The Rendezvous
She dipped mascara brush once again into a full tube, and carried the dark liquid onto her naturally long lashes. The mirror reflected a pale and tired face of a middle-aged woman magically transforming into a hottie. Finally, she thought. It was about time she looked like a woman. Her bright red curls were straightened into silk that flowed past her naked shoulders and perpetually dejected eyes hid sparks of tormenting excitement. Today - a new day. A day she will remember and cherish for years to come.
Eyes deftly mastered, she proceeded with her lips, dry yet still maintaining an inch of some private and unique sensuality left over from years of being unkissed. The thought of touching them with the means of other than a generic lip gloss aroused her, sending a thousand of shivers down her spine. She finished applying a dark red and closed her eyes in a luscious day dream.
His kiss, a gentle tug at her lips, and a whisper of all the things immediately following, just as he said he would in his email – where unable to hide the river of emotions overcoming their electronic relationship they both gave in and let their fingers do the magic. “When I see you,” he typed, staccato pounding on the keys of his iPad, “I will unleash the beast hidden inside you. You will never know what’s coming next. I will love you every minute and every hour like you never knew love before.” Pause following, the cursor, blinking at the end of every word, slowly and carefully spelled out: “….as I never loved anyone before.”
So he promised in the haze of mind dizzying emotion, commonly known as fool’s love. Fools – for during their two weeks of getting to know each other endless email chatter, graduated to persistent and intense internet sex, they have never met, not even by the photographic means, both desperately wanting and ready for the next step yet terrified of the disappointment of ruining the perfect state of affairs.
She was perfect. Spontaneous, excited, easily excitable, she was never too tired or not in the mood. Always available, this red-haired woman, as her description said and just as he liked them, ignited him within seconds, fostering the warmth of the feeling he missed the most – being loved. For her – he too, a hero out of a romance novel, ideal image of every woman’s deepest desire, a confluence of gay’s sensitivity and refined tastes with the straight man’s libido and the tool box. The toolbox she longed for and for the hundredth time carried herself to in her agile, darkest mind and exuberant imagination.
She finished the make-up and studied herself in the mirror. She was almost ready.
Off came the towel and on a simple yet elegant dress that she bought a few days ago just for the occasion. She looked at her beautiful shape-defining curves and the gentle creases of her décolleté and smiled. She was indeed very beautiful and had it not been for this date, she would have made a profound mistake of forgetting it. She picked up her randomly scattered clothes on the floor – her Cinderella rags as she called them, an old beat-up yellow stained t-shirt and dark sweat pants that she wore religiously around the house and triumphantly threw them into the trash. From this moment on, she declared to herself, I am writing my own story and in this story I am once again young and beautiful and have a prince that loves me.
It all flowed quite speedily from there. She caught a train into the city, got into a cab and despite the heavy accent of her driver was able to make heads and tails of her destination to a very quiet downtown hotel, where her prince was awaiting her in the privacy of a chartered room. She looked outside the window as the car took her further toward him and anxiously breathed. She pictured him tall and built, with grey piercing eyes, her truly very favorite and knew that nothing else mattered for she had felt in these past two weeks like she has known him her whole life. She wanted to be with him, feel his hands on her body, taste his lips on hers, just as he has promised in his wicked emails that kept her up at night. Those emails that made her hot and moist, so ready and anxious to finally materialize into the reality of a dark, clandestine night. The one of many, she hoped.
The car stopped at the light and the driver attempted to explain that she was here. She looked at him suddenly, with panic as though acknowledging him being the last one to see her off, baring witness to her last whereabouts of the innocence with which she came but will not return. But wicked joy and trepidation at happiness she was about to receive, just as he wrote he would bestow upon her, filled her heart to the top. She quickly paid the fare, generously tipped the driver, and briskly walked through the doors of a very small hotel.
The lobby was poorly lit further alarming her senses; she knew she was making a mistake, but could not stop herself. Maybe this was her adventure, for better or for worse. Whether or not good came out of it, perhaps the real reason she was there was not to get but to give. Maybe she wanted to be used. Perhaps this odd feeling of satisfying someone else was strong enough to even die at the hands of a serial killer…. Which, she thought with a sudden jolt of her entire body, of course, he was not. She did not care. She wanted to give herself so she would feel purposeful; to finally mean something to someone, to feel necessary and useful…. Unlike what she felt like every day.
Heart pounding louder than her nervous breathing, she stepped off the elevator and knocked the door of the room.
And somewhere in the distant universe, where centuries fly off in seconds like shooting stars across the dark galaxy meadows, time froze the second they saw each other. It was not at all the realization of the mistake both were making with the stranger. But a keen sensation of awakening from a dream of living an estranged life. In front of her, the tall, built and handsome grey-eyed, stood her husband. And at the door, staring into the vast oblivion of years thrown behind, was his wife.
