AMILEE'S ETERNITY

Forbidden love becomes distant love for ageing Amilee

Amilee loved her man with a passion that knew no bounds.

The trouble was they lived on different worlds. Not just in different towns, or counties or even countries, but on different worlds and there were obvious boundaries her love had to conquer in order to be gratified. And, of course, it never was. It was impossible, though she had to see him sometimes...

And it wasn’t easy.

Her man was Jo-jo and he lived on Paradise.

She didn’t know much about Paradise and the little she did know was subject to almost disruptive changes as it seemed to morph from one place to another even as she looked on. It was that kind of place. But that didn’t seem to trouble Jo-jo. Not even when his home shrivelled before her very eyes and shrunk from being a mansion to a petite cottage in no more than the twinkling of an eye. But he was in it and didn’t seem to notice any more than he heard her when she sighed Jo-jo in her best breathy romantic voice, needing his warmth rather than this wretched cold.

But that didn’t matter because he was there. Before her. Glorious.

And there was an advantage to the way she wasn’t anywhere near him when she was. Sometimes, and there was no predicting when though it was more often than not, she would be in his bedroom when he was waking up.

And that bedroom was almost familiar. She’d been here so often, watching and waiting, listening to his breathing, smiling at his snoring, sometimes blowing secret kisses his way.

Then she loved seeing him as he greeted a new day, opening his eyes and blinking until they adjusted to the light, and rolling over once or twice before pushing his black duvet to one side and climbing, naked, into the day. Stretching. All of him stretching. Every little bit….

It was fascinating, really. She shuddered and shook her mind free.

He had his morning routines, the walk to his bathroom, the splashing as he washed the night out of his eyes, the rustling as he dried himself, then his return to his bedroom where he sorted out the clothes he was to wear for a new day.

His underwear.

That fascinated her, the way he’d pick one pair of pants from a pile in his drawer and shake his head, replace it and pick out another. To all intents and purposes, she thought, they were exactly the same as each other, but he most certainly preferred one over the other. He rubbed his nose with it, sniffing, enjoying the fragrance of newly laundered material, even smiling as if struck by a hovering memory that in an instant darted off. And then he pulled them on, first his feet, then past his knees and then tightly round his waist.

“How I’d love to be there,” she whispered to him, but knew he couldn’t hear even those simple few words. After all, the two of them occupied different worlds and his glorious wonderland was numberless dimensions away from her.

Then she’d follow Jo-jo as he made his way into his kitchen and prepared a modest breakfast, always flakes of this or that cereal and sugar and milk. And the coffee. He’d fill the air with an aroma that he clearly loved and she couldn’t begin to smell.

“Too much sugar will make you a fat boy,” she chided him, but her barely audible words would never cross the chasm that separated them. She knew that much. It was her eternal torment and her grief. She would shout if she could grab hold of the strength in order to do it, but not even her most stentorian bellow would survive the endless vacuum that lies between worlds. She was sure of that.

So instead she’d follow him to his front room where he’d settle into an armchair with a newspaper and a cup of something hot and steaming.

“There’s never any good news,” she told him softly, “and if you’d put that paper down and look my way, let me look at the colour of your eyes and the soft yielding joy of your wonderful lips, and listen, don’t be deaf to me, I need to tell you something … I love you, I have loved you for ever and a day, I worship the soft beauty of your gentle face, I need to be with you...”

But she would never be with him. There was a Universe between them, maybe two universes … or, as a random kind of thought she asked is the plural of universe universi? She puzzled over that for a moment. Maybe there were countless universes … universi … between them. Maybe that was the secret of their distance.

Then, as if he’d never been, he was gone and she was left in the interregnum or whatever it was that lay between their being. Darkness would engulf her and she’d wait.

Wait for the next collision between dimensions.

It’s like a Venn diagram with two overlapping circles, she thought, and me trapped in the little bit that’s common to both… It didn’t really make sense, but that didn’t matter. She was trapped between two circles. Maybe that was an eternal truth. About life. About everything. And then her mind froze.

Because Jo-jo was waking up again. He was in his bed, the black duvet and blacker pillows, and the woman by his side…

Wait a minute!

Who’s that where I ought to be? Another woman, when he’s mine? And look at her! She’s so beautiful that she’s got to be ugly! And why is he smiling at her? Surely he’s shocked that she’s there? Surely he loathes the sight of her? He must know that he’s mine, he must, he must, he must!

And why is she looking at him like that? Why is that hand, such a perfect hand, resting on his chest, doing what I ought to be doing to the fluffy wonderland, what I know I should be doing, because there’s only one person who loves him, and that person is me!

“Morning, darling,” breathed the woman, and she dropped a forbidden kiss onto his brow.

“Mmmm,” he replied.

“It’s all wrong,” spluttered Amilee, “he’s mine! He must know that! All these years, just the two of us and never a word between us since that one...”

The tears were warm as they ran down her face, and she wanted to wipe them away but couldn’t because if she did it would be to admit that Jo-jo made her cry…

...like he had that one day, that distant far off one day, when he had turned over in his bed and looked straight at her and said, “It’s not right, Amilee, you shouldn’t be here, not like this, my sister... for Heaven’s sake go somewhere else, and don’t come back...”

And she had. Gone somewhere else, that is. That was when she had flown like a demonic wasp across a thousand universes … universi … and ended in this pit.

Where the sun never shines.

Where nights are all there are, and dreaming…

© Peter Rogerson 28.12.17