:: Hightail ::

This morning dawned quick and quiet, and filled with foolish cliches. Everything was the same: the way my alarm burned through the fog of sleep, the way the water was always too cold on first spray, the way my ancient hair dryer spluttered to its searing start. And yet everything was different. My heart sang and tumbled in turns. My eyes were bright, almost calescent with light, even before my mascara had the time to do its job. My fingered worked nimbly, studiously, on my face, my hair, my body―and why not. I was meeting―him.

The traffic flowed to the rhythm of Sunday ease. I caught the blank expressions of other drivers on the road and felt a childish, unreasonable sense of smugness―I'm the happy one here. You, you and you. Off to―where? Church? A family gathering? To run some plebian errands? Ha! I'm happier than any of you. Because I'm going to meet―him.

The sky wore the guise of summer, yet I knew nothing could rival the blue in his eyes. I smoothed the wrinkle out of my skirt as I got off the cab. But nothing could soothe the throb and throe of my wretched heart, because I was meeting―him.

I pushed the revolving doors and stepped into the hotel, into my escape, and into his welcoming arms. I wasn't meeting him anymore. I'd met him, and this moment, this very instant―he was flesh and blood and familiar scent in my embrace, and the relieved, rowdy laughter of a hungry lover erupted with unbridled luxury.

'My favourite Robot,' he said, smiling, blue eyes bright.

'And how many do you have?' I teased, feeling the breathlessness of devious excitment claiming me whole.

He laughed and took my hand―our fingers laced together with seasoned symmetry. And then, with that wide-eyed, almost boyish, seriousness that I'd come to―love―: 'I am not the sort with a collection plan.' Into my ear, with intimate decisiveness: 'I only care for the top quality.'

Our shared laughter drowned out the crass cliché of the situation. My heart was his, as was my space, and he could do whatever he wanted with it.

***

I couldn't stop playing with his hands. I ran random fingers over the lines of his palm, skirting the surface of his nails, sliding tender touches along his wrists and tracing invisible patterns on his knuckles. You see, I had a sudden liberty to―him, and like the teenage rebel with a fuck-the-curfew attitude, I abused my liberty with unscrupulous victory.

His eyes caught the light of the room, and in their gentle paleness I see particles of my own reflection. The curve of my shoulder, the flare of my smile, the nick of pain buried in between all that energy between us.

All that energy, all that tension, all the clichés.

Now exercised, now dissipated, now unimportant.

I locked my fingers with his and turned my face to his for a kiss. How simple, this liberty. And how sordid. Guilt can be my sedative later―now let me return to the chafe of my unchaste indulgence. Now, let me, let him, let us, be.

***

Time is a malaise for forbidden loves and disgraced lovers. I know the night that followed this day―in fact, the days that will follow this day―will bear the travail of my trespass. If he'd said, 'I'm not worth it,' I would have torn myself out of his embrace along with my heart―whatever that's left of it―and ran. But he merely held me and kissed me and loved me, and when time did its Cinderella call, the compassionate sorrow flooded the blue in his eyes with practice, and then he very quietly said, 'I do not ask you the questions with which I do not want the answers.'

If he were a lesser man that would have been vicious.

If I were any more of a woman that would have been poison.

But because I'm a robot to his passion and pragmatic programming, I returned his smile and his sentiment: 'Then you have answered all my questions which I do not want.'