A serious affair – part 2
The first part of this story can be read here
Morning came and went without fuss as usual. Liva woke up and to her surprise she did not find Arn next to her. Liva was a methodical person who liked to have her mornings to herself. She went to the bathroom, fished out her lemon sugar skin scrub and set to work on her face. She was deliriously happy humming a few bars from an old Sinatra song that she loved. She luxuriated in the warm shower for much longer than usual and when she was fully sated she went down to the kitchen wrapped in her warm terrycloth robe. Liva felt impossibly happy like a feline basking in the sun’s warmth. She poured herself a hot cup of Brivet’s coffee and sat down to enjoy the morning newspaper. Liva loved French coffee with her eggs and today was no different. She made herself a spicy fluffy duck egg omelet and finally washed it down with another cup of Brivet’s. She went back to the bedroom, chose the grey gabardine suit and paired it with black stilettos. It was 11.30 AM and she was ready to go back to the library.
As she stepped out, she saw Arn’s driving license on the table. She saw at once that it was damaged as it had been scratched across the face. It occurred to her that it was quite odd that he had left it at home. She laid it back down and dismissed it from her mind as she walked out of the house and down Livingston Street. Liva covered ground rapidly with her quick athletic walking style and in no time she was at the corner of Spencer Avenue waiting for the bus that would take her to the library. Though she knew how to drive, she had decided long ago that it was just not worth it. The clean air and a sense of palpable excitement gave her face a dusky glow and quite a few men stared at her. Some of them she did not mind and the other she just ignored. She hopped on the bus and looked out of the window enjoying the morning traffic. Liva found that something was poking her bottom as she sat and she realized it was in her back pocket. With difficulty she raised herself and pulled the object out. To her surprise it was the red star locket that Arn had given to her when they first got married. “How did it get in the suit?”, she wondered. Oddly enough it made her feel very guilty as she suddenly realized that she had not thought of Arn all morning.
She rarely thought of him nowadays. She accepted the fact and contemplated it without questioning it. She tried to picture him in her mind and to enormous surprise she found that she couldn’t. Well, she could definitely draw an outline of his face if someone asked her to but for the life of her she could not fill in the details. She knew he had bushy eyebrows and a dimpled chin. But beyond this everything else was hazy. Liva asked herself, “How could this happen when we have been living together for the last 8 years? It is as if we are strangers. We look at each other without seeing ourselves at all. We go through the motions of being a couple but if we looked deeply then we would see that there is only emptiness. His jokes used to amuse me earlier but nowadays I cannot even laugh with him. I hate his stories because they are always about the hinterlands and about how he grew up. What kind of a grown up will watch cartoons? Who will wear a Tyrolean on Sundays? His lovemaking was like an eager beaver stocking his woodpile. His idea of fashion was to wear his suede jacket with the collar turned up looking like a 1970s rock star. His speech was guttural and lacked refinement. That was probably inherited from his German grandfather but never the less it was intolerable. He irritates me by just sitting at the dining table and drumming the surface like a demented woodpecker. He wants to perpetually kiss me which makes me mad as my lips would hurt after he was done them. His sideburns are loathsome for they look like a squirrel’s bushy tail”.
It took an enormous effort from Liva to be normal around Arn. People did not realize how difficult it was to keep up an act for months on end. This was especially true when it extended into the confines of their bedroom as well. Sometimes she hated herself for the role she was enacting but she always consoled herself with the notion that it would be all over soon. She had decided that she could not take it anymore. Inexorably the feeling had built up from a small little mote to filling her entire body. She felt suffocated staying in the same house and living the same lie every single day of her life. Nowadays she felt like a whore when Arn touched her and just the thought sent frissions of disgust racing up her spine and made the hairs on her nape stand up. She suddenly realized that the bus had reached Stratton St and got off the bus. she discarded the cloak of negativity of a few minutes ago and went inside the library.
She took her usual table at the far end of the reference section and waited with mounting excitement. Anyone could see that Liva was waiting for a special someone and that it was an agonizing wait. There is something pleasurable about watching a beautiful young woman yearning. Liva’s eyes drooped under her lashes as if looking inwards into a private island of paradise that none knew existed. There were knowing smiles that crooked her lips as if she knew something that would make life itself irrelevant. The cheeks blushed as their mistress dwelt on thoughts that were oh so impertinent. Her legs crossed and uncrossed dancing to the rapid beat of her heart. There was an expectant hush as if the whole world is about to stop to witness love’s magical tryst. It wasn’t surprising then that everyone in the library jealously waited along with her. An old man near the door felt the years of his youth rolling back as he remembered the sweet smiling face of his long dead Missy. A young student couple rolled their eyes knowingly at each other and went off down the aisle to indulge their own affections for each other. Insufferable minutes later nothing had changed except that Liva seemed a little worked up.” It was not like him to be late”, she thought. In fact he had never been late for any of their little make-ups. That is what Jon used to call their stolen moments of happiness. Make-ups according to Jon were opportunities created for the occasion
by two people who were committed to each other.
Jon was really tall, dark and handsome. Liva and Jon had met in the library as volunteers in the annual sale and they had related to each other instantly. He loved wines and he was an expert on impressionistic arts. He liked the fine things in life like a Havana cigar or a silk shirt. He went to the opera for he loved classical music. Jon always spoke slowly with an East European accent that she loved intensely. It made him somehow like an old Bavarian count and Liva had always loved European royalty. Jon would love to discuss the weather, politics, poetry and music. Jon was someone that Liva had always wanted. He was intellectual and well read. Liva felt like she had finally met someone who she could spend hours having meaningful conversations. Jon was the antithesis of Arn and who better than Liva would know that.
Liva was now a fretful mess because it had been three hours since she had sat down in the library. Three long hours that she had spent thinking of every single excuse for Jon to miss on their make-up. She knew where he lived but had never even thought of going to his place. She had just assumed that it was always safer for them to meet outside. There was a vague disquiet building up in her and she could not ignore it any longer. She picked up her bag, ran out of the library and onto the street. The library felt dull and moldy as Liva had sucked the excitement out of the room with her departure. Liva saw that it was 3.30 PM on the library’s clock tower and she stood there biting her lip wondering about her next course of action. With a determined nod of her head, she hailed a taxi and asked him to take her to Huntington Drive. It was a long way from downtown for it took the good part of an hour before she rolled into the suburb. She asked the driver to leave his engine running and hurried over the #256. The lights were on so she knocked on the door. Where there was no reply, she squeezed the bell which resulted in a loud screeching buzz. But neither was there any reply nor did anyone come out of the house. An old woman across the street was watching her with distrust and Liva decided to beat a retreat.
She hurriedly walked back to the cab and asked him to take her back to the library. Jon was not there either inside or out on the streets. By now Liva was at her wits end and she took the bus back home. She saw that the lights were on which made her dread the prospect of talking to Arn. For a long time she hovered on the pavement before deciding to enter the house. She was relieved to note that there was no one inside. She deduced that Arn must have come in and gone out again and that in itself was quite astonishing. Arn was a devoted home bird who never ventured out at all except for work. She made herself a small bowl of clam soup devouring it hungrily for she realized that she had not eaten anything since breakfast. Her euphoric mood of the morning had evaporated a long time ago. She felt very sad that she had not been able to meet Jon. It was of course not the first time that it happened. She remembered once he had not met her for two whole days and how miserable she had been during that time. He had rushed off on one of his marketing trips without telling her. However once he came back he had made it up to her with flowers, dinners and of course visits to the Birds of Prey. Liva had not even known the place existed as it was tucked away in a forgotten corner of Ridgemont Avenue. That was always the icing on the cake for both of them when their passions boiled over, luring them to a place where the world did not exist and eventually they would come back down to earth regretting the passing of time. Each second was precious as it ticked away giving them reasons to tarry, delaying the inevitable parting at the end of the day.
Liva finally went to bed exhausted by the events of the day.
She kept tossing and turning murmuring to herself until sleep mercifully took her into its fold. It was way past 10 AM when she woke up with a start. She had no recollection of having slept and no rest from it either. Arn was not in bed and in fact there was no depression in the bed which suggested that Arn had not even slept beside her. Although it was very unusual Liva’s fevered brain did not allow her to comprehend the enormity of the situation. She went through her daily morning ritual and all she could think of during this time was to rush to the library and make-up. She did not find the morning newspaper and that did not ring any of her bells either. She walked to the front door, opened it and found the paper lying on the porch. She picked it up and turned back and something slipped out of the bundle. She stooped to pick it up and what she saw almost caused her to faint. It was a card key belonging to the Birds of Prey. She recollected coming home one day with the card key in her pocket and upon realizing she had it, she had thrown it in the kitchen garbage bin. She forced herself to walk calmly inside, closing the door and she sat heavily down on the dining table trying to pull herself together.
Liva was too clever not to realize what this meant. Arn had found out about her and Jon. She was sure of it. The other day she was unable to find the card key in the garbage even though she had flayed everything from the bag. Arn must have taken it and somehow put it all together. She had not realized that Arn was that logical for she had always felt that he was too simple minded. Her mind went into overdrive thinking about the sequence of events that had happened since last week. An icy cold lump had settled in the pit of her stomach. Arn was nowhere to be found and Jon did not meet her. Arn knew about the two of them. Jon was not at his house either. She immediately called Arn’s office and asked for Janice. When Janice came on the line, Liva asked her if she could speak with Arn. Janice told her that Arn had gone on vacation the entire week. Liva hung up the phone abruptly before Janice realized who she was.
Liva started to tremble with fear as her imagination exploded like a volcano. Arn was evil and malevolent. Arn had tracked Jon down and killed him. She did not know why but she was sure of it. Maybe Arn had left Jon’s body in his house and that is why Jon did not answer her bell. Any moment now Arn would be coming back for her and he would kill her too. Of that she had no doubt because he was too strong for her. She thought of calling the police but what would she tell them? That Arn had killed her lover? Liva was a resourceful girl and she had a methodical brain that would think things through. She would defeat him at his own game for she could put together a trap with the best of them. She sat up straight and vowed to herself that she would kill Arn as he had taken her life away from her. Arn would likely bring a knife because he would not want the neighbors to know anything. He would slip in quietly when she was sleeping because he knew how clever she was. She could outfox him any day given a fair chance and he knew it.
Liva sat down in the bedroom to wait for Arn. Arn the murderer! Arn the destroyer of lives. Arn the man she was going to kill.