Warning.
The second chapter of my novel, THE FIRE IN
BRADFORD may be rated 18+
But here goes anyway. THE FIRE IN BRADFORD, Chapter
Two:
Chapter Two
On my frequency in spades, or was it the Rolling Stones? Well I followed her to the station
With a suitcase in her hand
How long would I follow her over the next five years, with a suitcase in my own hand to be rebuffed, Rabelaised on.
Well I saw her at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she was gonna make her connection
In her glass there was a footloose man
This after a pretty stud popinjay tried to make her his novel. Maybe a popinjay like me. And would I later be a bleeding man in the bottom of her glass?
We danced. She seemed somehow stiff, not in tune with the natural grace of her perfect little body. She just seemed to want to sit near me, wanting to be very close. She rubbed a tentative thigh against me. I backed off a little. "What goes on between you and Lief?' I blurted. "You are a married woman after all."
She took a sip of her white wine. Damn. Her nice high forehead, flesh-coloured lipstick, blonde hair abob.
"Lief and I have an open marriage. He has male friends, he has female friends. I have female friends. I have male friends."
So here we were, dating and dancing, she and I. Male friend and female friend.
The night, as they say, rocked on, as it will with music by the Stones and the nice amber haze. Why is this beautiful, sexy mannequin so interested in me, mousy wallflower, dumb prof? And then she made that tentative move towards my genitals. Whaa...? I was lonely but not altogether stupid. "Lana, you are a married woman. Leif is just next door."
"Lief understands."
I leaned back and had a cigarette. Nice living room with its C-shaped chesterfield, wide enough to accommodate two small, slight people like ourselves. Top the left, a dining room with its millet and Cezanne prints, all grouped nicely, the wide picture window, the drapes not drawn, the two of us more than just silhouettes in the window. We kissed like brother and sister. I was growing to falling in love with her. And yet I could not make a move.
We would begin to have pub nights quite often, Lana soon affecting a wonderful floppy beret that graced her beautiful, symmetric face. "I am in a French Writers class," she would say and we'd trade bon mots and zippy Parisian phrases. Or, at least, my fractured French that I'd learned in Quebec, Haiti and Newfoundland. It's not hard to get a job at a community college. "What you call dat t'ing that bash his face against de tree?"
Very quickly, though, I felt a need for the wide open spaces.
Lana was sending up a wave of energy that welled right up against my lifeboat.
