24
Saturday turned into Sunday. It was 2 AM. She woke me up to take her home. I was
unconscious. The wine buzzed in my head and I remembered that the waiter in the
restaurant urged me to take a cab. I regretted driving my car. Now, I would just call the
yellow cab. By the way, he was a very good waiter, Greek in one of the Greek Town
restaurants. And as I expected, he did not ask Ela for her age, but let me know that he
knew, hoping for a bigger tip, which of course materialized two hours later. He clearly
envied me but also gratified himself in our manly solidarity. He was of my age,
handsome, and if it were not for his shepherd’s mustache, he would look like a man.
At home, I changed the bedding to pink because beige smelled of Marta. Only a dozen or
so hours passed and I saw again a woman who quickly pulled dress on her hips and
buttoned up the blouse, searching for them between flounces in the twilight. Completely two
different beings of the same sex, causing the same headache, but two separate tales. One
was yours for money, in which case lust is building up and she cannot say ‘no’ because
you pay for sex. The other only knows ‘no’, so that you explain to her that ‘no’ in this
place means ‘yes,’ and she either pretends or does not understand, which is killing the
lust. It’s good that the wine went to her head. In the end, she became like a cat walking
on you, so you caress it, and now she says, “Take me home”.
Her mother looked out of the window when we drove in. I did not like this
neighborhood. I understood that for her the most fun was to drive in an expensive car
and give herself to a man whom she likes in his expensive home, in a wonderful
bedroom, in a better neighborhood than the one she lives in. She was a sweet donut all
night and her girlishness stopped disturbing me at some point. We made love like an old
marriage, without fancy and imagination, but I knew that next time it is going to be
completely different. When she entered the house, I heard the raised voices of her and
her mother. It was apparently one of those mothers who does not appreciate that the
best thing that can happen to a young girl is a mature man who is going to place her in
good hands instead of wasting her life for the years ahead. Older men do not fertilize
blindly and treat them like treasure. Going home, I lit the rest of the cigar I kept in my
car from vacation, opened the window, and tried to imagine my meeting with the Branka.
I knew he would come back if only to talk, to see my loneliness and suffering. Her
departure seemed real. She still had the keys to the house, but even if it was a game, I
knew it would take a few days before she spoke, the earliest on Monday. It was not the
first time she spent a night with her aunt. I have been going through this training from
the very beginning. She used it from time to time, and I was glad that I could meet with
those friends she did not like. She did not like all women. Driving through sleepy
suburbs, I felt the urge to visit empty streets and explore. Illuminated bridges and
underground tunnels are the biggest attractions of the city buried in darkness. And
patrol cars, like traveling thru the country mini-carnivals for the poor. At four o’clock I
was at home and called Poland to speak with my mother, but nobody answered. I left a
message, went out with a bottle of wine on the terrace to watch the river which stood
motionless as if waiting until I suspend my gaze in such a way that she will move on
