Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

When he heard, Jonathan got up and excused himself for a moment. He texted Andrea from the toilet, with the noncommittal suggestion they meet. She wrote back after a few minutes saying she was very sorry but a girlfriend was visiting and staying overnight. Jonathan slammed down the toilet lid.

“Everything OK?” asked Megi from the stairs.

He hated her for her concern, for decently blabbering everything out.

“Oh, and there’s one more piece of news!” she said. “Andrea mentioned she and Simon are thinking about a baby.”

“Whose baby?” Jonathan didn’t understand.

“Theirs.” Megi yawned.

He ended up beneath her window at the fall of dusk. He told his wife that he was going for an impromptu beer with Stefan and wrote to his lover that unless she came down he’d stand there until Simon saw him.

For a good few minutes she didn’t text back, but finally she appeared in the window. The light from the street fell on her simple vest and panties, slid down the contours of her naked hips. Andrea disappeared into the depths of the apartment; after a while she emerged from the house and stood opposite him, dressed in a pale coat tied with a belt.

He took her by the hand and led her to the nearest church. She entered the dark vestibule first; he followed, unable to chase away the thought of whether she had anything else on beneath her coat apart from underwear. They sat down in a pew. For the first time, Andrea was not in a hurry; Jonathan, on the other hand, wriggled around. He gazed at her, took her hand, stroked the skin of her forearm as high as the sleeve of her coat allowed.

In the end, Andrea whispered, “Let’s go.”

They made love on the bed. No traces of tenderness remained; they tore each other apart, bit each other’s tongues. He sniffed her neck and licked away the damp, glued his hips to her buttocks, searched for what was familiar and for what was unknown.

When finally he rolled over to the other end of the bed, Andrea spread her arms and legs; they lay in silence like pale stars.

“What did you tell him?” he asked in the end, and immediately regretted it.

“That you’re one of many.”

“Screwing you?”

“Who’d like to.”

“And he still wants a child with you?”

“He does. Because he loves me.”

“The way you are?”

She got up and wrapped a sheet around herself, tugging a resistant corner out from beneath him.

“Andrea.” He curled up on his side. “I’m taking risks.”

She clicked a cigarette lighter. She didn’t smoke but clearly must have done at some stage since she kept lighters in the house.

“What do you want from me?”

He groaned as if she had set fire to him.

“You.”

“You want me?” she hissed. Her glistening hair swayed in the darkness.

He looked at her shoulders, at the flickering flame of the cigarette lighter.

“I’d like to have you both.”

FLUFFY PETALSfell from the trees to the pavement, their cool touch brushing the tips of shoes. Once again, Jonathan sneaked out and, wherever possible, rocked and caressed, whispered and kissed. The angry Andrea grew increasingly docile, consoled. He went to her, and it was as though they had a home. Flower pots stood in the windows, books on the shelves and, next to which, photographs. They had their favorite tastes and colors, films and rituals, declarations of love and trivial resentments. He felt that now Andrea had really fallen in love with him, the game was over. She took his face in her hands, looked him in the eyes, and said, “I love you.” She licked his cheeks, lips, chin, and everything swelled within him, from his erection to his heart. He was managing to be a lover, father, writer, and husband all at once. “People ought to be able to live like this,” he repeated, powerful. If he’d had a tail, he would be constantly wagging it. He’d choose a shaggy one, like a Setter’s.

Andrea spread herself beneath him and said he was the one with whom she wanted a child. She’d never thought about it before but now something had come over her. “Pour it in, come inside me,” she meowed, presenting her wet pussy. He went crazy with desire, but with what remained of his willpower, pulled on a rubber. She threw herself at him, like a mongrel at a bowl of food – bit him, sucked, licked, almost lost consciousness so that he was a little scared of her. Yet he couldn’t not take her in that state, couldn’t not make love to her. He wrestled with her until they fell off the bed, rubbed her clitoris, immersed his cock to its very roots. Until one time he couldn’t wait and came without a condom. He had never yet experienced such a strong orgasm.

“Good thing you protect yourself,” he tossed, rolling on to his back.

“Not any more,” she said lightheartedly. “But don’t worry, my period’s just due.”

He gave no more thought to it. He lay down to sleep next to Megi and dreamt of Andrea’s thighs; he cooked what his wife liked, fantasising about his lover’s rump. That’s the way he was now – and he couldn’t help it.

Yet, somehow, he ceased to be in a hurry to see Andrea. He cuddled the insecure and sad Megi, stroked her hair when they lay on the sofa together, gazed at her blonde bangs, and it wrung his heart: she felt so safe with him. He also missed the children. Although they didn’t notice his actual absence, they must have sensed a distance because they approached him a little warily, as if he smelled of something unfamiliar. In the end, they’d let themselves be cheered up and the three of them would sit down to a game of Battleship or go on bike rides.

Now Andrea didn’t take well to his “returning home.” She inundated him with messages, disclosed her feelings, and demanded replies. Half-amused, half-troubled, he wrote back, a little surprised by her passion and his own distance. He didn’t know whether he fully believed her but was so moved by her eagerness that he responded in the same vein.

Sometimes they argued, like the time when, furious at some triviality, she screamed, “I’m not any ‘love’ of yours!”

“Aren’t you?” He was astonished.

“At best I’m what you imagine love to be. You’re deaf to me, to my needs!”

A few hours later he was busying himself around Tomaszek, who was throwing up half the night. Meanwhile, Andrea sent passionate messages. Jonathan cleaned the floor and the soiled sheets, fretting that his lover was worried about not getting a reply.

“Damn it, why did I give him those tomatoes for supper?” Megi held Tomaszek in her arms. Everything stank, yet, out of the blue, a thought crossed Jonathan’s mind: Andrea had entered his life because he’d opened himself to the love of a woman. Where had Megi been at the time? Andrea had entered smoothly and deeply; if she were now to leave him, his blood would flow.

When he later analyzed this period (in no great detail, rather a general summation in order to understand what really had happened) he had the impression he was playing with pictures in a memory game. He is standing in front of Andrea’s apartment, demanding she see him. He leads her to the church in the opposite direction to the one they usually take; she lies beneath him and asks for a baby; he returns home and strokes his wife’s hair on the sofa; Andrea reproaches him saying he has less and less time for her; he reproaches her for having used him to provoke Simon’s jealousy and to finally make her husband declare that he wants a child by her.

Then his lover stops finding even the smallest gap in her daily schedule into which to squeeze their secret trysts; she starts flirting with other men in front of his eyes again. Jonathan is furious. Andrea writes, “I’m nothing but your toy!” He stops sending her messages.