Short Story: Another Life

Short Story: Another Life

It wasn’t that long ago that he could have had her. Could have made her howl and squirm. Made her beg for mercy, made her beg for more. No, not that long ago.

Round the corner from the jobcentre where he’d done his weekly signing on, Lenny sat alone at his table amidst the steamy clatter of The Lucky Boy café, the solitary cup of tea which he’d been nursing for almost an hour had taken the last of his change and was stone cold.

The woman he had been watching intently for the last ten minutes, was he thought, probably in her early twenties. Her face was broad rather than round, a little too fleshy perhaps, her cheeks, already a little too pouchy either side of her quirky, button nose. Without make up her lips were full and pink. Very kissable, Lenny thought. He could see beauty there. Not some sluttish magazine cover glamour that was unobtainable, but real beauty. It was her eyes that did it. They enthralled him. Big and brown and saucer like. He was reminded of Betty Boop.

With her was a small child, a curly haired boy of three or four. His golden brown skin, a stark contrast to that of hers, he was whining and fractious, banging the table with his tiny hand and using his chips to paint the Formica top in tomato sauce red. Lenny wished the child would shut up. He wanted him to stop distracting his young mother because he wanted her to look at him. Wanted this young woman to stare at him with those big brown eyes. Wanted her to meet his gaze and hold it. He wanted some sort of signal from her that said, however small, there is a chance. But instead, she looked everywhere else. And why shouldn’t she? Why should she give him a second glance? He knew what he looked like. Every inch of his sixty years.

Unshaven, his face was smattered with a sheen of silver stubble and his clothes, his hair, his skin, were grey and frayed with the fatigue of just being alive. He caught sight of himself in the wall mounted mirror that ran the length of the room. He looked like a man shrinking with age, as if he were cowering away from a life that had taken just about everything he could give.

But with a woman like her at his side, a woman like her to come home to, who knows? And if she did look at him, just the once, held his stare for just a second and then smiled. Well, who's to say that it could not be possible? And anyway, just where is it written in stone that he could not have a woman like her doting on him? And she would dote on him, because apart from demanding complete fidelity, which she would unquestionably grant to him, his love for her would be unconditional and all embracing.

He would cook for her, not in any form of servitude but purely for the pleasure he would get from watching her sit and eat a meal that was all his own work, that he had prepared specially for her. How grateful she would be. She would tell him that no other man had ever cooked anything for her, had ever made such a demonstration of affection. And he would be her protector. At busy road junctions she would take his arm as he expertly scanned the traffic, waiting for only his judgement as to when it was safe for them to cross. But she would always take his arm anyway, by default. When they walked down the street it would be linked through his, showing everyone, the world, that they were together, a couple, that they were a combined unit, one and the same thing. An item.

And he would show her a new, brighter, different world, far away from the grey, concrete, graffiti ruined walls of the estate that he imagined, felt sure, that she must come from. He would change the boundaries of her existence beyond all recognition. When they went out as a family, and a family would surely be what they were, himself and her and the little brown kiddie, to have a Sunday lunch at a fancy Covent Garden restaurant, the local cheap eateries of Catford and Lewisham being a thing of the past, their touching of hands across the table, the stroking and paddling of fingers, the long looks into each others eyes, would leave no doubt that they were not just lovers, but that they were deeply in love itself. And despite what the other diners may have felt about their screamingly obvious age difference, their aspects of distaste or even anger, would be dissipated, swept away by the sight of their blatant happiness.

And the brown kiddie, obviously not his, would sit content and well behaved, secure in the knowledge that at last he had a proper father. A father who would play with him, fly kites with him, take him to football, would never let him down. And he would be bright and curious, smilingly engaging on Lenny’s every word as he patiently explained the intricacies of the menu. And because the child was obviously not a product of Lenny’s loins, people would think him not just kind to take on another man's issue, and a black one at that, but they would consider him worldly and sophisticated. A man whose intellect and generosity of spirit magnificently took him far above the petty meanness of sexual or racial jealousies.

They would do everything together, on Friday nights he would take her for drinks in the gaudy brassy Victorian pubs of theatre land and Soho which were always packed with herds of young bucks who had perfect white teeth and trendily shaven heads or ponytails and were called Luke or Jake or Dan who worked excitingly in advertising or graphic design. And she, in reflection of how they were one, would mirror him in pints of Flowers or IPA and he would admire her stamina and how, though it might make her sweetly giggly, she never became loud or lewd in her behaviour.

And when one of the young bucks, caught in the eye by her beauty, who couldn’t understand what she could be doing with this man, old enough to be her grandfather, seeing their togetherness as some kind of joke, something almost offensive, and regarding Lenny’s age as some kind of gaping fissure that, as they leant against the bar, an elbow could be wedged into and the sly process of prising her away from him begun, he, Lenny, would smile softly and step aside. He would be flattered. It was a salute to his stature, his ability to attract and keep such a young woman, a salute to his manliness. And he would have nothing to worry about. He knew how she would feel about these Johnny come quickies, as she would call them. That compared to him they were all mere boys, unworthy of her consideration. He would know that she simply would not contemplate another man in her life.

Because their own lovemaking would be regular and healthily energetic. In the bedroom, the kitchen, on the sofa, she would gasp at his gentle strength, his commanding force as he took the lead in ever more brilliant inventions to give her more pleasure. And after a Saturday night spent inside her, the welcome calm of long sunny Sunday mornings spent together in dressing gowns, drinking fresh coffee and reading the papers. He would be able to detect the faint odour of her secret juices, dried now on the soft skin of her thighs, giving off stirrings of the faintest sweet muskiness in the air between them. And he would occasionally, deliberately, sniff this air, revelling in the earthen scent of her sex. The scent of the woman that belonged to him.

Someone was shouting. Someone was telling someone else to call the police. Under the table, between his legs, Lenny manoeuvred a paper tissue into position and attempted to wipe the pathetic dribble of semen from his fingers. The young woman with the big eyes was standing now, holding the kiddie close to her, turning his head away. She was staring at him. Just like he’d wanted her to.