Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

Something skips in Megi; her sandwiches grow sweaty in her grip. She doesn’t know if she should go up to them; in the end, she forces herself, even manages to say something. Andrea reaches for a serviette; her nails are painted a cherry brown, a color Jonathan associates with old hands. Megi has short nails with a touch of natural varnish. She sees now that they lack expression .

They leave together and bid each other goodbye beside a window displaying underwear. The trainee says something about the Spaniard. “Jacinto” – the name rasps on her lips with its foreign sound; Megi’s nervousness explodes in a torrent of hysterical giggles. She muffles them; it’s ignoble to laugh like that and she stops her mouth. She’s made a fool of herself; the trainee looks meaningfully at Andrea .

But suddenly Megi sees that Andrea’s lips are quivering. Or maybe she’s imagining it; maybe Andrea wants to yawn or say something. The laughter dies in Megi. The trainee walks away and, a moment later, Andrea also says goodbye. And Megi struggles with herself. She’s itching to call after her, to look into her face .

Jonathan felt guilty that he was sparing with sex with Megi so as to have more to give to Andrea. So for several days he fumed, waiting for Simon to get himself off to England, while Megi, in the meantime, was making it increasingly clear that he wasn’t devoting enough time to her. Initially, she was nice to him, cuddled up, and even paid him compliments – which surprised him because he’d thought that that stage in their relationship had passed irrevocably – and, although he was still blinded by his desire for Andrea, Megi’s fawning behavior had an effect. This led to a frightening emotional complication – he felt guilty for being tempted to fuck his own wife; in his eyes this equalled a betrayal of his lover.

Yet Andrea kept calling off their meetings. She wrote about an overload of professional duties that required her attention; her emails became rarer and rarer. Jonathan justified this by saying she was busy, but one night he woke up, needled by the thought that he’d jumped to her every beck and call, regardless of professional deadlines.

Again he was in the grip of jealousy and suffered like an old man riddled with arthritis. Lack of sexual fulfilment added to his tension. How he missed the feeling of satisfaction in his body, the delicious pain in his groin that came from screwing Andrea. Didn’t she miss it, too? The image of his beloved woman in someone else’s arms extinguished his joy in life.

He recalled their last meetings, searched for a place, a situation in which he might have offended her, said or done something untoward. He blundered on – for her sake. Waiting for stupid messages, suffering so much pain, uncertainty, imagining a younger, more attractive, better dressed, more successful … oh!

One day, when he got back after dropping the children off at school, he found Megi at home.

“Don’t you feel well?” he asked when he saw her pottering around in her dressing-gown, making coffee.

“Do I look ill?” She smiled flirtatiously; her hair was slightly damp after her morning shower.

Jonathan put his bag on the floor and studied her.

“So what makes you stay at home?” he asked.

“I wanted to surprise you.” She nervously tightened the cord of her dressing-gown.

He walked up to her, put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the head. Megi sighed and returned to brewing coffee.

He sliced the bread, she laid out the butter. As they prepared breakfast, they exchanged comments and joked. Jonathan told her that Cecile had offered him the course next year with extended hours; Megi summed up Przemek’s strategic maneuvers in two fields – to get close to the politicians who looked as though they might win the next elections, and to get a girl.

“Both long-term strategies?” Jonathan bit into his sandwich.

Megi pulled a plate from the cupboard and handed it to him.

“His problem with women is that they instinctively sense what’s most important to him,” she replied, sitting down on the high stool. “Meaning power.”

“In my opinion, his problem with women is that he’s hideous.”

“And yet he does have girlfriends.” Megi’s dressing-gown slipped open a little; a long thigh showed beneath the towelling.

“A good subject for a nature program.”

“Some find him attractive,” she muttered.

“Get real. Would you like to have it off with him?”

She laughed; her leg slipped out completely from beneath the white towelling; Jonathan’s eyes rested on the smooth skin. He wondered whether she had any panties on.

“You don’t understand what makes some men attractive, that’s the whole problem.”

“It would be a problem if I did understand.”

“Don’t you fantasize about doing it with guys?” she asked.

Jonathan shook his head, staring at the band of skin above her thighs. He moved closer.

“And with two women?” she questioned.

“Mmm!”

“A propos, I met Andrea recently. We bumped into each other in Exki.”

The sandwich shot out of Jonathan’s hand. He bent over, apologising under his breath. “We,” in a sentence where his wife put herself in the same category as his lover, upset his balance, and not only mentally. But he was struck by something else in what she’d told him.

“When did you meet her?” He picked the bread up from the floor and threw it into the bin; his face pulsated.

“I can’t remember.” Megi shrugged. “Last week? Two weeks ago?”

“Two?”

“What’s the difference?”

He spun on his axis and swiftly began to clear the kitchen surface.

“Aren’t we eating any more?” Megi was surprised.

“I’ve got to go and write, the Pavlov Dogs are being dogmatic.”

He made toward the hall; Megi pattered behind him, her dressing-gown hanging off her slender shoulders.

“Are you going out? You just said you were going to write.”

“I’ll be back in a minute. The printer’s run out of ink, I’m going to get some more.” He pecked her on the cheek and ran downstairs.

Andrea didn’t want to let him in but he sat out in the hall and stayed there until she poked her head through the door. Seeing him hunched there, she told him they had to stop seeing each other.

“I know what happened,” he said, getting to his feet.

She stepped back and shook her head.

“I know, I really do know,” he whispered, slowly coming close to her.

Again she shook her head but he stretched his hand out to her and gently immersed his fingers in her hair.

“Andrea …”

He took her by the head, then by the hands. He cuddled her as they stepped over the threshold, crossed the living room; he laid her on the bed. She didn’t look at him, said nothing, her lips and fists clenched. He stroked them until they began to yield. He licked and kissed her fingers, one after another, carefully, tenderly. He held her in his arms, rocked her until she no longer curled in on herself.

Then he started to stroke the whole of her – from her smooth hair, down her shoulders, breasts, belly, hips, thighs, and knees. He slipped off her socks, caressed every toe, licked the spaces between them, kissed her toenails. When she groaned, he rolled up her skirt, lowered the rim of her panties and entered her, without undressing – only his cock and her pussy. Andrea arched and started to cry but he scooped her beneath him and came without a single thought, his face wet with happiness and fear.

Jonathan stood behind the glass and watched the group of children practising aikido. Little hands parried blows; this child and that tumbled under sudden swings. Tomaszek brandished his limbs enthusiastically; Antosia carefully copied the instructor’s moves. Her precision, his spontaneity, Jonathan’s and Megi’s genes merged.