An Office Slave

When I awoke next, the sun had risen. Hardy was gone from my side. A small, soft three-year old little girl bundle lay in my arms – my daughter Amelia. Sleepily, I stared at her baby face with an almost painful joy flooding through my being, an emotion I get whenever she was near.

Sometimes, when Hardy would have to leave early in the morning for work, he would lift Amelia from her little bed and transfer her to my side like he did today. Usually I would feed upon the happiness that gave me, and savour the feeling that all was well in my life.

This morning, however, I remembered last night, its memories darkening my first waking moments. My heart hammered painfully in my breast as images of Richard Hunt burned hot in my closed eyelids. I clutched at the warm comfort Amelia's little self provided, carefully not squeezing her too much. I thought back to how everything started, two weeks ago, how I thought I could be so smart, so sophisticated, but ended up being so naive, so stupid as to start something I thought I could control.

It all began with Frankie Gillespie.

[Flashback to two weeks ago]

'Hardy, look.' I said, my pruning of the ivy crawling up our veranda wall forgotten for the moment. I looked down from the third floor of our brownstone onto Tiller Street, where a police car was parked facing south. It was a quiet Saturday morning with my husband Hardy and little daughter Amelia on the shaded balcony having our usual weekend breakfast together. But voices had begun to be heard, agitated and arguing, breaking the peace of our breakfast.

Hardy came up to stand beside me. I looked around at the other buildings lining Tiller Street. There were other people who had come out onto other balconies to see what drama was going to unfold .

We heard it before we saw it. A woman's screech, 'Don't you go with them, Frank! Frank! No, no! Don't take him please! Frank!' Then we saw them. It was Frankie Gillespie, I saw with a shock, whom the cops were leading out of his home, handcuffed, hair still wet presumably from his morning shower--Frankie, one of our neighbours, who owned a chain of bakeshops around Minneapolis and St Paul. Frankie, a sweet and quiet Italian man, who had sweet gingerbread biscuits for Amelia, and a fancy bag of dinner rolls for me at least once a week.

'Oh, Hardy. It's Frankie...' My voice trailed off.

'Shit,' Hardy swore quietly. 'They've found him out.'

I looked at him, startled. Hardy hardly every cursed. 'What do you mean?'

He swore again under his breath, and glanced over his shoulder at Amelia, whose attention towards the wooden puzzle in front of her had not waned.

'What is it, Hardy? What's he done?' I persisted, lowering my voice. I looked back down where Frankie's wife, Meliana, was now crying softly at the doorway of their home, her face buried on the shoulder of their daughter.

'Drugs.' Hardy said in a low voice, nearly biting out the word. 'He's been approaching bankruptcy. So he started distributing drugs, hiding packets of them in loaves of bread that went out to his dealers.'

I stared at him. 'But, but... How did you know this?'

Hardy looked at me, a sad smile on his face. 'He sold me a loaf of ciabatta with a packet of heroin by mistake once. I confronted him about it straight away, so I've known for a long time.'

I was stunned into silence. We watched the police car move away, and poor Meliana as she was led back in to her home quietly sobbing.

Hardy slipped an arm around my shoulder and turned me away from the balcony railing. Our breakfast had gone cold, and our Saturday morning ruined.

That night, in his arms in the aftermath of a slow, lazy lovemaking, I stroked his chest.

'I'm glad you're not like that, Hardy.' I said.

'Hmm?'

'You know, like Frankie.' I was pleasurably sliding into sleep.

'Hmm... You mean you wouldn't have married me if I was a drug lord or, a ... a pimp, maybe?' His voice, low and sexy, sent reverberations around his chest where my head lay. I laughed softly.

'But, of course not,' I said. 'You'd never do something like that ...' I expected him to deny it, maybe even laugh at me. But there was silence, a strange quiet in the darkness that pulled me out of my lethargy.

'Would you?' Silence. 'Hardy?'

'Of course not, Neen.' He said. But I heard it - the hesitancy, the 'but'. "But there are times when I think of, well, things.'

'Things?' I laughed. 'Well, they can't be as bad as what Frankie did.' Silence. 'Could they?'

He gently moved me off his chest and positioned me on my back, nudging my legs open. I giggled.

'Oh, Hardy. Again?' He kissed me deeply, then drew back to study my face in the moonlight.

'Tell me, Neen. Would you love me still if I told you everything that I am?'

I peered up at him in the moonlit darkness.

'Hardy, you're being weird. Stop it.'

'Am I?' He said softly. And he slid into me and rocked me. I wanted to continue the strange conversation but I fell into immediate sleep after another pleasant orgasm.

Two days later, my cousin Lara called me to announce the end of her 15-year-old marriage.

'But why?' I asked, shocked and dismayed. I had always looked up to Roy, her husband, or soon-to-be Ex. As Roy was one of Hardy's closest buddies, it was Roy and Lara who introduced Hardy to me.

'Oh, the usual.' Lara said flippantly, her voice edged with anger. 'I found out he had a mistress. He's been visiting her at a club – a gentleman's club, Neen. Can you believe it? He has a membership in a gentleman's club, and wait for it,... a club where they can pay to lease, repeat, lease a woman, for like maybe a month, or a year. Like a fucking car.'

'Who's taking the children?'

'I am, of course, and I'm taking him to the cleaners as well.' She started to cry over the phone. 'The nerve of the man, Neen. He said he did it because I didn't enjoy, and I quote, Neen, the marriage bed, unquote. Well fuck him, the little pervert.'

That night, after putting Amelia to bed, Hardy and I sat side by side against our pillows, our respective novels open on our laps. I read about a chapter and then gave up.

'Hardy,' I started tentatively.

'Hmm.'

'Would you love me still if I went bad?'

'Mmm.' His eyes remained glued on his page.

'Hardy.'

He sighed. He put his book down on his lap.

'What are we talking about, Neen? Is this about Lara and Roy?'

'No.' I said, uncertain how to go on. I thought about my words carefully.

'Neen.' He said, a warning in his voice.

'Hardy, last week you asked me if I would have married you if I knew about your nasty secrets –' He expelled a gust of a laugh.

'I should have known that wasn't the last of it.' He plucked my book from my hands and place it and his on top of the drawers beside his side of the bed. 'Now talk.'

'I've been thinking about what you said.'

'What did I say?'

'You asked me if I would still love you if you told me everything you are.'

He stiffened. 'So, NOW you want me to tell you?'

'I don't know, Hardy. Maybe I don't want to know, you know?'

He sighed. 'So I won't tell you.' He dragged a hand over his hair. 'Happy now?'

'Well, Hardy. What if I've done something bad? Would YOU want to know?'

An exasperated snort. 'Of course, I would! And I would still love you. Is this what this is about?'

'Hardy.' I took a deep breath. 'Do you have a secret life?'

'No! For God's sake. Neen!'

'Do you have a mistress? Like Roy?'

'No!' It was an expletive. 'I do not, Neen. No!'

'Well, do you want to?'

Silence. Oh my God.

'No.' He said, emphatic. 'No.' But it was too late. I had heard the change in his voice.

'You want to, don't you?'

'I..., I... No, I don't, Neen.' He got out of bed. 'This is ridiculous, Nina.' I followed him. He went into the kitchen and the fridge and poured himself a cold glass of water. Then one for me too. He sat down at the kitchen table. I sat down across from him.

He passed his hand down his face and looked at me. Then he took my cold hands in his.

'What's on your mind, Nina?' He asked wearily.

Somewhere in my mind, a warning voice whispered. Think, Nina, before you say things that cannot be undone. I gripped his hands as though I was afraid of falling. My mouth had suddenly gone dry. I licked my lips, and took a deep breath.

'Do you love me, Hardy?'

He simply gave me an irritated look, an eyebrow raised. 'Next question,' he said sarcastically.

'And I love you, okay?' I smiled at him, my lips not quite steady.

He rolled his eyes.

'But, Hardy, what if we loved each other only because everything is good and happy in our lives?' He opened his mouth to interrupt, to perhaps angrily deny what I was saying. I rushed on, tightening my grip on his fingers. 'What if we loved each other only because we weren't truthful to each other? Or to ourselves? What if the moment we'd each find out who the other really is, we'd run away? Like.. like Lara and Roy?'

He pulled his hands out of my grip and put them up, like he was warding off an evil presence. He stood up and looked down at me, annoyance written all over his body language. I had said my piece, a most damaging theory. And I wondered at my daring. Where would it lead? I wanted to close my eyes, but I opened them wide instead, forcing myself to watch him, my foolish heart pounding in my chest, silently urging him to understand what I wanted from him. The truth, and in spite of it, a stronger love between him and me. Oh, I was ever the idealist.

'So, you're saying your love isn't real then. Is that what you're saying?' He said, hurt in his voice.

'I... -'

'You've saying, if I tell you, if I expose you to all the dirt in me, you'd disappear from my life.' It was a statement. He wanted me to confirm it.

'No!' I burst out. 'That's exactly what I'm NOT saying!'

'Then what, Nina?' He only called me Nina when he was upset with me. And he had called me Nina since he had stood up from the bed. 'What do you want?'

'I want... I want... everything, Hardy.' I was rooted to my chair, my hands clutching the sides of the table, feeling the loss of the warmth of his hands. 'I want the good and the bad. I want to know all about you ... and still love you.' I could not stand to be away from him, so I stood up abruptly and went around the table to stand beside him. But I could not touch him; he had turned to stone, staring at the kitchen cupboards with eyes that hid his thoughts. It was the first time I sensed him so far away from me, as though he felt I was the enemy.

I forced my hand up to cup his cheek. My God, he flinched at my touch. I drew his face to look at me, and he allowed himself to be turned.

'I don't care what you've done, Hardy. I love you. But I want to know everything about you, and still love you. I don't want you to think I'm a shallow wife.' He put his hand on mine on his cheek.

'You're not a shallow wife, Neen. I never think that.'

'But how do you know?' I asked softly. 'Have you tested me, Hardy?'

'So you'll just take it all? All my rubbish, is that what you're saying?' He had a wry look on his face, like he was already judging himself. And me. I licked my lips nervously and his eyes took on a hard look, his gaze dropping to my mouth.

'Yes.' I swallowed hard. 'And, and... And mine too. My rubbish, I mean. I want you to know my, my dirt too.' His eyes flew up back to my eyes, and narrowed. I lowered my hand from his face, suddenly fearful, but I wanted this said.

'Like what?' He was so still, like someone waiting, with bated breath, the sting of a wound when touched with alcohol.

'There are many things I want to.. tell you -- about me.' My courage ran out then and I tensed. He grabbed my shoulders to stop me pulling away.

'Like what? For God's sake, Nina. What?'

'I – '

'No!' As quick as lightning, he had a finger on my lips. We stared at each other and I read a fear in his eyes. The same fear that I knew had to be in mine. I should have, at this moment, laughed and said, Forget it, Hardy. But that the fears were there told me to pursue this, that there were secrets to uncover, like Pandora's Box.

But Pandora's Box was not only about the bad things in life, but also the good. There were treasures in life and in love. And I wanted them all. I wanted to open our own box, and find that our love would stay strong and true to the end.

I did break the tension then with a brittle laugh. 'I only wanted to say I didn't know how to tell you.'

'Good.' He said, relieved. 'Because I don't know if I want to hear. Just yet, anyway.' He gathered me in his arms. 'You're brave, Neen. Braver than anyone else I know. But I don't know about me. I don't know.'

He held me close to him, his lips on my temple, until he said, 'Let's go to bed.'

But we didn't make love that night.