The Four Corners of my Past

by Alaitz Arruti

  On that moment I didn’t know why I let Edward Becher come into my life, or why, me, Elena Bas, decided to mingle in that story. I understood sometime after and the answer was simply. Illusion.

  We people need illusion to be happy, we need something that gives us ilusions to overturn our wishes and concerns. For some people, illusion is a sport, to others, a hobby. To me, for many years, it was my work until one day, that also became part of my routine. I had reached the limit of my professional career, making my relationships, my passions and most of my life to revolve around it. I had enjoyed learning from new challenges, the trips, the power that my new position gave me, Product Procurement Specialist. I ceased every opportunity that was given to me and I did not lose time. At twenty-eight years old I had more personal and professional baggage than many people double my age. But every novelty has its date of expiry and mine arrived without my noticing that winter.

  My job had turned to be just that, a job. It didn’t surprise me anymore, it didn’t attract me, it didn’t cause me the adrenaline of my first contracts and I searched for a new solution that kept me alive, Edward. To be with him was risky, exciting, wrong... it was just what I needed. It was perfect.

  When I entered the cafeteria, with ten, strategically studied and controlled, minutes late, the place where I had breakfast every morning, the same one in which several times a month I met with my job partners with the intention to unplug, or even to keep working, seemed bigger, darker. I doubted every step, as if nerves had wiped of my memory and had made me incapable of remembering where I was. I wanted to see him firstly, to go to him without doubting between the tables, with my stare lost between known faces, empty beer bottles, overflowing ashtrays. I thought it would have had to be me the one who would arrive first, so that he would be the one to have to come looking for me and I could watch him coming closer to me. It would have been more dignified than feeling lost in my own city, in my own skin.

  A smile far away distracted me and at the same time indicated the way, the one straight to the sofa in which Edward was seated, with his legs slightly crossed, one arm rested on the tallest part of that couch for two and his jacket opened. -Bastard- I thought, of all the tables scattered on the wooden floor of the place, he had chosen to wait for me on the only sofa, where the distances were small, impersonals and the obliged contact forced us to breath the same air.

  - You are not lost – I said when I arrived pretending a calmness that I didn’t have.

  - I had a good reason not to - he answered.

  Bastard – I thought again. He knew perfectly well in which he was moving, he was sure of himself, he controlled every gesture, every phrase, every sided look, the position of his eyebrows, the moist on his lips.

  I sat next to him, in that “casual” space he had designed for me, between the sofa and his skin. Away from the exit door, near his mouth.

  We talked for hours, as if life, until this moment, we had lived it to share it in this cafeteria in Barcelona, in front of my office, one winter Friday, one boring month of January that palpitated every time Edward caressed my hand with the absurd excuse of a toast <>, in a gesture so common that it seemed involuntary but it wasn’t, that could go unnoticed but not to me, that I was already lost. He was speaking but I wasn’t listening to his words, I was attentive to his gestures, to everything that his lips, his eyes, his fingers, his legs close to mine had to tell me. A silent wish, latent, quieted the tone of his voice, rough, subtle, ambitious. People went in and out of the cafeteria, they changed our landscape, night darkened the windows, street lights illuminated us. Empty beer bottles were accumulating and a never spoken pact, forbade us to look at the clocks and realize the time it was. To lose the sense of time was not an option, it was a place in which to live that winter afternoon which was almost evening and that it wasn’t as cold, at least from my sofa corner, each time farther away from the door and closer to his mouth.

  - By the way, your English is exquisite – he told me when the waitress was about to clean de coffee machine waiting, wishing, that her shift was about to end.

  - Thank you, my mother is English – I explained – I am bilingual since I was this tall – I told him marking a little distance between the floor and my hand.

  - That’s great! And where exactly is your mother from?

  - Norfolk, noreasth.

  - What a coincidence! Sarah, my girlfriend, is also from Norfolk.

  He said that with such ease that the phrase almost went unnoticed. If it weren’t for the fact that we were alone in a Barcelona cafeteria, Mr. Becher and Ms. Bass, drinking our fourth beer, at nine in the evening, without dinner, without high heels and without a tie, talking about everything but the Holborn project, with all of those “x” from his emails fluttering invisibly between us. If it weren’t for the way he looked at me, for the capacity he had of making me sweat every time he slightly bit his lip while he looked like he was paying attention to something I was telling him about, for the way he had to bring his hand closer and closer to mine. If it weren’t because I could feel his leg subtly brushing mine, his body next to mine, his smile weakening my immunity system. If it were not for all of that, - Sarah, my girlfriend, is also from Norfolk – would have been in the same drawer in which the phrases – my mother cooks a superb lasagna – or – my favorite dish is rice to the cubana – were kept. But all of that, that sharp image I perceived, did not fit the phrase - Sarah, my girlfriend, is also from Norfolk -. What are you playing at Mr. Becher?

  - A precious city – I answered -. I am a little hungry, do you mind if we look for somewhere to snack?

  - Sure – he finished the little beer he had left in the glass and got up.

  When we went out of the cafeteria, the night had covered the city. The cold, the sea breeze, where her soft cover, the yellow lights of the street lamps compensated the feeling of abandonment, of a Barcelona that was going indoors.

  On my feet, in front of the entrance stairs to the cafeteria, while I was buttoning the buttons of my gray coat, I thought we could go to a tapas bar that was only two blocks away. Spicy potatoes were always a good choice, the perfect accompaniment to our fifth beer. I indicated, with a head gesture, that our next stop was on our left. Edward smiled, he came forward a couple of steps and once again in front of me, in the silence of a city not much used to winter, he kissed me.

  He kissed me so much, so strong and so good, that I was sure I had kissed him my whole life. I leaned my body against any wall, the only witness to that crime. That way of kissing, that way of touching me, with desire, strongly, without shame, in a hurry, with ease, without saving the details, with the eagerness to go through it entirely, just once, and remember it forever. That way of kissing must have been forbidden. Guilty, guilty, guilty... yes, I am guilty... and who care about guilt? I kissed him, I kissed me, we kissed... we walked without separating our mouths, wandering in our lips, with the craving accumulated in each beer, in the “x” that still fluttered and when we arrived, at last, to the bar, it was closed.

  - But what time is it? – I said in a break Edward gave to my breathing.

  - Ten – he said catching his breath – no, excuse me, eleven... ten in England, I forgot to fix the time.

  We had been kissing for two hours. We never made it to the tapas bar, we didn’t taste the spicy potatoes, we didn’t drink our fifth beer. We got lost in the darkness of the city, that was our accomplice, in the humid cold of the month of January, in the foreign body, the mutual desire. Time had moved on while my life had stopped in Edward’s lips, in the reddish hairs street lamps didn’t shine over.

  - It’s so late! I better get back to the hotel, my flight leaves at six thirty in the morning. Do you want me to walk you home? – he proposed.

  - Don’t worry about it, I’ll grab a taxi – I said not knowing that at the end of the street, right in that moment, a black and yellow car with the light on, was turning the corner. We saw it at the same time, we stopp
ed it at the same time. Time, that was what we didn’t have anymore.

  - Sweet dreams Elena – he said before kissing me one last time.

  - Have a nice flight Edward – I said goodbye caressing his beard.

  From the taxi window, while the car was turning away from him, I saw him with his hands in his pockets, waiting for me to turn some corner, to disappear from the exact point where he, at that exact moment, was staring at and the night, the thousand kisses impregnated in our lips, our face, our neck... became the memory of a winter night in Barcelona.

  Our date ended abruptly. Unexpected, almost unexpectedly. Some kind of unheard alarm woke us up from the dream in which we lived and dropped us down to the reality of a surreal encounter. He to his house and I to mine. He was leaving to London and I was staying in Barcelona. Everything went back to its place all of asudden, everything except me. We could disguise the date, we could pretend the meet was a passional accident, but it would be impossible to erase our tracks. The road was made, the story had initiated, the game had begun. We could not escape what was about to happen, we couldn’t avoid the inevitable.

  I arrived home with the emotion of the experienced, the inability to assimilate the perfume that impregnated my shirt. I left the keys over the entrance counter, I left the bag next to it and looked in the mirror. The dried lips, the cheeks reddened by the brush of his beard, blushed by the memory. The disheveled hair designing the brand of fingers that a few minutes ago had brought me closer to an unknown mouth that kissed me as if that was the only function in their life, to kiss me. I liked Edward, yes, but mostly I was attracted to him, I desired him. It wasn’t a matter of the heart, it was my skin the one who depended on him, the vertigo of feeling surrendered to his caresses, to his fibrous body, the touch of his hard hand. Edward was the Anglo-Saxon version of a roman god, the flowering of my sexuality as I’d never known until that night, against a wall, in front of the man who left me literally without a breath. I replayed it over the entire weekend, every one of the unsaid comas in our conversations. The gestures, the emails, the beer, the goodbye, Norfolk, Sarah... I replayed that game that I had initiated myself without knowing it would take over me, of the twenty-four hours of my days, that his memory would make my smile nervously, that it would turn me on, that it would bristle the hair on my body. That my desire would turn almost into an obsession that always wore the same skin, the same perfume that it was the only oxygen that I breathed. My mobile phone became a silent companion that waited next to me for an email that never came, a message on my inbox filled with absurd work errands that little interested me. I wanted to see his name written, Mr. Becher, to know that he was thinking of me, that I wasn’t the only one going insane over a desire that was bigger than myself. – Write Edward, go over all the rules, just one word, an X that gives air to your presence-.

  I had to wait until Monday. For the British time delay, to indicate nine in the morning on his watch, ten in mine, to receive an email that simply said

  Dear Elena,

  I would like to speak to you in private, would you be so kind as to provide me your personal phone number?

  Edward. X.

  <> was the first text message I received on my mobile phone, the first of the hundred that followed in a few hours in which I would be incapable of focusing in something other than the little red light of a small screen. <>, <>, I want more>>, <>. Office hours text messages, from nine to five, from ten to six, Monday through Friday. Hours loaded with a written passion that didn’t skimp on details, on hurries, on imaginary encounters, of good and bad intentions. Living hours that died the moment the porter of our offices closed the door with lock and key and then his silence belonged to someone else, to Sarah.

  We spent two months devoted to the written passion of emails and text messages. While in our respective offices the sound of the computer keyboard turned into a universal soundtrack and the coffee machine turned into our most faithful partner. Edward and I abandoned ourselves to the impatience of the hours, days, months... with a future encounter that only came thanks to the progress of the project that united us in a newly started winter and with the arrival of spring, came also the arrival of the day in which our words could be translated into a muted language that only we would understand.

  I arrived at Paddington hotel at lunch time but I wasn’t hungry, I Knew that Edward would be waiting for me at Victoria’s train station at five thirty that same afternoon and the accumulated desire of the last months, was oppressing my stomach. I had been brave from afar, uninhibited in my messages, but the reality of seeing him again made me a coward and with the passing of the hours the shame I didn’t expect to have, grew.

  We had planned a reunion for the next day, Thursday, in his office, the one I had imagined so many times, the place from where Edward gave me his hours, the only place in the world in which I, was a hidden priority in a text message. He would have to mark the time of the chores, close the final budget and the objectives, a negotiation between two interested forces that with all probability, would spent the entire evening prior to the meeting together. We hadn’t planned it very clearly, our intention was to meet that same afternoon to break the ice, but it would be stupid on my part not to expect for our encounter to go further. That was what I wanted. I had forgotten for a second, that the afternoons belonged to Sarah and that London was her territory.

  I filled the hotel tub with water and submerged inside the soap bubbles, sinking my entire body into silence, into the privileged of feeling isolated for a few seconds even from my thoughts. The cold warned me a few minutes there that I had spent too much time in there, between the water and the porcelain and I got out to cover up with the robe and start the ritual of the first dates. Even if this wasn’t one.

  I thanked the truce of British weather that on that day it decided to give me a warm, dry afternoon, to wear the dress I had bought expressly for that meeting. It was a sea blue color dress, long sleeves and wide skirt, it had a narrow tie, almost a rope, under the chest and the neck decorated with a knit embroidery of the same color. It highlighted my narrow waist and dissimulated the white of my skin. I liked the image I saw in front of the mirror, even more so than the one in the store of the Born, one afternoon from the week before, when I had bought the plane tickets and I knew the meeting with Edward was just a countdown. I left my hair down, brown, dark from the months without beach and sun, wavy for the natural humidity of the island. I had my times controlled, chronometrated, and I went out of the hotel at five past ten o’clock, to arrive in Victoria at the agreed time, before or at the same time as him, but no later.

  The station was a going and coming of uniformated people that let itself be carried away by a dark, inpersonal fashion of tied up men and women in pencil skirts, sports sneakers and high heels on their hands. It smelled of coffee and butter. The heat from the subway got mixed with the noise from the trains, the coffee pots, the phone calls, the taxis, the busses... time was a race against the clock en Victoria Station, where nobody had time for anything, where everyone was in a hurry for everything (or for nothing).

  I thought that finding him was going to be an impossible mission, that the best thing would have been to avoid the city’s rush hour, when all the offices close and people return to their homes, always away from downtown. The light of the station was so intense that one could forget if it was daytime or nighttime. In there, between the bright advertising posters, the public address system, the electric stairs... I could even forget that I was in London. Until suddenly I saw him and I remembered that it was five thirty in the afternoon, that there was still daylight outside and that, effectively, I was in London.

  Edward was leaning against a wall with his back to me. With his jacket, jeans and loafers. I slowly approached, not knowing what to say to him , how to announce my arrival, how to act afterwards. The time without seeing him had increased my desire but Edward was still the strange
r I kissed one winter night in Barcelona. So much and just that.

  - Goodbye honey, I love you – I heard him say before he turned towards me, with his mobile still on his hand and the earplugs on.

  Sarah had just appeared, unknowingly, at the exact moment in which we had started to build our encounter designed months ago. She, from the ignorance of their shared house, at five thirty o’clock in the afternoon, at an our that belonged to her and that I was about to steal from her, placed herself like a wall between two bodies attracted to each other by a desire that didn’t understand any rules, languages or seas. At Victoria Station, they melted into a delayed hug, Mr. Becher and Ms. Bas, London and Barcelona, Atlantic and Mediterranean. That call, that “I love you” should have made me back up once again, it should have invited me to undo the way done, to go back to the calmness of my office hours, the voluntary solitude of my apartment, my blanket and my couch. I should have backed up, I was still on time, but I had accepted my place in that game of divided hours, shared and whether I liked it or not, it was where I wanted to be.