didn’t work out with Andrew so you’ve thrown yourself at the feet of the only one left.”
Sometimes he sounds just like my mother, and that’s something that certainly doesn’t work in his favour.
“You do know that you’re not in any position to tell me who I can and who I can’t go out with, don’t you?”
“Oh, there’s plenty I’d like to say on that point…” he replies, crossing his arms defiantly.
I turn off my computer, pick up my bag and jacket and stride off toward the exit, muttering under my breath, “And in that case, so would I, my dear.”
“Of course you would, you always have something to complain about,” he replies, following me like a shadow.
“Mark, what is your problem tonight?”
I am shocked by his behaviour – over the last five days he has kept a very low profile with me.
“Why, do I seem particularly different from usual?” he asks, feigning surprise. But there’s a hint of something else in his tone.
“You’re angry,” I note as the elevator reaches the ground floor. Walking quickly and without exchanging another word we slip into the subway. There is a festive mood in the air, and I cast a melancholy look at a group of young girls, all dressed up to the nines to welcome in the new year. Lucky them, they look really happy.
“Yes, I am angry,” he confirms, after a prolonged period of silence.
I look at him in amazement.
“Why?”
“Sometimes you ask really stupid questions, Maddison,” he snaps. He has decided that he’s going to see the year out by insulting me, apparently. But I have no intention of going for the bait.
“Insult me if you like, I really couldn’t care less.”
“Since when did you become so mature?”
“Since you started being so grumpy,” I answer.
“And would you like to help me feel better?” he asks sarcastically. It is obvious that nothing I can say will do any good. I’m sure this question is some kind of trap. I give him a glare.
“Knock it off, Mark,” I warn him.
We are still fighting when we reach the landing that separates our apartments.
“I’m taking you to the party tonight,” he informs me paternalistically.
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t need a nanny.”
“I wasn’t offering, I was simply informing you.”
He can be the most obnoxious man in the world when he wants to be – God obviously doesn’t want me to forget that.
“Don’t insist,” I say, with a threatening look.
“Well, I am insisting.”
He stands in front of me defiantly. It looks like the weather forecast for this evening is going to be stormy.
“Do you realize that you’re behaving completely irrationally?” I ask him, exasperated by his weird behaviour.
For a moment he seems to almost soften, but then comes back to his senses.
“Me, irrational?” he exclaims incredulously. His face is as bleak and empty as the sands of the Sahara.
“Extremely irrational, now that I think about it…”
“So don’t think, then!” he says, his voice rising. The silence that follows is only thanks to my incredible powers of self-control. I open the front door of my flat.
“You know what? Do what you like, Mark,” I snap at him, and slam the door. I am very pleased with myself for having left that damn landing with my head held high.
A few hours later, my cleaning – a socially responsible act that I only do when I’m on the verge of going crazy – is interrupted by a knock at the door.
Will it be Thomas or Mark? In all honesty I don’t know which would be worse.
“Who is it?” I ask in spite of myself.
No reply. Oh my God, what do I do now? Should I open up or not? I walk over to the peephole to get a look at whoever it is, but can’t see anything except a black coat – they’re too close to the door for me to be able to identify them. Damn it, I’ll have to open the door to solve the mystery.
Mark stands there before me: sullen, grumpy-looking, but still him. And deep down I knew it would be. I try not to dwell on the fact that, in all honesty, I actually wanted it to be him. Being too honest with yourself is over rated, as far as I’m concerned.
“What do you want?” I ask, forcing myself to sound annoyed. Lately I’ve been forced to struggle against absurd self-destructive impulses that make me just want to jump on him, but I will stop myself from giving in to them, even if it’s the last thing I do.
“Are you coming?” he asks, without even deigning to reply.
I’m wearing a beautiful black cocktail dress decorated with lace – classic and elegant. It should be pretty easy to deduce that I haven’t dressed like this just to dust the bookshelves…
“When, exactly, did I accept your invitation for this evening?” I ask, a mocking expression on my face.
He stares at me for a few seconds, as though attempting to hold back his answer.
“Never, since I didn’t invite you,” he responds with equal sarcasm.
Oh, of course – he ordered me to go with him, I mustn’t forget that.
Tired of the bickering he gestures to the door.
“Where’s your jacket?”
I point him to a thick winter coat resting on the couch. Mark takes it and hands it to me as though he was a real gentleman. He really ought to stop alternating moments of being horribly mean with moments of being kind. It is extremely confusing.
“But I’m going with Thomas,” I remind him, raising an eyebrow.
“Not any more – I called him just now to inform him that you were coming with me.”
“You know, don’t you, what I’m thinking right now?” I ask in a genuinely threatening voice.
He lowers his arms in surrender. “I certainly do. Come on,” he says, pushing me towards the door with one hand. But I push back and stay where I am, and the next thing I know, Mark is almost dragging me.
“Ouch!” I shout. What kind of bloody way of going on is this?
“Oh, come on, if you weren’t acting so immature, I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
Ah, so it’s my fault now, is it?
“I’m not even going to answer that. You are completely out of your mind today. You’re frightening me.”
He really is, I’m not just saying it for effect.
For a second he looks surprised, but then I see a tense smile appear on his lips. To be absolutely honest, I have known now for quite some time that there’s something wrong with Mark. Funny how it’s only in this precise moment that I actually realize that I know.
He sighs but says nothing.
“Mark, what’s the matter?” I ask, genuinely worried. I can’t help it, like it or not I do actually care about him.
“I wish I could say ‘nothing’, but the truth is that I do not even know myself,” he says, with a melodramatic sigh. It is not a ‘Mark’ thing to say – it’s more a ‘Maddison’ thing.
I give him a reassuring smile and walk out of my apartment. He follows me. Once on the street, we flag down a taxi: the city is bustling, lively and full of energy, a busy mixture of sounds, colours and smells. This evening there is something magical in the air.
As we sit in the back seat of the car, I watch Mark out of the corner of my eye – he seems rather distracted and is scanning the horizon out of the window. After about twenty minutes we arrive at our destination. The club the party is in is very fashionable, which is to say dark and smoky. When we leave the taxi it’s already past nine o’clock and the place is packed with people.
I immediately make out Chul Ju and Seung Hee dancing very close together. By the look of it, they’re more than just colleagues – there’s a certain feeling between them. Even the very serious Dong Woo seems to be enjoying himself dancing with a pretty girl from marketing.
Both Thomas and Andrew spy me right away and rush to my side in no time at all. Mark, who had fought so hard to accompany me here, has disappeared and is now sitting at the bar ordering a beer. I do not understand what goes on in his head – first he goes to all that trouble to get rid of Thomas and then he acts like he couldn’t care less about keeping me company? A feeling of profound disappointment takes hold of me, preventing me from acting as though I just don’t care.
At this point, almost out of spite, I start dancing with Thomas, who actually does look very cute tonight. I dance with him, then with Seung Hee and the rest of the team, and I even dance alone, but for some reason the other’s good mood doesn’t seem to infect me: this seems destined to be a thoroughly miserable evening. Exhausted from all this uncharacteristic moving about, I bump into Thomas again, who accompanies me to the bar and offers to buy me a drink.
“You look really beautiful tonight,” he says, looking admiringly at my dress as he hands me a glass of white wine.
Embarrassed, I smile and thank him, then take a sip of the wine. As I do, I notice that Mark is sitting a few metres away and has heard the whole conversation. I watch him roll his eyes to the sky in disgust.
The big boss has been drinking nonstop since we arrived. And I know it’s none of my business, but I still have to do something. Even though I don’t want to, I worry about him. It’s a feeling that I hate but I need to face. I apologize to Thomas, go over to Mark and give him a pat on the shoulder.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough for tonight?”
Not only does he not put down his glass, he doesn’t even raise his eyes to look at me.
“Did I ask you to stick your nose into my business?”
Grumpy to the core, and, I would say, quite drunk. A pretty dangerous combination. But I’m not going to let myself be put off so easily. I sit down on the stool next to him, take his glass out of his hands and drain it myself. Better me than him. The beer makes its bitter way down to my stomach. I’ve never liked the stuff, but I didn’t have much choice.
Mark is annoyed. He tries to catch the barman’s eye to order another drink but I gesture to the young man to ignore him and, fortunately, the barman is too scared to contradict me and walks away to avoid trouble.
“What do you want, you pain in the ass?” he asks me, finally turning in my direction with eyes full of anger.
“To stop you from making a fool of yourself,” I say calmly.
“What. Do. You. Care?” he asks, slowly enunciating the words of his question. A wayward strand of hair falls over his eyes, and I’m almost tempted to put it back in place.
“Nothing, to be honest. But I’m a nice person and I want to end this year with an act of kindness. And how do you want to end the year?”
“By getting drunk, isn’t it obvious?” he mutters resentfully. And I realize that his intention was very obvious, right from the start. He knows perfectly well what he is doing, and perhaps he actually does deserve to stay here on his own and drink himself half to death. If only I were a bit less of a caring person…
“No chance. Tonight there is no way I’m letting you make a fool of yourself. Maybe next New Year, when I’ll no longer feel responsible and you will be back in rainy London.”
Mentioning my city turns out not to be a wise move. The atmosphere, already not particularly friendly, cools even further.
“Are you in a hurry to get back, then?” he asks, sounding grim. And also hurt, now that I think about it.
“If you must know, yes, I can’t wait.”
I want to push his buttons. Maybe I can trigger a reaction in him.
I grab him by the arm and force him to turn towards me.
“Mark, do you want to tell me once and for all what is going on with you?”
I seem to be condemned to repeat this question endlessly. He stares at me for a long time, pulls free of my grasp and takes my hand, then plays for a while with my fingers, tracing little circles on my knuckles. You’d imagine that he was preparing to tell me something, but then he changes his mind. That hard expression of his comes back and he looks at the watch on his wrist.
“It’s almost midnight,” he says, disinterestedly.
It’s true, the time has flown. All around us, everyone is getting ready for the toast.
“Come, let’s go outside,” he suggests suddenly.
I let him drag me outside because I’m curious to find out what he wants, but once outside, neither of us knows where to start. It is very cold and I’m shivering. Mark notices, pulls me close to him and hugs me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and resting his chin on my shoulder. I’m enveloped in sudden heat – or perhaps it’s this moment of his weakness that’s warming me.
Around us there are the echoes of voices and cries, and I spend the last few seconds of the year like this, in a freezing cold street in Seoul, being embraced by a man who does nothing but confuse me.
Suddenly the sky lights up with the bright colours of millions of fireworks exploding one after the other in a wonderful show that goes on and on. I can barely hide my astonishment.
So there we stand, silent and motionless, still embracing but with our noses pointing up in the air. Finally, very slowly, Mark turns me towards him, mumbles something that could be “happy new year,” and kisses me.
A very intense and very long kiss.
I do not even try to escape the sensation of absolute happiness that comes over me when his arms enfold me. The feeling of familiarity with his lips should scare me – because at the end of the day, I don’t know them well – but instead it somehow reassures me more than I can say. I’m at the mercy of my feelings: I realize that this road is going to lead me to the edge of a precipice, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Our kiss is interrupted by someone trying to get our attention by coughing discreetly nearby. Luckily it’s Seung Hee: if she realized what was happening she’s pretending not to have. She hugs us and wishes us both a happy new year, and shortly afterwards, Chul Ju and Dong Woo appear, and eventually even Andrew and Thomas, who approaches me and gives me an emphatic kiss on the cheek.
“It’s cold, come inside, Maddison,” he says thoughtfully.
“I’m fine,” I reassure him. But the others insist so I get dragged back into the club. Mark, however, doesn’t follow us. I turn my head to see where is, but he seems to have been swallowed up by the darkness. There is no sign of him.
“Seung Hee,” I call, “can you do something for me?”
I whisper in her ear to go and look for Mark and to try to get him to come inside. Shortly afterwards she re-appears looking downcast. “It looks like he’s gone,” she informs me with a sad shrug.
The news affects me more than I’d like to admit. I stand there, undecided about what to do. But my indecision only lasts a second.
“If someone asks you where I went, you don’t know anything,” I instruct her with a wink.
“Who, me? I don’t know anything!”
I thank her, go to collect my coat and then run off home. There’s not much chance of finding an empty taxi at this time of night on New Year’s Eve, so I might as well walk towards the metro. That bloody Mark, what the hell is going through his mind? Walking off after a kiss like that…
At least the anger that I’m feeling warms me up a bit, but by the time I finally walk across the entrance hall of our building, I’m absolutely in pieces. Maybe I really should reconsider my decision not to take up sports.
I wait impatiently in the elevator and once I’ve reached my floor I go straight over and knock on the door of Mark’s apartment. No sign of life. I start ringing the bell. Still nothing. I decide to play my last, desperate card: I try calling him on his cell phone, and from inside the apartment I hear the melody that I have come to know.
“I know you’re in there! Open the door!”
Seemingly endless seconds pass before, eventually, he decides to open up. On his face is a pained expression and his eyes are red.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks in a not-very-friendly tone.
“Oh, you know, I live across the hall,” I say calmly. “I’ve run out of sugar, and I wanted to ask my friendly neighbour if he has a little I can borrow.”
“You’re not funny,” he mumbles, leaning against the door jamb. He doesn’t seem particularly willing to let me enter.
“Aren’t you going to invite me inside?” I ask, looking for a space to slip through. But he stops me with one arm.
“I don’t think so. I’ve really drunk too much and I can’t answer for my actions, Johnson, so it’d be better if you went.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” I reply, pushing my way firmly into the room. I’ve managed to get into his cave but now I do not know quite what to do. My brilliant plan hasn’t amounted to much.
Mark snorts and drops down resignedly onto the couch, closing his eyes in an evident attempt to ignore me.
Oh no, that’s not happening.
I sit on the coffee table in front of him and take his hand. The contact awakens him, making him open those spectacular eyes.
“Maddy…” is all he whispers. I don’t know what hearing my name pronounced in such a sweet way is supposed to mean. Something inside me gives way, and I feel the dam burst. I lean over towards him and kiss him without thinking. Kiss him with conviction. Me, who has never initiated a kiss, who has always been passive, who always let myself be kissed without ever taking the initiative. This is a whole new world for me.
For a moment, Mark is amazed by my passion, but his brief hesitation is swept away by my desire, and his lips welcome mine as though it was all they had been waiting for, while his tongue invades my mouth as though seeking its only possible salvation.
Without ever breaking contact I rise from the table and sit in his lap, my arms encircling his neck.
This evening we are both victims of an unusual frenzy. We undress and kiss with a fury that allows for no pauses, makes words unnecessary and which expresses itself only in groans. Within a few minutes we are both completely naked and are making love on his couch as though it were the only thing we know how to do.
I do not want to think about it, not tonight.
And in any case, it wouldn’t make any difference if I did.
*
The first thing I notice when I wake up is that I’m sleeping on something hard. Hmm, I think – I must have slept on the floor in Mark’s lounge. My host thoughtfully covered us up with a blanket to keep us from freezing to death, but there’s not much he can do about the back pain that I’ve got today. Out of the corner of my eye I watch him sleeping calmly by my side. Fortunately, he has a serene expression on his face.
My second thought, however, is truly terrifying and it hits me like a bolt from the blue: unprotected sex. In the time it takes to blink I’m up on my feet and running for the bathroom like an Olympic sprinter.
I look in the mirror, let the water run into the sink and start to reproach myself in a low voice. How on earth could I have forgotten about something like that? I am not a bloody kid any more, I am twenty-eight years old. High school girls get pregnant after one night of unprotected sex, not old spinsters like me! I quickly count the days until my period’s due. Fortunately, I should be in a non-fertile phase. Though that doesn’t make what happened any less serious. I’m a moron. We are both morons. Ok, last night he was not really himself and the blame is more mine than his. I was the one who came running over here like crazy in the middle of the night, I was the one who forced him to let me in and it was me that started something that I should never have started. Mistakes like that can end up costing you dearly. Maybe today nothing will happen, but that is no comfort to me at all.
As I’m wetting my face I hear a knock at the door. “You okay?” Mark asks me in a sleepy voice. I must have woken him up during my abrupt dash to the bathroom.
Seeing as he gets no reply, he knocks again. I grab a blue towel that I find hanging on the door and wrap it around me. At this very moment the only thing I would like to do is disappear, but unfortunately I neglected to bring my magic wand with me.
“Maddison, will you please open up and come out of there?”
He is starting to sound annoyed.
I gather my wits and the towel about me and open the door. He is only wearing his boxer shorts and he is staring at me with his piercing eyes. I try to smile at him.
“Hello Mark,” I greet him, struck by a sudden shyness, while some rather embarrassing images of the previous evening make me blush like a lobster.
“Are you ok?” he asks me, looking me over from head to foot.
The million dollar question.
“Yes, of course. How are you?”
“I heard a groan. What was it?” he asks, without even answering me.
I leave the bathroom and head for the couch, which I drop onto, wearily.
“Mark, we did it without using any protection last night,” I tell him, nervously stroking the towel and waiting for his reaction to the news.
He looks at me seriously. I have absolutely no idea what is going through his mind.
“Are you worried?” he asks, sitting next to me, but keeping some distance.
“Yes, no… I mean…” I stammer. I can’t even explain. “I shouldn’t be in a fertile period at the moment – or at least, I don’t think I should – but you never know.”
Mark reflects on this and rubs his chin, which is now covered with the vague shadow of a beard. I swear, this is the first and the last time I will do anything as stupid as this.
“Well let’s wait and see.”
He seems strangely calm. I nod, not knowing quite what to say.
“But Maddy, I do think we should talk about what is happening to us.” He moves nearer to me and seems undecided as to whether to take my hand or not. In the end he chooses not to do so.
“I’m listening,” I say. I have no intention of making this easy for him.
“This is the second time this has happened and in all honesty I can’t exclude the fact that it will happen again.”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise – that really was not what I was expecting him to say.
“What do you mean, Mark?”
“You realize yourself that we no longer have any control over all of this… This happens as soon as we lower our guard even for a moment.”
“Really? And I thought that you always had everything under control.” My sentence is full of resentment, but I don’t know why. Maybe it bothers me that he is talking about the sex between us as though it were some kind of mistake. Of course, it was a mistake, but he could have phrased it a bit more tactfully.
“If this is the only thing that’s bothering you, you can be sure that it will never happen again, Mark.” I say as I pick up my clothes from the floor and I go, once again, to the bathroom to get dressed. Going out onto the landing rolled up in a big towel could be the definitive coup de grâce for my fragile ego.
On my return I notice that he has got dressed too. He is in the kitchen preparing coffee. He hands me a cup.
“You just don’t want to make things easier for me…” he complains, leaning on the counter.
“This is not about making things easy or difficult, believe me. If you want me to admit that things are complicated between us, well, yes, I admit it – things are incredibly complicated between us, and they don’t make much sense. So what are we going to do about it?”
Silence, as he reflects upon possible solutions.
“What about if we try going out with each other?” he asks out of the blue.
“You know very well that would never work. We are not even remotely compatible. We live and we want to continue to live in two distant continents, not to mention the fact that we want very different things out of life.”
What I’ve said takes him by surprise.
“I never said that we should get together, I just said that we should find a way to release this tension that has built up between us. Hanging out together, maybe, without being tied to each other,” he explains.
“You mean that we should carry on going to bed together until the flame goes out?” I say, feeling rather offended. What an absurd idea. “That’s not something that I would normally do…”
“It would be a first for me, too,” he says. “But we are losing our minds here, and living in constant denial of this attraction between us is making us just a little bit tense. Let’s let it out, live with whatever happens and then say good-bye when the time comes, without regrets and without resentment,” he says, without relinquishing the idea.
I don’t really know what to say. “You mean just sex, without any ties, without any romantic claims on each other?” I ask doubtfully.
Mark comes towards me and takes the cup from my hand and says: “Yeah. Does that upset you?”
“No, no,” I stammer. God, what a fake I am.
He strokes my cheek. “How stupid of us to get dressed again…” he whispers. Then he takes my hand and leads me into the bedroom.