A Heart-Shaped Box

The waitress finished pouring their drinks and, after catching his eye, retreated with a conspiratorial smile. He imagined that they must get a real sense for it – the illicit, the clandestine and all the other intricacies of human relations that are played out in the hallways and rooms and lobby of the hotel microcosm; innumerable affairs no doubt, of which this was just one.
Certainly, they’d been coming here together long enough now that first one waitress, then another, and another and even the doorman, always greeted them with a smile more familiar than practiced. They knew what their order would be and proffered it before being asked, he was always shown to the same table, the table which time and habit had deigned theirs. They’d sat there so often he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a ‘reserved’ sign in place. And they always asked, “Will madam be joining you tonight?” to which he would broadly smile a yes.
He touched her now, she having joined him several all-too-familiar rounds of drinks ago. She smiled and the lights from the celestial chandelier formed minor constellations in her eyes that tried to compete with that gleam of wickedness that’d always thrilled him. Their glasses clinked and they fidgeted in their seats, making subtle movements to inch closer so that they could feel skin on skin, savour the warmth of each other. It felt like those first teenage intimacies all over again, such was the delicious torture of an affair beyond a locked door and shuttered windows. Of course, neither of them was a stranger to the desires of the flesh or the ways in which they were played out, nor each other, each other’s realm of the senses, but here in this public arena they were forced and even a little delighted to have to hide their desire in plain sight.
They talked and laughed, both things came easy when they were together. They smoked a cigarette – a habit they had kicked but enjoyed now with each other; another thrill of their illicit behaviour. The waitress brought more drinks and another smile, this time he was sure she knew. He smiled back hoping to confirm it all for her. He didn’t know if he did but didn’t ponder it too long. His hand had been resting on his lover’s knee but now she slid it up under her skirt, along the slender grace of her thigh and he could feel the heat and the hum of her desire. They had come as close as they could but every sense, every cell, strained to get closer, nearer, until they were beyond touching; until they were one.
The bar huddled in the darkened corners of the lobby, away from the well-lit front desk. Deeper in, beyond conspiratorial clusters of armchairs and other seating, a band started up.
“Oh, I hate bands” she said over the rim of her glass; her eyes bright above it, above them a small furrow had formed which her eyebrows seemed to point at reproachfully. He just smiled and gave her thigh a gentle pinch before lifting his free hand to her forehead and smoothing out the crease with his thumb. He wasn’t making this easier on himself. Her eyes met his, still wicked but tender too. They stunned him every time; only lately it had started to hurt. The band began to play and they were both relieved to find it performing the kind of bland, forgettable jazz that they should have known to expect in hotel bars.
They returned to their conversation; their day, their lives; the intricacies and inconsequentials. Here and there the presence of her husband slipped in and each time he felt a wince of pain he hoped was never visible. There was no way of avoiding the fact that she was married but sometimes he’d find a way to forget it. It wasn’t about male pride, or maybe it was. He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t even about desire or the excitement of this state of affairs. It was about love. He’d never felt this way about anyone and while he knew he should’ve walked away before it even got to this, he also knew that he couldn’t. Love was the flame to his fluttering moth heart. He knew she felt it too, or knew at least that she felt something, felt enough, otherwise why would she be here? But he also knew he was competing with all the years of a shared life, trying to scale a wall built of time and memories, laughter and tears and furniture in which she had a shared stake. He knew he couldn’t scale the wall, only she could. All he could do was call to her from the other side and hope to entice her over, hope she could find the strength to climb. He knew that she couldn’t.
Over the course of their affair- how many months had it been? - They’d shared all the secrets of their lives in all the secret places they’d found to be. After all, what can be hidden in such circumstances, apart from all that needs to be hidden from the rest of the world? They’d occasioned a restaurant, a coffee shop and usually the hotel bar in which they now sat, but the rest of the time they had been safely locked away in his small apartment. They’d close the door and build a bubble world of making love and make believe. On his birthday they’d taken a room at this hotel but she’d been unable to spend the night, leaving him lost and alone; her perfume still smiled beguilingly at him, her eyes still looking into his every time he closed his own; a warm shadow of where they had lain still in the bed; an ache in his muscles and most of all in his heart. But all these things spoke only of her absence now and not of the place she had occupied a short time before. He’d been left to seek solace in the minibar and the disinterested assault on late night TV. He found only a frustrated longing.
Only once had he seen her home, while her husband was away. He thought of that time now: He remembered walking the rooms. It was a nice place, the kind of place he might one day like to live in. He’d admired the books and the records. It seemed her husband’s tastes were not too dissimilar to his own. He picked up a copy of a favourite book of his, noted the well-thumbed pages, the wrinkled spine, and imagined it was his own copy. It could have been. He’d slid a Nina Simone record out from a stack of many, turned it over in his hands and scanned the track listing that he already knew by heart. He’d ignored the smiling photos of that other couple, staring out from picture frames, empty, eternal smiles captured in frozen moments. There were no photos of him and her together. They had no public image, no one knew about them outside of each other. They were a world of two and all its empires would rise and fall with them, a secret history. Were they to die their shared story would be lost forever and the stories told of them would be lacking, wrong. Were they to leave each other’s lives now he’d never forget her but the picture of her face would not be held in place by a fading photograph only the insubstantiality of memory.
The band was still playing and she smiled at him again but a trace of apprehension drifted into those eyes; she knew he’d been thinking, knew he was about to speak, to say something difficult. She always knew.
“Run away with me,” he smiled with what he hoped was a glint in his eye instead of the desperate hope he was filled with. He’d said it before and yet knew he’d never been so serious.
Her smile slipped sympathetically as she said, “I wish!” punctuating the air with a laugh intended to disarm. “If only I had the strength,” but her voice trailed off along with her eyes, along with her smile. Her laugh was now only an echo. Each time they’d had this conversation he hung on her next words, waited to hear her give in gladly to a ‘yes!’ an ‘okay’, something. But it never came. He knew it wouldn’t. Her hand reached up to his face, caressed his cheek and plucked some unseen piece of lint away with a delicate, practiced intimacy. A shiver of ecstasy trickled down his neck. In return he guided a strand of hair from her face that didn’t need to be moved but was there for that purpose alone. He followed the movement of his hand over her ear, his fingers in her hair and round to the base of her skull. He traced his name along her neck in an unknown language. She leaned into his touch, eyes closed and serene. He could feel the ache take hold in his chest.
He’d once believed she’d be his and his alone, that somehow it would work out, but at times it felt as if he’d been telling himself that for too long. Truth and hope are worlds apart. He still believed that one day it could. A love like this couldn’t be denied and the longer they tried to the more it would weigh them down, drive them crazy. If only she could see it, if only she could see enough. If only she could truly stand on top of the wall and look down to the other side, to him
“I love you,” he said, looking up from their entwined hands, looking into her eyes and hoping to convey all that that meant from the depths of the endless night therein.
“I love you too,” she smiled through a ripple of discomfort at his heavy stone cast into the waters of the moment. The ripple emanated across an eternal, silent second until it was broken by her eyes upon her watch. As ever, time was running out. The problem with stolen moments, like stolen kisses, is you can never hold onto enough.
“Stay,” he said, a last ditch attempt to be proven wrong. She smiled again though it wasn’t strong enough to reach her eyes. He’d asked her so many times before, been denied and now there were no more words left.
“Just. Stay,” he said again, did his voice waiver? Did it sound like pleading? It should, it was.
“Baby, you know I would if I could,” he could almost feel her trying to check her watch again. He hated that watch, what it meant, he wanted to smash it into a thousand pieces and in doing so freeze time.
“You can!” The silence was like a wave about to break, a wave that could sweep them away, a wave that could drown them. He knew it wasn’t easy but he felt it shouldn’t be this hard. He heard only the echo of his own voice call back from that wall of years.
He’d asked her once, where will this all end?
“I don’t know,” she’d told him but he’d grown tired of ‘don’t knows’ and ‘maybes’. She held his hand tightly but he still felt her slipping away. He wanted to hold onto this forever until the time was finally right, until forever could belong to them and them alone. So, until then he knew there was only one thing he could do.
Reaching into his jacket pocket he produced a small, wooden box and placed it on the table before them. Her eyes fell upon it with wonder and surprise. She looked like the girl she must once have been and it pained him to see it. Another facet of her he couldn’t hold onto. Another side he’d never see.
“What is it?” She asked.
It was no bigger than a cigarette packet and made of a rich, dark wood, the scent of which could almost be tasted in the air. It was intricately carved with the impression of something that could’ve been floral but wasn’t. He felt her hands leave him and reach out to caress the box, their pale, slender ghosts haunting a memory on his skin.
“Can I open it?” she said and he only nodded. He didn’t have the words for this. She grasped the box and there was a second of almost imperceptible reluctance before it broke open revealing only emptiness within. Emptiness lined with a deep red silk. It could have been a jewellery box.
“It’s empty,” her eyes on his showing a disorientation close to disappointment.
“It won’t be,” he said. Was he really going to do this? He took a breath and pushed on before she could ask him more.
“I love you,” he spoke those words again and continued before she could speak, her breath wordlessly exhaled. “I know, I know you love me too and yet life is keeping us apart,” he faltered, felt those ice cold fingers in his throat that almost drew a tear to his eye. She saw the hurt he couldn’t hide. She loved him and so would say all that she could to chase the pain away.
“Baby, one day…” He knew she had nowhere to go from there, no map or directions. Besides, she was right.
“Yes, one day,” he looked down at their hands, reunited now. The box still lay open on the table. “That’s what the box is for”. She didn’t understand. He soldiered a smile, willed the water in his eyes not to overflow and looked at her with the love of which this was his sacrifice, for both of them. “Let me show you,” he said and reached into his jacket once more, this time removing his wallet. From amongst folded bills and credit cards he slipped three hairclips. They were hers; souvenirs left in his bed and found after she’d left the first night they’d slept together when he already felt the flower of love blooming. He placed them carefully in the box. Next he removed a receipt from the French restaurant he’d taken her to, where she’d worn that dress he loved but had seen only once. After that, a note she’d slipped into his pocket once as she’d left. He found it hours later and smiled the secret smile that belonged to her. He put the smile in the box too. She watched, wondering what to say or how to say it. He couldn’t stop now.
Resigned, he placed the waitress within, their usual table, then the whole PanGlobal hotel; he took her words and his, the touch on his skin, and placed everything inside the box. One by one she felt all these things enter. They weren’t gone, weren’t lost, but for now they were in the box. One by one all the pieces of their secret life were placed with care within. The box was bigger than it looked. Finally, both their faces now warm and wet, he placed their last kiss inside. There almost wasn’t enough room. That last kiss was bittersweet, filled with love and longing and hope. There almost isn’t enough room anywhere for a kiss like that. With that done, he closed the box and it gave a soft, resounding click. He tried to speak, stopped, breathed. He picked up the box from the table. It felt heavier in his hand.
“What happens now?” Her tears catching the light of that same chandelier became falling stars in a tumbling universe.
“We’ll always have this,” he said, regarding the box, “and one day, someday, we’ll open it together. But until then the box will keep it safe. It won’t fade with time or become distorted by our memories.” With that he slipped the box back into his jacket. He gave her one last look and clasped her hand in his before he stood up and walked away, while he still could, before he said too much. She watched him go, watched him walk beneath the chandelier, across the lobby and out into the night. There was nothing else for her to do. The loss and truth that had washed over her flowed back out to sea and she felt the memory of his hand in hers. She turned it over, opened her fingers like the petals of a lily and saw, in the palm of her hand, a small silver key.
“Someday,” she said to no one, “someday”. And smiled through her tears.