Irene kissed me gently on the lips to wake me up. It had been two weeks that I had been living with her and sleeping in her marital bed. It felt right and good. Irene was an amazing woman, gorgeous, sweet, and kind. She had taken me in and treated me like a king and I treated her as the queen she was. Yes, she was married to Oscar, but he was a vapor. Something that appeared every few weeks for a fleeting moment, then would disappear as quickly as he appeared. Oscar did not deserve Irene she was too good for him.
As I became fully awake, I pulled Irene into bed with me. I told her I had a serious question for her. She propped herself up on one arm and looked at me quizzically. I stammered for a minute but then spit it out. I asked Irene if she would ever divorce Oscar. Irene reacted in a way I did not expect. She became very upset and flustered. She blurted out, "no, never, he is my husband, I could never do that to him." My heart sank. In our brief time together, I had fallen hard for Irene. For me it was love. Did she not feel the same for me? She had been so kind and sweet to me. She had asked me to move in with her. We had made mad passionate love every day for weeks. The meals, the snuggles, the soft kisses, the wild passionate sex. Was I just imagining this?
Irene saw the hurt in my eyes and began to sputter. She said that she had very strong feelings for me. In fact, feelings stronger than she had ever had for any man including Oscar. Irene said that she wanted to spend the rest of her life in my arms. I responded quickly and told her to divorce Oscar and we can be together forever. Irene sat up, looked at me and began to cry. I propped myself up and wiped away her tears and asked her why she was crying. She said I would not understand. I told her to make me understand.
It took her forever to start speaking, but once she did, she did not stop. She said she had met Oscar in Barcelona. She was twenty-two and he was a young strapping military truck driver in the US Army. She was living at home with her family. Her father was an alcoholic and beat her and her siblings to within inches of their lives daily. Her mother was distant and was afraid to get involved as her father would beat her too. The day Irene graduated from a small, local college she ran away and ended up living on the streets. She had not thought it through and quickly found herself cold and hungry. Irene looked down and stared into the bed and said that she had done things she was not proud of in desperation. Men would seem kind at first and offer to help but it would only lead to one thing, whether she wanted it or not.
Oscar and his buddies had been out drinking one night and found her crying in an alley. He offered her some money and allowed her to sleep in the cab of his truck until the next morning, which broke every rule known to man and beast. She had expected him to want sex with her like all the other men, but he was different. He was kind and truly wanted to help her. She had never felt that kind of caring before. The next morning, his Sargent caught her sleeping in the truck and all hell broke loose. Oscar had begged him to look the other way and forget what he had seen. Irene had also pleaded with the Sargent not to report Oscar. The Sargent hemmed and hawed then removed Irene from the truck and took her to his apartment that he shared with his wife.
While there, they allowed Irene to clean up, eat and get presentable. The Sargent's wife took a liking to her and said she could stay for a couple of days until she found a safe place to live. Each day Oscar would stop by to check on her. Days turned into weeks and Irene became her host's live-in babysitter for their two-year-old. Irene had never been treated so nicely by anyone before. Months went by and Irene fell in love with Oscar. Although she had only known him about four months, they were married. Within days of getting married he was transferred back to the states. He packed her up and moved her to the town we were in now. At first, Irene saw it as a big adventure, but soon found it lonely. She was now in a country she knew nothing about with limited language skills, without any support structure whatsoever. Oscar immediately started driving for a local long-haul company too, which only compounded the feeling of isolation. That feeling had never left her during the last 15 years. She had always hoped Oscar would return and live with her full-time, but he was always too concerned about providing an income and all he knew was trucking. She had begged him to work close by, but he had always refused.