Drunken Love, Que Son [jenna bush book club TXT] 📗

don’t know what may happen if I see you. I have a strong desire to make up with you for what we have missed in the last 27 years. And what I want to do if I see you is to undress you and kiss you 27 times all over your body, one kiss for each year we were apart. And I want to make love to you. Passionate love. Crazy love. Mad love. But I don’t know how you may react to what I may do with you. You are committed to your husband and family and you don’t want to cheat, despite your feelings for me. But I am afraid I will force you into making love with me and you will have no strength to resist. I am afraid that I may lose control and so will you. I don’t want to force you into committing sin, to do things against your will, against your better judgment, and I don’t want the peace of your family destroyed. Therefore I am backing down from the intention to see you alone. So what am I to do? I will not see you at all. You must understand that I am not your friend. I am your lover. A lover makes love. And if a lover cannot make love with the person he loves, you know how painful it will be for him? Knowing you and the limitations you face, I now decide that we’d better not see each other. Perhaps never. Not in this lifetime. We are two lovers fate have meant to suffer separation for the rest of our life. And I am outraged.

 

Then the next night you called and said that you keeps crying whenever you think of me, that it hurts you to know that after all these years, I still am so much in love with you, and that it’s painful for you to know you are helpless and could do nothing to help ease the madness in my heart and mind. You are not a free woman, you are chained, you told me. Then you said we must try to see each other one more time before we both become so old and senile that we cannot recognize each other anymore. How, I asked. And you said, I don’t know, leave it to fate. My love, I am afraid that fate will always be cruel with us. We may never see one another again in this life time, except if all around us are dead and leave us alone. Then I said that if I saw you again, I would kiss you 27 times, one kiss for each year we were apart. And you said why only 27, why not 27x2? If we met, first I would let you cry because of joy, then I would take you and place you in bed and slowly take off your clothes and kiss you on your hairs, your face, your lips, your nose, your neck, your shoulders, your arms, your hands, your breasts, your belly, your thighs--and your pussy. I would kiss your pussy with love, respect, and reverence because I know how much it has suffered. With my kisses, I would wipe off from your pussy and from your heart all the hurt you have been carrying all these years. And you would cry for joy and happiness because at last, with my love and kisses, you are liberated from the nightmares that have been haunting you. Then I would make love to you, respectfully, and with all the passion my crazy love can muster. I would lick you from your head to your toes, and you would do the same to me, and we will carry one another to heaven! Do you want to stay in heaven with me forever? But all these are only my fantasies. Reality is when I asked you what would you do when you see me, and you only said you will definitely hug me and cry. I said I want more than that, I want us to lie in bed and wrap our arms around each other’s body and I will squeeze you and squeeze you and you said my embrace might suffocate and kill you and I said that is fine with me, I want you to die in my arms. And I would die too. Before we die, I will write a suicide letter to ask people to bury us in the same grave so we can be together for eternity. And I asked you if you would lie down in bed with me, you answered that you would know what to do when we are together, but right now you could not say yes or no."

 

Shakespeare leaves Adam's head. He felt that both characters are now so entangled with one another. The ball has been rolled down the slope and there is no stopping now, Shakespeare feels. He is convinced that the lovers will meet, no matter what. Because they cannot do otherwise. It would be gross injustice if they don’t. Twenty seven years is a long time, so long in a person’s lifetime, almost half a life.

 

The train slows down then stops. Shakespeare looks out and finds that he is at his home station. He quickly walks out of the car just as the doors close behind him. He walks up the steps and when he passes the token booth he looks at the clock and sees that it is now four thirty in the morning. Time is not waiting, he must finishes the story before daybreak. Shakespeare hurries home. The snow has stopped falling and the streets are now completely white. The wind has also died down. He walks for two blocks, and his are the only footsteps in the fresh snow. Arriving at his apartment he steps slowly down the snow-covered stairs and into his room in the basement. The room is still cold as when he left it yesterday evening. He goes straight to the refrigerator but finds only water and raw vegetables. The hunger has come back. But no way he could get any food now, all the stores are closed. Shakespeare boils water to make tea and after it is ready, he sits on a chair and imagines again:

 

The next day, after the drunken conversation with Eve, Adam went to Maryland with a friend. They were going to spend a day there with the family of the friend and would go back to New York the next day. All through the trip, he was silent and talked only when he was talked to. He listened to the music and looked at the highway and the scenery but his head was full of Eve. The hangover after all the wine and beer last night was making him sick, in addition to love. He felt that he could no longer leave “fate” alone to decide what they were going to do. He must see Eve. Because if he did not, the lovesickness would kill him, and he thought it would kill her too. That night Adam and his friend and others had a party, there was a lot of drinking and eating and talking. He drank a lot, but did not go out of his mind. He went to sleep fully aware. The next morning when he opened his eyes, he thought tonight on getting back to New York he would book a ticket to San Jose and would call to let Eve know. The day dragged and he could not wait to get back to New York and to his computer and the phone.

 

As soon as he was back in his apartment that evening, he went straight to the computer and got online and ordered a ticket to San Jose. Then he opened a bottle of wine and turned on the stereo and as Phuong Thanh was singing, he called Eve and told her that he had just booked a ticket to go see her and they would see each other soon.

 

"When are you going?" Eve asked.

 

"I will tell you when the day gets near. I am so happy."

 

"I can’t wait."

 

"Nobody must know."

 

"No. It will be our secret. How do we meet?"

 

"When I arrive and after checking into a motel I will call and you will come to me."

 

"Do you know what motel you are going to stay at, so I can scout the area before you come? I don’t want to waste any time."

 

"I think I will stay at the Vagabond Inn on First street. I stayed there before when I was going through the area a couple of years back."

 

"First street? Downtown? It would be only 15 minutes from my house."

 

"Oh."

 

"Bring a shirt of yours for me to wear." Eve said.

 

"Ok." Adam thought that was cute.

 

"How long are you going to stay?"

 

"One night and one day. We will stay in the room and will not go out. What are you going to do when you see me?"

 

"I will hug you and cry. What will you do?"

 

"I will hug you and kiss you."

 

"Then?"

 

"Then we will lie in bed together all day. Bring food and water."

 

"I will. What do you like to eat?"

 

"Sandwiches…"

 

"No, that would be unfair. I will cook and bring the food over. Do you like beef noodle soup?"

 

"Yes."

 

"So I will cook beef noodle soup. You want coffee?"

 

"I drink black coffee."

 

"I will bring black coffee."

 

"Just bring yourself."

 

"We will have a wonderful day together. I will ask for a day off from work to be with you." Eve said.

 

The conversation went on for two hours.

 

That night Adam went to bed happy. He had made the right decision. He thought there would be nothing to stop him from seeing Eve, not even her husband. If the husband tried to stop Eve from seeing him, or intrude in their reunion such as busting into the room that day, he thought he would kill the guy. Adam was not a violent person, but nevertheless, the homicidal thought crept into his head.

 

Eve and Adam talked on the phone in the days after as if there was no tomorrow. The tension and expectation built as they talked about the day. They talked into the nights, into the early mornings, and for four hours and hours; one time it was for seven hours non-stop. He had never talked like that on the phone before. The longest he had been on the phone with someone was forty five minutes. He used to hate the phone. But now, because of her… and she sounded as if she was dying of love whenever she was on the phone with him--but she laughed a lot too. They talked about the days they first fell in love, and memories of love. At one point during one of the conversations, he said that he was mad at her for letting her pride get the better of her love, and she said she was sorry she was stupid and that if she could do it all over again, she would not repeat the same mistakes. She told him that she had had a difficult life, suffering from verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her parents since she was very young, and now her boring marriage with a man who said he loved her but never cared for her.

 

As Adam began to lose sleep over the phone, the conversations got more and more passionate and more intimate. Eve said she would take off her clothes for him and would make love to him when they met.

 

"That is what I have been wanting to do for you all these years. I could not be your wife, but that is the least I can do for you, even if I could not come to you with my virginity intact. You understand." Eve said.

 

"What if your husband finds out?"

 

"I don’t care. He can divorce me if he wants."

 

"Make sure he does not find out. You must not destroy your family over this. You have