Landing on my feet

The story opens with a daring leap from a first-floor window. I should be employing a ghost writer for this scene, but I do all my own prose, even the tricky opening lines.

Let’s freeze-frame, ‘cause you can do that in a story, it’s like film in many ways, only using readers’ brains instead of celluloid.

I am in mid-air, not in flight, well, in flight in one sense, fleeing not flying. My trousers are draped over my shoulders, and my naked-bar-boxers legs spread, not spreadeagled, but spread ready to land.

Unfreeze-frame. I plummet, screaming a “solongsucker” as I fall. I land on my feet, gather my balance and I’m off, legging it to the next scene.

The next scene, of course, is down the pub, feet firmly rooted on the beer-sticky floor, legs thrust back into my trousers, downing the first pint quickly in anticipation of downing the rest just as quickly. Life is a rush, a life lived quickly is a life lived.

This is the Falcon and Prey, the pub where I met her, Charlotte, Charlie, the one whose window I was leaping out of just two scenes ago. Six months ago, I saw her for the first time. Our eyes met across a crowded bar, well her eyes met mine, mine were busy looking her over, inspecting the goods, and believe me she had the goods. She was wearing a bright yellow dress that meant you would spot her in a crowd of hundreds, with legs and looks that would stand out in a crowd of thousands and a wedding ring on her finger that she discreetly removed minutes into talking to me.

Charlie’s was the usual story, I’ve heard it a thousand times, married young, married money, married prospects, bored off her tits. I soon fixed that. Did I bring meaning to her dull, meaningless life? Probably not, but I brought fun, I brought sex, I brought pleasure. I made her feel like a woman again.  

Six months I was seeing her, the longest relationship ever.  It was an open relationship, had to be, she had her husband and I had, well whoever else was around. But we saw each other all the time, she phoned me at work, at home, I received gifts through the post, messages, expressing her love, suggesting discreet meeting places, parks, woods, places we could meet and have illicit sex, and details of times she would be alone, while her husband was working late, or away on a trip, which was pretty much all of the time.

And so the scene shifts forward, back to the present.  Six months, it’s a bloody long time. I’ve become careless, cocky, treating her bed like my second home, like my first home even, as I spend more time there than anywhere else. I start leaving the odd shirt behind me, clues and bloody obvious signs that even a pig-ignorant stupid lawyer husband can spot.

So that last time he tricks his wife, tells her he’s going to be away for the night, a conference in Bath, but he’s there, in the house, waiting for me, waiting with a gun, a bloody twelve bore shot gun he’s borrowed from one of his shooting friends, waiting to catch me to catch me el flagrante, That’s his mistake of course, as it gives me time, gives me a way out. 

I open a window and leap. I fly through the air, like a bird of prey, only I’m not flying, I’m just going through a temporary geographical adjustment. I land on my feet, gather my balance and I’m off, legging it to the next scene.

The next scene.

My eyes spot the prey with a wink and a smile. A brunette at the other end of the bar.

“Date stood you up love?” I say, “What you drinking?”, I steer her away from her date, ignoring his words, he is history.

A new story has started.