His Wife

It had been three weeks since we last saw each other.

Matters of work kept us apart – he had been working on a play in London and probably one of the fellow actors in said play. I, on the other hand, had immersed myself in work as if there was no tomorrow.

He called me that morning, the moment he landed, suggesting dinner later that evening at our favorite restaurant. I acquiesced, when usually I would not, my resolve probably weakened by not having seen him for a while.

When I reached there, straight from the office, he was already seated waiting for me. He looked different, distinctively so. He was wearing his spectacles, which he rarely did. Instead of his immaculate matching three-piece suit, he was clad in jeans, a striped shirt and a black dinner jacket.

"What happened to the 'Cuban drug lord' get-up?" I ask, once I am seated. I am being rude on reflex, not used to seeing him looking like this, like a man I could possibly desire.

He rolled his eyes at me and shakes his head. "Was it really that bad?"

"Darling, you had a satin scarf tied around your neck half the time. But considering your sexual preferences it's perfectly understandable." I try to assuage him.

He smiles at me. He really has the one of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen on a man and smiling makes it worse, blinding me further.

He reaches across the table for my hand, holding it in his, "I've missed you." He says, looking at me.

And there it is, unmistakably, the pressure in my chest as my heart pounds and stops all at the same time. But, by habit, like a pro, I fight against it, the flood of want that threatens to break the dam I have built. I take a deep breathe, smile back at him, " Me too."

"Let's order, I'm starving." I say, using it as an excuse to pull my hand out of his grasp to reach for the menu.

We both order the steak and as he turns his gaze upon me once the waiter has left, I wonder if this dinner with him is such a good idea.

There was a time when we first met that I loved to be with him, be seen with him. I simply could not get enough of him. His intense murky brown eyes, his intelligence, his worldly wide expanse of knowledge, his intellectual vigor, his eloquence, the easy way he quoted Camus and Aescylus, and he interlaced his English with French depending on his mood.

His fascination with the Greek Classics was fascinatingly intense, so much so during the months that ensued after we met, I found myself devouring all sorts of texts and books on that very subject even though my specialty was the Italian Renaissance. My colleagues at the museum found this most puzzling till I began to invite him for our exhibition openings. Then they cast knowing glances in my direction - as if they could even begin to imagine the many facets and undercurrents that made up my relationship with him.

"So how was the play?" I ask him, absent-mindedly running my finger around the rim of my wine glass.

He shrugs, "I pulled out of it."

Now he has my full attention. " But you were really keen about this one…I thought you said the storyline had a lot of potential and you could connect to your character."

He shrugs, "It just wasn't all that it was cracked up to be I guess." He seems rather evasive.

"I think…" He pauses, something he does whenever he is trying to find the right words to phrase thoughts he has mulled over quiet seriously, "I'd rather just focus on other things for now…like work…and you."

He may as well have said he was moving to Timbuktu.

"Me?" I ask, unsure what exactly he meant.

He smiles, amused at my surprise and uncertainty. "Yes, you are my wife after all."

My wife.

Wife. His wife. Syed Asif's wife. Mrs. Asif.

So I had come to be known the past one year and five months. One year or so of wading treacherous waters I had never imagined having to tread.

It is one thing I realized during this time to rationally come to a decision and note its possible consequences but it is a whole other thing to actually be emotionally prepared for it.

When Asif asked to marry me, I thought why not, why bloody not. It would sure annoy my family a great deal – me marrying an Arab Muslim however moderate and devoid of religious orientation. As for him, his family could continue living happily in their delusion about their only son's sexual orientation.

The agreement was based on the mutual companionship we offered each other and a freedom to lead our own lives. I thought it was a perfect deal considering how little luck I seemed to possess in finding love and since I did not want to die alone….

Only my closest friends knew about the actual arrangement - as far as everyone else were concerned we were as much a married couple in public as in the bedroom.

But then he was Syed, tanned, stubbly, defined jaw, tall, lithe, handsome as hell Syed and it was hard to live with him, wake up in the morning, brush my teeth while watching him strip and get into the shower in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, or knock on his bedroom door and walk into to find him lying on his bed, all toned and tanned chest, slight paunch, clad in only his pajama bottoms.

Desire was a tremendously strange thing I realized. It could exist in so many different forms, that sometimes you did not even know someone was inciting it within you till it was too late.

It was not my fault really that I assumed my feelings for him were purely platonic and would remain so. I never felt the way I did when I fancied those other men who never liked me back – there were no sweaty palms, racing pulse or feeling as if the air was sucked out of the room they were in.

Though the first few times I met him and was around him I felt as if I was burning up from a fever. I would turn to him, put the back of my hand against my forehead and say out loud 'I think I'm having a fever.'

Except there was no fever and this seemed to occur whenever I was in his presence. Almost as if something about the chemistry of his body was affecting the chemistry of my own, raising my bodily temperature and so on.

And there was this inane urge to always have a part of my body in contact with his, be it my leg against his, or us sitting shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip or resting my hand casually on his leg with an unassuming air of lack of intent when truth be told, there was intent but it was so instinctive that I could barely claim it as my own, as part of an actual thought process. I simply assumed it was my own innate desire to be affectionate towards him, to display my fondness for him.

But after we got married, things changed. I became a lot more aware of the workings of my heart, my imagination and at the worst of times, my libido even. And so I begin to build a distance between us, avoiding him as much as I could, using both work and my friends as an excuse, reminding myself of all the reasons he repulsed me – his dress sense, his kinky sense of humor, the sort of men he liked, the willingness to build a marriage on a lie – though the last reason did not help much since I was as guilty of it as him.

But now….

"I spent the entire weekend holed up in the apartment reading John Jay Chapman, if you can believe it." He is saying to me, as he elegantly cuts his steak.

"Who's that?" I ask, not out of curiosity but pure habit, staring at my steak, feeling a wave of nausea that was most likely psychosomatic in origin. I really should not have ordered the steak is probably the only thought I can manage at the moment.

"What's wrong?" He asks, concern lining his face as he looks at me.

I look up at him and wish he could look at me the way some men did, men unfortunately I had no interest in but entertained anyway for the sole purpose of gaining some sort of experience in the romantic department.

"Sheila?"

"I can't do this." I mutter, folding my napkin neatly and placing it on the table beside my plate of uneaten steak.

"What?" He says, bewildered. Thinking he did not hear me, I repeat my statement, rising from my chair, taking my bag and walking away from him. I do not even look back to see his reaction to my statement, my sudden departure.

There is this photo of us. Him and me, at the beach, standing in the water, our backs facing the camera. We are not holding hands as you would expect couples to be doing so, all by themselves, out by the beach. We are just standing side by side, barely even grazing each other. For all you know we could be just friends, brother and sister, cousins. But there is never such an indication – maybe it is the way his head tilts in my direction, maybe it is the way I stand with my weight on one hip in his direction, the way we seem to be drawn towards each other by forces incomprehensible and unfathomable.

Or maybe it is just me, looking at a photo and overanalyzing it.

It is not the only photo of us. They are dozens but that one is my favorite. No one understands it, not even him. He does not see the subtle implications of our posturing towards each other. He merely saw two people standing in the sea looking out to the horizon, to the possibilities they hoped lay ahead in their future.

I am sitting in the living room, looking at that photo when I hear him come in. I hear the door shutting behind him, him turning the lock, the soft sound of him slipping off his shoes, then his socks, and the faint footfall of his bare feet on the carpet as he walks into the living room.

All those sounds as familiar to me as the curves of Boticelli's Venus from the many nights, lying in bed alone, waiting to hear him come home from whichever man's arms.

Somehow the fact the he did not spend the night with any one of his lovers' and always, for some unfathomable reason, came home made me feel that at least in some sense he was mine – his mornings, his waking up hours were mine.

He comes to sit on the couch beside me. He has removed his jacket and it lies draped on the armchair beside the couch.

He looks at the album in my hands and then at me. I meet his gaze and I cannot help myself, "Why do you always come home? Why do you never spend the night at any one of their places?" I find myself asking.

If he is surprised by my question he does not show it. He seems to know what I am talking about. He does not have to think and there is no hesitation before his response.

"It's you I want to wake up with, not any of them." He says simply.

From any other man, I would have taken it as a declaration of love but from him it is a simple fact, a confession of a craving for companionship that is not yet defined by desire, at least not on his end.

I sigh, a deep-rooted sense of resignation and defeat weaving through my bones. This man can never love me the way I wish him to, I realize.

But I do not want to begrudge him so I reach out and slip my hand into his. "Sorry for walking out on you at the restaurant like that. You did not deserve it." I tell him.

He is looking down at our entwined hands and does not respond at first. Then he looks up at me and there is something unrecognizable about the expression on his face. It takes me a moment to realize it is fury, unbridled fury.

If you knew Syed, you would know he is not a man who gets furious easily. Passionate, yes, prone to lecturing, yes, even telling people off curtly and frankly, yes but not the yelling, shouting, throwing things sort of anger that I was used to, having grown up in an Indian home. He was just not capable of the in-your-face anger but there were moments, where there were flashes of them, and this is one of them.

Surprisingly enough it is not directed at me.

"I shouldn't have done this to you, It's not right, I shouldn't have brought you into this mess with me, you're young, clever, pretty, you have your whole life to meet some guy who'll love you and take care of you and give you children…"

I want to cut him off, stop his bitter, frustrated rant evident with self-loathing and tell him no, it's not true, I do not want all of that, I'd probably never get any of that to begin with. I want to say to him that I agreed to this knowing full well what I was getting myself into, I am more than fine with all of this.

I want to tell him all that but I cannot because I am not fine, I am so far from fine I have no idea where I'm at or how I even got here.

Looking at him I now realize he is as lost as I am, possibly even more so. He is all odds and angles, from the way his dark hair clashes against his pale stubble tainted face, to his desire to keep all the people around him happy while keeping his own socially unacceptable desires a secret burnt beneath his skin.

It is then I know what I have to do. I have to leave him, for real, for good, not just for my own sake but for his too.

I do not tell him this of course. I keep the knowledge within me, where it warms me in places I no longer felt existed and for a while feel myself come alive again. I buy the airline tickets, give my boss a letter requesting five months unpaid leave, make lists on what to take and what to leave behind, meet my best friends to let them know about my plans.

After a week, while he is out visiting his family and I fake a migraine to stay behind, I pack my things; call a cab and head to the airport.

On the bed where we slept side by side together but never melded into one I had left a note for him.

It's time for you to be you.

No more hiding, no more lies, no more trying to make everyone proud and keeping what makes you who you are a secret.

Do this for me and maybe one day when we meet again we can at least be friends without expecting anything more or less from each other than pure friendship.

Love,

Me

PLEASE REVIEW AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK