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The Intrigues of Mr. Johnson

By Daniel Tomasch c2000

Please e-mail me at QBall DANIEL TOMASCH if you like it, if you don't, etc...

It took me a very long time to figure out what she meant by that. Even after I
left, I thought about it. It didnt strike me as odd at first, but then I never
really paid attention to her at first. Its a good thing youre going to stay, shed
say, sort of nonchalantly, sometimes sort of like it was just stuck into her
sentences as if she didnt even know she was saying it.

Usually Id smile at her and pretend Id heard what she had said. I didnt really
pay attention to her at first.

And then we started having breakfast together, a few months in. At first,
together would extend only to the fact that we sat at the same table for
relatively the same  length of time; Id sit and read the Post and sort of sip and
grumble at the relatively hopeless coffee I would make, and she would sit at the
other side of the small round kitchen table and, having usually asked me for the
crossword, would sit there and blindly try to fill something of it in while
dripping eggs over easy onto the paper.

And then we started talking. Nothing important at first; shed ask about my
stories and look interested as I described what I had written that day. Id ask
her how  work was going, and Id smile and not at whatever she vaguely described.

And then, I started listening to her. That was when I heard how she would throw
it into a sentence, and then smile, and then go on.

And then, as if we had been sort of see-through to each other before, things
became very solid. And not long after I noticed she spoke at all, and not long
after I heard her say it with purpose. Not in the middle of her sentence, as if
she had suddenly found a penny in her pocket and, being wide eyed and excited,
showed it to me. But  a definite purpose, one that made all the unreality of
before seem even more unreal.

She hadnt met me at the breakfast table that morning, and I sat reading the
newspaper and greedily sipping my coffee. And then she just sort of slipped into
the room. She was wearing that nightgown I had glimpsed her in before, the one I
had wished she would wear and hoped to hell she didnt, the cream lace one. I died
a little whenever I saw her in it, and my heart would race. She started wearing
it around more, probably for the simple reason that she knew exactly what it did
to me, and was more than happy to make an old man horny.

So she whisked by the kitchen table, cream lace gently flowing; and I noticed
then that she was wearing only the nightgown, and her bare body just peeked out
here and there from underneath. She said a polite good morning and went over to
check her coffee pot. She didnt even so much as smile at me as she filled it and
turned it on. It just as well by me as I was reading my newspaper and for sure
wasnt interested in what she was doing.

And then she did it. She came over and sat down across from me, crossing her legs
as she sat. She tapped on my newspaper, which I had little interest in looking up
from. She said my name so softly and so sweetly. John... I looked up from my
paper, across the table to her. She kind of toyed with the one side of her gown,
pulling it open ever so slightly. The rest didnt really hide much, I could see
that her nipples were hard through the lace of the gown. She looked up at me and
smiled, so slightly. Im glad youre going to stay for a while.  She smiled again,
and stood up letting her gown flap to the sides of her body, revealing what she
had. And she walked away. Im going to draw a bath. She said. Please dont use too
much hot water. She left; I made myself very still. I heard the door click down
the hall, I could feel my heart thumping and feel the blood run through my veins,
I could imagine the soft sound of the robe as it fell to the ground, I could hear
as the water turned on and began to flow.

I hadnt masturbated thinking about a women in years; I did thinking about her. My
god. I was a married man. I had taken a sabbatical from my life so I could be
relatively alone and could write. My wife had barely said goodbye to me as I
left, and seemed to care even less that Id be alone with another woman in the
middle of nowhere.  That was about three months ago. I dont know why the hell Id
gone there. The woman had put an add in for a room mate, and her house was off
the roads of the world, near the mountains. It was quiet, with a little brook in
the back and woods all around.  Id gone there and set up, been inspired by the
countryside, by the quiet, by the lack of people, and had yet to finish a damn
thing. I thought about my wife every once and a while there...  I tried not to. I
really didnt even know if she cared for me anymore.

I didnt see her the rest of that day, but I didnt care. I spent that day in my
room, in the alcove with a window, typing away. I wrote so much that day, almost
more than I had in all of the past three months. I finished stories I hadnt
finished in three years. God, I even wrote poetry:

Does she care for me? She doesnt even wish me goodbye Does she care for me?

Time didnt move for me that day.

It was 9 pm when she knocked on my  door.  She didnt wait for an answer and
pressed the door open. I went on typing.

John...

I turned around. She was wearing the same silk and lace that she had worn that
morning; it hid nothing.

We had sex that night. God, I hadnt had sex in over a year and a half. With my
wife it had been cold and uncaring, it had become almost rote... procedure... not
love. I gave it up, thinking that it wasnt worth anything like that, loosing hope
that it really couldnt be anything more. I dont even know if I said I Love You to
my wife in that year and a half. It just became a joke to me, how there happened
to be no love in anything we called such.  But I died a little each time I
laughed at it, each time I scoffed at the word marriage, the word love, each time
I snickered at that ring that was so snug on my finger and was supposed to
represent something equally binding. I died a little.

When I woke up that next morning, she was gone. A half smoked cigarette sat in
the ash tray on the night stand; she hadnt left too long ago. I picked it up and
took a drag, feeling the smoke tickle my throat and lungs a little, and leave a
biting taste in my mouth. I hadnt smoked in 7 years. From the window in the back
of her room, I admired the creek that flowed through her backyard, and finished
smoking the cigarette.

I wrote nothing that day. Nothing. I had written something everyday since Id been
there. Even if it was just a sentence or two, I wrote something. I wrote nothing
that day. I spent the whole morning thinking over what I had done, in between
trying to read the newspaper. Everything else but the night before seemed so far
away, and even that seemed somehow unreal.

She came in around 9 pm again that day, this time wearing a red dress with one
strap loose from her shoulder, and holding a bottle of champaign. She smiled so
sweetly at me.

We had sex again that night. Sometime during that night she turned to me, and
smiled that same smile that had started it all. John, she said. Im glad youre
going to stay. I had absolutely nothing to say in return. It was only then that
it really struck me as odd. I woke up the next morning to find the same thing as
before; she was gone and a half smoked cigarette smoldered on the nightstand.

I felt sick that morning, my body ached, my stomach hurt, my head pounded. I
downed some aspirin and laid in her bed until after noon, hoping she would come
crawling back into it. She didnt.

I got out of bed, dragging my feet. My mind filled mostly with what shit I still
felt like, the aspirin barely having done a thing, and her. As I finished what
health-food-yuppy-crap I had for dinner, I waited for her again, only half
expecting she would come in wearing something sultry, wishing like hell that she
would. I waited until 1 am, and she didnt show; no red dress, no champaign.

I downed some more aspirin and crawled into bed, my stomach and head pounding. I
wanted to think of her, but it made my head sick even more, and I fell asleep
alone.

I woke up feeling like shit at 1 that afternoon, and took some more aspirin,
which didnt help. She hadnt called; nothing. I rationalized that it was her house
and she didnt really have to call, but knowing that infuriated me none the less.
I searched her room that day. I dont really know if I was even looking for
something; I just needed to look. I kept on looking over my shoulder every time I
heard the steps creak or the wind blow against the pane. I hoped it was her, I
feared it was her. It wasnt.

I read her diary; her last entry had been almost a year ago. She hated her boss,
she liked her new place in the country, almost all her things were unpacked after
four months in the house... I didnt really care and I put it away.

I found where she kept her cigarettes, and took a carton out from her stock; I
hadnt smoked in 7 years. I found where she kept the liquor; it took me an hour
after that to find the damned key.

I spent that evening on the back porch with a gin and tonic which soon lost the
tonic and became a bottle of gin, smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes, and
watched the sun set through the trees. I only felt tired and went to bed soon
after the last golden rays of the sun had melted away. There was no moon that
night.

I didnt hear a thing from her for five days. I had finished more than half of the
carton of smokes, two bottles of gin and one of vodka in the meanwhile. I hadnt
given a damn about writing a thing. I just wanted to drown myself and feel like
shit. Then she finally left a message on the machine one morning; I didnt know
exactly when, Im sure I was asleep. She said simply Jonathan. Pause. I may be
home tomorrow. She hadnt called me Jonathan at anytime in the last three months.

I burned the house down that night. I used a cigarette and a glass of gin, and
lit one of my stories on fire; one of the better ones. I stood barefoot in the
creek, a hundred yards from the back of the house, and watched the flames lick at
the wood, and the windows pop from the heat. I stood there, staring at it -
transfixed. I thought about her, about my stories, about my home. I thought long
and hard about my wife; I wondered if she would take me back.


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