Overripe visit. SOIL III
On a Sunday, Mim fancied traveling again to Anton and Stefan’s city, to dare pay the latter a visit. This much Stefan last said, that whenever she pleased, Mim could drop by to pick the photos taken at the party held in the theater’s foyer.
To defy her arduous hopes, suspicion was growing in Mim’s subconscious that something terrible and ironic might have occurred inside her body just before her firm decision to leave Stefan. Well, this spooky hunch prompted her to visit him.
Overripe visit
Mim on the staircase climbing toward Stefan’s apartment is imploring each step to accommodate her feet, her mounting emotions covered in shame, shame for being, this time, for him. Once she faces the all-too-familiar front door, Mim breaths encouraging air in her lungs and presses the doorbell knob for one tick, prepared to wait. She prays she finds him at home, and God, it has got dark, and she hears the clank of the door catch. Stefan shows himself in the slim opening, mellow and warm, a forlorn ripe fruit, dark irises lucent under his embrowned brow.
The sight of her knocks Stefan off his stubby legs. “Wow, Mim!” His brow brightens, yet too late, heavy-eyed, overripe. A shadowy presence ticks in the house. Mim is too late.
They sit at one end of the oval table.
“How are you doing?” Rather tepid and clumsy. Stefan’s embarrassment masks a mix of frigidity and affection as he keeps his big watery eyes glued on her.
Mim sends equal equivocacy to his pupils as dark and woeful as the tabletop.
“I’ve run in to see you.”
Stefan regains his senses and claims he rejoices at seeing Mim, then excuses himself.
The shadow that perturbed earlier her intuition has been expanding within the apartment, and now pressurizes Mim’s temples. As the shadow closes in on her heart, Stefan reappears, followed by a young woman in plush house slippers. Mim recognizes the short-haired girl of a quick roving eye—aha, that one.
The shadow
One random night that woman sat, a solitaire jewel, in the white restaurant downtown. With a malicious grin on his lips, Stefan pointed to her. “See that girl over there? Never a night passes that she doesn’t prowl the restaurant. I gather on the lookout for male company.” Few minutes afterwards, he invited her to their table and Mim noticed the girl had a foot cast in plaster. “I adore this ambience, so what can I do?” she addressed Mim. Then, exposing her stiff bandaged leg in a gesture of blunt frankness, she uttered with proud consonants, “Despite this, I’m here all the same.”
The two greet each other now, curt and dull, then the girl vanishes, with Stefan hot on her heels. Mim contemplates her chin reflected by the murky sheen below, her lips, hollow nostrils, her eyes’ lugubrious sockets—ugh, she looks ugly. And what the heck is she doing here? Whereupon another question enters Mim’s mind. What blimey is that wench doing here, of earth’s wenches?
Her screams reach Mim from the bedroom. Bawling and squalling interspersed with hysterical sobbing rasp in her eardrums. Mim pictures the mad wench perched on the bed, hurling pillows at Stefan, with every throw emitting harrowing wails laden with hatred and anger. Stefan’s husky voice travels the lengthy corridor in low, timorous waves, as though trying to tame one lover and appease the other, to restore peace in the home.
Mim can no longer witness the pathetic domestic show, so rises and makes for the exit to end her visit. She pauses in the vestibule, hesitant, wishing to say goodbye.
Inhaling life
Stefan pops up at the hallway’s disturbed end, distressed, worried, teeming with goodwill. “Forgive me,” he says.
“I’m on my way, bye.”
“Sorry, Mim, I don’t have the photos. They are at my parents’ apartment. You came out well … I’m happy for your visit, believe me … Haven’t even had time to chat.”
Content without a reason, Mim waits for him to unlock the door, breaks out, scurries along each flight of stairs with feathery steps, and lets herself out into kingly September twilight, inhaling life. Oh, this beautiful life, fascinatingly complicated. Mim made her debut on life’s winding corridors, long, crisscrossing, infinite.
Sucking in strength from the rich autumnal air, she is swaggering to the train station. Oof, if only that nasty menace stopped biting at her subconscious, prompting her to pray. Mim entreats nature it was not true providence left Stefan’s mark in her womb and could bring her back to life liberated, back to herself. Once only has she made love with Stefan, one unique time and—curse strikes. Why, oh why was Mim fated to suffer in the wake of men?
. . .
From Soil, Chapter 21 of Traveling True: A Sensual Novel, published in 2017.
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