She was practically a baby when he had seen her last. A bright, sexy baby that was old enough to sit on his lap and kiss him. Now she was a sophisticated young woman. Self-assured and enticing with an inviting smile and a touch of irony that comes from experience. He hugged her and looked at her and then hugged her again and again. He could not let her go. They were the only people left in the pavilion. Even the barman and the waiters had fled in a panic.
“Goodness, what was that,” said Fay
“An earthquake, I presume,” answered Robbie
“I meant the panic. It was mad. Totally irrational behavior.”
“You must admit, an earthquake does make one feel sort of helpless and it only takes one person‟s panic to infect a crowd.”
“How strange we should meet in this way. We might not have met without the earthquake. There was quite a crush of people this afternoon. I was sitting with some friends.”
“Did they just leave you behind? Nice people!”
“Oh, they panicked and ran. In any case, I did not get up to follow them. I was quite calm. Sort of detached and I continued sipping my drink, observing the mass hysteria until a man knocked my arm and I spilled it accidentally on the ground. And then as the place emptied, I saw someone who was as detached as myself and was also observing the madness. You know, even if it were not you, I would have gone and talked to him. I am terribly attracted to cool, self-possessed people. But, wonder of wonders, it was you and I am so happy.”
“So am I, dear Fay. Let me get you another drink,” said Robbie. “And one for myself. Let us celebrate this startling reunion. I spy some bottles that were not smashed and some glasses as well. What will you have? Please, none of the fancy stuff, though. I don‟t know how to prepare them.”
“Oh, anything alcoholic will do. I was drinking a gin and tonic.” Robbie went to the bar and fixed two stiff gins and tonic with ice and even found some dusty sliced lemon which he rinsed and put in the drink. He pulled a napkin from a drawer and dusted a table and two chairs and they sat down close to one another, smiling, just as fate seemed to be smiling at them. Sometimes when events are so completely unexpected and involve people and emotions and future entanglements, we call chance, fate, giving it a more intimate and intentional character as if a higher power is manipulating our lives. Undoubtedly, chance sometimes does take some unexpected turns.
“How are John and Ellen?” asked Robbie.
“Oh, both of them are fine,” said Fay. “Your pal Johnny is working like a bee making lots of honey. He did not tell me you were back in Egypt. How many years is it 92
since we kissed that day in our flat? I was what, sixteen? You must have been twenty one. I was paralyzed with longing. I had never been so aroused before but when things started getting out of hand you stopped. Remember? I was very disappointed. We have not met since.”
“And you have been married for some years.”
“Yes.”
“Happily?”
She made a face of bewilderment and shrugged her shoulders. She was what could be described as petite. Certainly not as tall as Mona but decidedly prettier. A pretty, smiling face that told of a gay disposition and two twinkling, lively eyes. A mouth that was large and whose smile and laugh, strangely, gave a hint of vulgarity which seemed to be confirmed by her uninhibited and amusing frankness.
“Life and marriage are too complicated to allow us clear cut appraisals,” she said smiling at Robbie. “I suppose if you are not unhappy in your marriage that is already an achievement. A good reason to keep it going. Perfect marriages need people perfectly matched and this rarely happens. Most marriages are borderline cases where the married couple is not completely happy but is reluctant to break it up. A break-up does take courage and the upheaval, social and personal, is often too distressing so one drifts on and on in a sort of purgatory.”
“Is that where you are drifting?”
“Not quite. Cracks are becoming apparent but I have not allowed them to reach the state of purgatory. For me at least.”
“Even a bachelor such as I knows that incompatibilities intrude after the first couple of years.”
“That is almost a rule. Ours is a marriage of two totally different people and what holds it together is, believe it or not, a lingering residual of love, that magic word of a thousand hues. In our case, that of a dog and its master.”
“If I am not mistaken, he is the dog and you, the master.” She smiled.
“Yes, and contrary to the normal, the dog is docile and the master naughty. Well, let‟s say, somewhat unorthodox.”
“Dogs usually are good and faithful and love their masters.”
“Exactly.”
“To tell you the truth, I have heard some rumors… but I‟d better hold my tongue” Robbie said, smiling.
Fay was amused.
“Oh, do tell.”
“Well, it is whispered that the master, or rather the mistress of the dog, is a free spirit and not above tasting the forbidden fruit.”
“I cannot pretend with you, Robbie. The rumors are true. Of course there is always an explanation. Things rarely happen in a vacuum. My husband is a workaholic, always working late, always huddling with layers and accountants, always going off on business trips; never giving me a thought. Whenever I complained his answer always was, I am doing all this for you. No, damn it, I need a person next to me, not cash. It is probably as tough being married to an insensitive man who is loyal and madly in love with you as to an unfaithful one. It is he who finally pushed me to adultery though I was 93
hardly a little virgin. I started traveling to relieve my boredom and sliding in and out of love affairs. He found out, of course, eventually, about them and was wounded but he cannot give me up so he endures this state of affairs.”
“And is this life tolerable for you?” asked Robbie.
“For me, the marital situation is easier. I still have affection for him because he has always been good and generous with me though I hate to see him suffer and get depressed.”
“But you cannot stop.”
“It‟s not that. Don‟t make me sound like a sex fiend. Since he set me free through the lifestyle he imposed in our marriage, now I simply cannot give up this freedom. I can no longer be confined. He knows that if he tries, I shall leave him. I have a little money of my own and shall survive. That‟s why I‟m here. I have some property in Egypt and two or three times a year I come to collect the income.”
“Another drink, Fay?”
“Okay, so you can tell me your news.”
Robbie went to the bar and fixed another two gin tonics. He was already feeling a little dizzy but happy and relaxed. It was so strange to have the club deserted and quiet.
To be sitting in the midst of overturned chairs and tables, smashed glasses and bottles and the smell of spilled alcohol mingling with that of broken wall plaster and dust. Τo have found Fay at such a moment. He took the drinks to the table and before sitting down caressed her hair. She looked up at him and smiled. They both wondered if the kissing that was interrupted by Robbie‟s scruples a decade ago would resume.
Robbie did not have much to tell Fay. Five lazy years in England with failed studies and nothing worthwhile to brag about. His reading of novels, his addiction to the theatre and midnight solitary walks in the deserted London streets which meant so much to him were items hardly worth mentioning.
“I just wasted my time there,” he said.
“I wish I knew it,” said Fay.
“Why?”
“I would have come to live with you.”
“A student life with barely enough money to keep you going? You would have been bored to death.”
“Not with you. I have had many affairs but I still remember those kisses. Can you believe that? It is the longing that was never fulfilled. Don‟t you think we would have been happy?”
Robbie was thinking it was time to go. He was starting to worry that the club gates would be shut. The gin tonics he fixed were heavy duty and the pleasant dizziness was turning too intense for comfort. He wondered how Fay felt. He sensed her attraction for him. It was coming back. Her admiration for her brother‟s handsome friend was surfacing from her subconscious, that storage of unfulfilled yearnings. He reached and held her hand.
“Yes,” he said. “No doubt about it.”
“Have you anybody now?” she asked.
“Not before the earthquake.”
She smiled.
“And after it?”
94
They were close and he bent towards her face. He could have reached her lips but he did not. Halfway, he stopped. She looked at him and understood it was a question. She bent and kissed him lightly on his lips.
“Yes,” he said smiling. “After it, I have.”
She got up and sat on his lap. She caressed his hair, kissed him again lightly on the lips and looked at him tenderly.
“Isn‟t that how it started? I sat on your lap and I kissed you.”
“You were so young I was surprised at your audacity. Later, I realized that you probably had more experience than I. But I was waiting for John and was afraid he would find me corrupting his sister. Or was it the other way round?”
“Yes, you little baby. It was.”
She kissed him and her tongue inched in his mouth. It was hard for the invasion and then soft and playful. It had the residual sweetness of the tonic and mingled with the scent of the gin. He liked the way she took the initiative and loved her expert tongue. He remembered that it was expert even back then. She was always precocious but he firmly believed that the time had come when the women were becoming the hunters. The initiators of sexual propositions. Public morality was moving forward by leaps and bounds. At the golf pavilion, was he not, after all, waiting for a woman to give him a sign, a nod, that she would welcome his approach? And the fact that she would almost certainly be married would mean they would enter directly into an illicit sexual relationship without pretense and the wasting of time. But just now he had Fay and her tongue was assaulting his psyche and sexuality. She stopped and looked at him tenderly.
“Sometimes fate gets it all wrong. We should have been together, us two,” she said.
“Why?” asked Robbie.
“Because you love me and perhaps I would have been a devoted wife. Don‟t you think we are suited for each other?”
“For a kiss, yes. For a love session, yes. For a longish love affair, perhaps. For married life though, who can tell? You ought to know better than me. You are already married.”
“Don‟t panic Robbie. It was just a thought not a marriage proposal.” Robbie laughed and they started kissing again. When they stopped they were both aroused and flushed.
“Would you really marry me, Fay?”
“Oh, who knows? Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. At the moment I am unhappily married and all I can offer is to finish what we started five years ago. See if I can get it out of my system. Take it or leave it.”
Take it or leave it? Robbie smiled at the offer. Fay was a craving with long roots.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “every morning, as I was waiting for my school bus you used to pass by in yours and would always wave to me?”
“Of course I remember. My girlfriends used to ask me who you were. They thought you were terribly handsome. I used to tell them you were my lover. Obviously they never believed me. I was far too young, you were far too old.”
“Always cheeky and outspoken our little Fay. There are such a host of memories.
I remember you by the seaside in Alexandria. You were always so gay and full of life.
Riding the huge waves with laughs and song and when I was near you I peeked at your 95
budding breasts. You had that glowing sensuality that sometimes one finds in pubescent girls. I wondered what it would be like to kiss you and hold you naked in my arms even then. Why are the sweetest things in life forbidden? Then, ten years ago, the kissing and, today, the earthquake.”
“Yes. We might have never met without it.”
They kissed again and when they stopped, Robbie pushed her gently off his lap.
“We‟d better be going, Fay. I hope the club gates are still manned and we‟ll be able to get out.” He took her arm to lead her out of the pavilion and smiled at her. “What was that superfluous question?” he asked.
“Take it or leave it? It was not a question, it was a statement.”
“Tough and decisive, as usual.”
“Make up your mind.”
“I‟ll take it, baby; you have a treasure I want to taste.”
“And I, a lovely lollipop,” she said with a smile, looking at him in the eyes.
POST-SEISMIC TREMORS
They made their way carefully past the debris, out of the pavilion and went to the car park. They held each other by the waist and swayed slightly as they walked. They were dizzy from the gin and perhaps a little from the kisses. A handful of club employees were moving about and the rest of the club seemed to have gone through an invasion of hooligans. Robbie‟s car was the only one in the car park. The gates were closed but a guard opened them to let them out. Out in the street they faced the panic once more.
People had flooded the streets emptying the apartment buildings all along the way. They were talking loudly to each other exchanging stories of surprise and terror, reluctant to go back inside lest a greater tremor follow on the heels of this one. The car traffic was sparse and Robbie drove carefully through the milling crowds. He looked at Fay and they smiled at each other.
There were many types of earthquakes. Some big, devastating and impersonal; others small, overwhelming and personal. They were much the same for the people they affected. They produced intense emotions. Robbie and Fay were heading for their own small and personal earthquake. The big one of an hour ago left them oddly unaffected.
The people‟s panic amused them. It made them feel superior. They were pleased that they did not feel the slightest fear. On the car radio they heard that many of the poorer districts with rickety, run down housing were flattened and that the army was already setting up tents in public gardens and empty lots and they felt sorry in a detached, intellectual sense.
They were not depressed because the hardship did not affect them directly. On the contrary, they were perhaps the only two people that had benefited from it. They found each other.
They crossed the bridge and headed for the town center. The Nile was calmly flowing on its eternal journey north, unperturbed. Everything seemed normal except for the people on the street who seemed to be waiting for tremor number two. Their patience would be exhausted soon and they would shortly be heading for their flats. Most of the 96
shops and big department stores had shut their doors but the luxury hotels were hives of activity, their lobbies packed with their worried, chattering guests.
Robbie parked the car and they passed through the little crowd of neighbors that were standing patiently on the sidewalk of their building, talking among themselves and anticipating the second installment that would never come. He felt a pair of eyes almost physically penetrating him. He turned and saw Mona. She was standing next to her husband holding little Marianne in her arms. She smiled at him and he smiled back and waved at the child before entering the building. He was surprised at the look of complicity in Mona‟s eyes when she saw Fay. Not the slightest sign of irritation or jealousy. The doorkeeper warned him not to use the elevator but Robbie told him not to worry and they took it to the third floor. He held Fay tenderly and kissed her on the way up and asked her if she was real or whether it was all a dream.
“Let‟s just say it‟s a dream come true. Real today, a memory tomorrow. You see, tomorrow I am flying back to my workaholic husband.” They entered the flat. The big, impersonal earthquake had paid it a visit. A few fissures on the walls. A broken vase and one or two fallen paintings. The small, personal one started with a kiss just as they shut the door behind them. They sat on the sofa. They wanted an exact reenactment of that magic moment cut short ten years ago. They hoped to revive it today. To resume where it had ended. She sat on his lap and kissed him. He caressed her breasts. Her tongue wiser, knowledgeable, experienced, talked to him and thrilled him as it did even then. Her passion and desire were as flawlessly conveyed by it as electricity through a copper wire. They murmured words of love, still unsure they meant them.
He started unbuttoning her dress and she his shirt. He slid it off her shoulders and reached to unclasp her bra and release her breasts. They were ten years older, had bloomed and sagged slightly with the growth in size and age and the fondling of lovers.
They were at that point of feminine mellowness that they seemed to implore to be touched and suckled. He helped Fay take off his shirt and flannel and held her tightly, her breasts upon his. He wanted to feel them on his chest, to feel they were his, their warmth, their fullness, the sensation of having breasts. He looked at them and touched her nipples lightly and teased them with the tip of his tongue until she cried that his gentleness was driving her mad. She wanted passion. She wanted to be bitten mangled and overwhelmed.
Wanted her plaything, her lollipop. Wanted to be stripped and impaled. She kissed him wildly, roughly, sucking his tongue out of his mouth. Her dress was bunched around her waist and he made her stand and take it off.
Her legs were thin and shapely. He held her waist and pulled her towards him. He loved the curvature of the female form, this sensation of femininity and he liked to savor the delicacy, fluidity and smoothness of the female body. It was built to receive with soft, enigmatic genitals. Enigmatic because Robbie could find no explanation to his fascination. However much he looked at them, caressed them and kissed them, there was no satiety, no slaking of the thirst to feast his eyes on them.
For propriety‟s sake, love‟s toil, its free-for-all skirmish of passion and lovemaking is left to the reader‟s imagination with the guideline that it was long, spirited and varied and ended with the personal orgasmic tremors and pounding hearts that no ordinary earthquake can induce. They awoke after a drugged nap, had a shower and returned to a more intimate, unhurried exploration and tasting of each other. Mona had 97
taught Robbie that the human body has a scope of sensuality limited only by the imagination and inhibitions of the participants. Its music ranged from the hasty, grunting and groaning of the male on an unsatisfied, bored female, to subtle, melodious symphonies played on the instruments of infinite nerve endings and pleasure centers that each partner discovers on the other. Now, under Fay‟s tutorship, Robbie set about composing new and original sonatas of voluptuousness. The familiarity between them, the long years of association and restraints to their physical union added a note of the forbidden, a note of the incestuous, which made their excitement more intense. They talked and laughed, fought and played, explored and experimented, entered and withdrew from each other‟s bodies and souls until they felt the ebb of desire and the flicker of love.
As their kisses turned spiritual rather than passionate, their forthcoming separation started burdening their thoughts.
“We have come to it faster than I thought,” said Fay.
“Our separation?” asked Robbie.
She smiled.
“Our love, silly. Instead of liberation I am shackled. I did not get you out of my system. I buried you deeper. How strange to feel passion again for a man. Oh, how complicated life is. One is never sure where one is heading.” Robbie was startled.
“Is it strange to be in love?”
“In all my many affairs I have never fallen for a lover. Not once. Imagine? The word lover was absolutely a misnomer for me. In those short-term, purely sexual relationships one does not see the better side of men. More often than not one has to deal with manipulative lies, selfishness and vulgarity. Anything for a fuck. One eventually becomes cynical. My most tender friends are women.”
“Then why persist?”
“Haven‟t I explained that? I am married to a man who loves me but in reality is more in love with his business and his money than he is with me. He is married to them. I am a detail in his life. He will never admit it but I have come to that conclusion. Had I found another worthwhile person, I would have left him in a jiffy. Unfortunately I have not.”
“Not even after the earthquake?”
Fay laughed and kissed him.
“After the earthquake I fulfilled a dream. It was wonderful. I even think I am in love but am I? I have to reason things over. I am confused. Is one lovely afternoon a basis for radical decisions? Perhaps it is. I don‟t know.”
“So you are definitely leaving?”
“Yes, but without my heart.”
“You will be taking mine.”
Fay laughed and kissed him again.
“A double heart transplant,” she said. “An exchange of smitten hearts. Until we meet again.”
“Meanwhile?”
“Meanwhile, you have the golf pavilion to keep you occupied. It will be soon repaired. Its function is essential. It keeps marriages from collapsing by providing 98
opportunities for the safety valve of adultery. So do your little share of philanthropy, Robbie. Make love to as many married women as you can.”
“And you?”
“I, too, shall be saving my marriage. I shall be sleeping around.”
“It sounds absurd.”
“And yet, it is for the best. It is a test we must go through. There are many things that have changed in my life and I must be sure.”
It was already midnight. They felt drained and dressed slowly and a little mournfully. They kissed and caressed one another tenderly. Robbie drove Fay to Heliopolis where she was staying with an old school friend. The streets were still crowded and the popular teahouses and coffee shops were packed. In Abbaseya they saw a few old wood-and-plaster houses that had collapsed and the occupants huddled next to them on the pavement holding pots and pans, blankets and dilapidated suitcases packed with clothing. They were patiently waiting for help. Patience was their only capital. They would probably be assigned a tent or would be lodged in an empty school building to be followed by hardship and discomfort for a few years. However, they must have been happy in their misery. Even misfortune, sometimes, has its compensations. The usual government practice was well-known. They would eventually be allocated a government flat in one of the new gulag-like satellite cities that were sprouting in the desert, on the fringes of Cairo. The main road artery they were on did not pass through the poorer districts and Robbie and Fay did not see any further destruction but many of the parked cars on the way were occupied with sleeping families.
Driving to Teresa, they tried to figure out the future. They made muddled and tentative suggestions for a future they could not envisage or truly believe in. They exchanged phone numbers. Fay would be back soon. She promised to keep in touch. She thought she was in love. Just as he thought. It was mad but what a joust that was! It brought back the unfulfilled yearnings of her tender age. Of a time past when she could still weep from too much longing. Perhaps, she mused, she had never stopped loving him.
She would stay with her husband a few weeks, finish a few odd jobs she had and would fly back to stay with Robbie for a while. To wear out the obsession. To luxuriate in the physical pleasure. He would be waiting chastely, he said.
“No,” she pleaded, “please, no commitments. Just let things happen. If we plan it, an obstacle might crop up and I might not come at all. Or else you might find another love. Did we plan the earthquake?”
They reached Teresa‟s house. Robbie knew Teresa. He met her once or twice, long ago, at Fay‟s family home and more recently on a number of business meetings. She owned and ran a foundry she inherited from her father. It was a highly unusual occupation for a woman and, certainly, not an easy task to manage a specialized enterprise dominated by rough and uneducated male craftsmen. However, she was a tough cookie herself and managed to survive and thrive in the business. She was a bright, friendly but plain looking girl with one leg shorter than the other which caused her to limp slightly and to use a walking stick. She was of normal height and apart from her deformity was well built if a little on the plump side. Although not much older than Fay she was already branded as an old maid because though she eventually became quite wealthy she hardly changed her solitary and retiring lifestyle and devotion to her business. Her only concession to wealth was a new super luxurious flat she lived in with 99
two unusually good looking maids who kept her house, cooked and were rumored to be her girlfriends.
When she opened the door of the flat and saw Fay, Teresa let out a scream and pulled her into her arms. She scolded her, called her naughty and heartless not to have called her after the earthquake to let her know she was safe and not crushed by a collapsed wall or something. Then she saw Robbie and smiled.
“So you have found him,” she said to Fay. “I did not tell you he was around. I wanted you all to myself but you did find him and you have lost your mind. Now I understand and, well, I suppose I must forgive you. How are you Robbie?” she asked him. “Please do come in.”
Robbie shook her hand and kissed her but declined to sit because it was far too late for a visit.
“I just came to deliver Fay,” he told Teresa. “She was in my care during the earthquake. Or rather, I was in hers. She is a fearless girl. I was in her debt, you see. She kissed me ten years ago and today I returned the kiss and the accumulated interest. I want to marry her but she seems to be a little confused about her feelings, not to mention a little married already.”
He meant it as a joke but both women blushed and did not laugh and Robbie was confused. After a few moments of small talk he made an uneasy departure kissing them both and leaving abruptly. Going to the door he turned to Fay and asked her to call him soon and on a sofa in the living room he saw two striking Arab women. He had not noticed them earlier. One was Fay‟s age, the other in her middle thirties. Both were dark-complexioned and exceedingly beautiful.
In the car he thought about them. If there was only one of them he might have believed the rumors. But two? How would that work out? But again he was thinking conventionally and things were not always what they seemed. Teresa seemed the epitome of ordinariness and there was not the slightest sign of the lesbian. She had short hair but it was always perfectly combed and her dresses, though never showy were tasteful and feminine. Robbie was too exhausted to ponder the question much longer. He thought of his lovely bed and sped the car as fast as he dared to reach it.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER
After a few days of loneliness, daydreaming and pining for Fay, Robbie resumed his sporting life. The day following the earthquake he received a severe reprimand from his father for his absolute unconcern about his family. He had not phoned to ask about them, to inquire whether their plant had sustained any damage and to reassure them that he was well. Robbie was silent. He did not excuse himself. He could not very well tell him that he was making love all afternoon and evening that day and that, just then, nothing much else mattered. His father, annoyed at his silence, remarked that it was sad that after five years in England and the considerable expense it involved, his only achievement was to perfect the English stiff upper lip. Now and then, inevitably, his failure would surface to dog him.
100
He resumed his tennis and squash, swimming and jogging and, of course, his golf and his cocktails at the golf pavilion. His golf was improving. He started his incursions on the links and started playing for nine holes with other beginners. He started enjoying the game, the walk and the conversation. He enjoyed playing with women. There were more laughs and sloppy playing and less rivalry. For someone who was not all that keen on the sport, it was more fun. His circle of acquaintances was also growin