Henry

He had the appeal of an un-flushed toilet; there lay his appeal for her. He stank, by choice if you want to know and he let himself go after he came home from the war. Without the structure of the military, he became unkempt and he looked like he hasn’t bathed since the nineteen nineties.

She first saw him outside the expensive bookstore housed in a five star hotel chain far from her side of town. She was with a friend who came to see her cousin play the piano for the guests at the hotel bar.

He wore his military issue boots, faded khakis and a white shirt punctuated with ketchup stains. He was smoking a cigarette like it was going out of fashion and fast. Despite his unkempt appearance, you could tell he had money; at least he had family who had money. His clothes were branded and the rucksack on his shoulder bore the name of an expensive luggage company.

But it wasn’t his disguised wealth that excited her. She was attracted to him in the same way she was drawn to stray cats and hobos. She had this visceral urge to tame them, make them heel, and have them under her command.

She came back to that hotel where she saw him first a week after and found him nursing a cup of espresso at the cheap café across the street. She thought of the million ways she could contrive to meet him: ask for a light perhaps. Or offer to buy him coffee. Maybe give him a lift home. The possibilities were endless, but they all seemed too impossible.

“Nice shoes,” he smiled at her.

This was her chance. She hoped she wouldn’t blow it.

“Thanks. Yours aren’t so bad either,” her smile was wide and inviting.

He laughed at her obvious lie. “Where’d you get them?” She was genuinely curious.

“I was with the army for a while, during the war. Glad that’s over.” His lopsided smile was doing strange things to her heart.

“Can I join you, if you aren’t expecting anyone?” Her boldness surprised even her.

“Sure thing, but bear with me. I haven’t spoken to anyone in a long time.”

He may not have kept anyone company for a long time but you couldn’t tell that he was out of practice. He was a regular raconteur and he kept her entertained with his stories of life in the military both funny and sad. He spoke of his beliefs about God and the human race (is man good or evil?), and his philosophies about war (he was against it). He asked her a lot of questions about herself, but he talked little of his life before the army.
She enjoyed herself thoroughly and before she knew it she was making arrangements to meet him, same time, same place next Saturday. It would be her treat, she said. Let’s go Dutch, he insisted, saying he wants to see where the thing goes before anyone gets obligated to someone. It excited her.

Next Saturday, she dressed casually, careful to fit in with him. He bathed and shaved and had on a clean shirt. But he still wore his military boots.

“Hi! Thanks for showing up,” she greeted him.

“What? Do I seem the type who stands up his dates?” He laughed heartily.

Date. This is a date to him. She didn’t know what to think. Things were proceeding at a pace faster than she thought they would. It scared her.

“Of course not, but with men you never know,” she laughed despite herself.

She told him about her dream from the night before. She was in a corridor filled with blue container drums of all sizes and it felt like she was being pushed through it. Then she reached a brown door and behind it were two men whose faces were unfamiliar to her. The dream was strange she said, because she never had such a dream before.

“Maybe the blue drums represent the empty spaces in your life. And the long corridor filled with them says you perceive you need to fill a lot of spaces, the strangers may be the new things you try to fill your life with,” he analyzed for her. Then he broke into a laugh. “I don’t really interpret dreams. I was pulling your leg!”

She laughed with him and she invited him to join her at a nearby Thai restaurant for dinner. They had pomelo and shrimp salad and tom yum with noodles. They washed the whole thing down with milk tea. They split the bill and made a date to watch a new release at the movie house the following week. He is paying.

After five more dates, he brought up the possibility of being exclusive dating partners. She agreed. After six months of exclusive dating, she moved in with him.

On the month before was to live with him, he introduced her to his uncle, his only surviving family on his mother’s side. He is his mother’s younger brother and is a very wealthy writer. He wrote pulp romances that sold really well among the female market worldwide, but was panned by critics left and right. He felt no acrimony. He said his main goal is to entertain and if his style was revolting to the literary hoi polloi, he couldn’t care less.

He received her with as much affection as one receives a frisky pony, with a lot of curiosity as well as caution. Uncle Raitt quizzed her about her own means of making a living and was pleasantly surprised she had poetic persuasions. But her bread and butter is entertainment journalism, although she would love to be an author who writes at her leisure one day, she told him.

He gave them his blessing and promised to increase his nephew’s allowance to accommodate the change in his status.

She brought very little when she moved in with him: just clothes and books, her desktop and laptop computers, music compact discs and a selection of DVDs. Her single bed was put in the empty guest bedroom, which he had decorated so her friends can stay over if they decide to drink after dinner.

His suburban hideout was spacious for one, but adequate for two people. His home belied his scruffy appearance. It was neat and well kept. It sat in a new development outside the metropolis, in a province that is not quite rural, not quite urban. The community shone with the intelligent planning of the developers, it kept its old incarnation as a forested patch of land as much as it could. The buildings were integrated with the flora and fauna in the area. In the mornings she could hear the birds sing in the centenarian trees while she has her coffee in the clubhouse.

She did not mean to, but she made him over. Seeing her busy, well groomed and occupied with various artistic pursuits got him off his bum and had him resume his old occupation as a civil engineer. He applied for jobs with two boutique development firms and got accepted by the one with offices in the city. He had his unkempt hair shorn for a neater haircut. He shaved in the morning, but left his five o clock shadow in the afternoon. She loved rubbing against it.

He bought a minivan and proposed they get a pet. She did not wish for it, but she was pleasantly surprised. She will choose, he will name the pet. She chose a Maine Coon cat and he christened him Henry.

Life fell into an even rhythm. They argued over little things: wet towels on the bathroom floor, uncapped toothpaste tubes, kitty litter that needed to be taken out. They made up, more than made up for the arguments with long, loving letters and walks in the park, dinners at hole in the wall restaurants and Michelin star hotels.

Yet it felt like their connection did not go deeper than the amicable, sexually charged friendship they started with. Neither was inclined towards marriage. Neither cheated, but the commitment they shared was not one borne of a passion towards the other. Fidelity was part of each one’s values system; it was something they would have granted to whoever their partner was.

It hit him one day.

That he loved her because she was more friend than lover. It made him sad. Sad that he changed into something he loathed and that he spent years trying to fit into her world. He didn’t want to, but he did. He was going someplace he didn’t want to be with a person he wasn’t sure he should be with. He made a run for it.

He left her a letter and didn’t ask her to leave their home. He bought a one way ticket to England, where he hoped the cold will cure him of his addiction to domestication.

She found the letter the day after he left. She read it dry-eyed, after feeding Henry.

It read:

“Dearest Sarah,

I was never meant to be in the place you brought me, yet after years of being with you I found myself there, as another middle class statistic earning a keep in an office job. I joined the army because I didn’t want identical days; I wanted each to be different from the other. Routine suffocates me. But I found myself yearning for it because you were around.

I do not blame you. You are who you are and you did not ask this of me. I blame no one. I know things just happened, we took the next step and the next and the next without asking if it was what we wanted. At least that’s how I see it.

You tamed me, without meaning to. But that doesn’t mean I should belong to you.

I will always be grateful for what you did to me, get me back into the land of the living once again. But you are more a friend than a lover and I hope you understand that we both deserve more than what we have right now. Let’s not settle for anything less than love.

Yours always,
John”

She tore the letter to pieces and wrote a reply, sent to him through his uncle:

“John,

I hope you rot in hell.

Sarah.”