“Yes… I know you don’t believe me, but I never actually had sex with or even tried to seduce Annabelle. She was my secretary, that means I have a duty of care as an employer.”
“But you kissed!”
“We kissed once, five years ago, when she got way too drunk at a conference and cornered me in a lift. I was so surprised, I forgot to push her away. Or at least, that is my story. Apologies were made, we had a laugh about it and once a year, on my birthday, she gave me a proper kiss when nobody was looking. As we had broken the ice anyway. That is the be all and end all of it.”
Kate looked at me, bemused.
“That’s the most you have ever said about it. Any more?”
“No. I was the boss and I was married. And all my customers are men. Were men. Are men, were my customers.”
“Martin, you were married for twelve years to a woman who treated you like a cash machine. Apart from kissing your secretary on the lips once a year, are you telling me you never strayed?”
I was tired. I’d had two beers, which for me is my limit. I had just terminated my own company and apparently I was so pathetic, my own sister had come to rescue me. And now she made me think back to my marriage. Sorry folks, but I lost it. Somewhere a valve opened and before I knew it, I was going to pieces.
“Hey! Oh God, I’m sorry!” said Kate, leaning over to hug me. I pushed her away.
“I’ll… be fine… Just don’t… go on about it… okay? Jesus…”
I hadn’t cried for about as long as I didn’t have sex: 19 months, 14 days. Monique had deigned to have sex with me when it seemed as if Samsung was going to buy us. Turns out that was just another tactic to drive an extra nail into our coffin, to let us bleed out just a bit more. Samsung didn’t want our tech. They wanted us out of the way, then scoop up our patents.
Kate watched me for a few seconds, then stood up and got some paper towel from the kitchen.
“Thanks,” I said, weakly. It was taking all my concentration to stop this and I wasn’t doing well.
“Come here, you sad old git,” she said, standing in front of me and pushing my arms away. Then she sat on my lap, or rather she straddled me. She used to do that when she was a kid, it was her favourite way to talk. Today, she was about three times the size of that four year old girl, so the experience was rather different.
At the time, it could get uncomfortable when she moved around too much, because penises on twenty year olds really don’t know or care what is going on: if you touch them, they get hard. Little Kate went through that phase where she wanted to see ‘pee-pees’ and for a while she really tried to get to see mine. We had to have a talk about it in the end, or mum did to be precise. I didn’t want to be present for that one.
“Hey, you’re not a kid anymore, get off me!” I protested.
“Shut up. Be human for a few minutes, see how the rest of us manage,” she said, wrapping her arms around me and resting her chin gently on my left shoulder. I didn’t have it in me to fight. I don’t think another human being had touched me, save from handshakes and a few parting kisses from female employees, since Monique had stopped showing affection. It felt good to be hugged, to feel the warmth of another human. And I remembered her smell. From a very early age, Katey loved almond soap. It became her thing: everything was almonds with her. Candy, soap, candles, baked goods, you name it. What chocolate is to most women, almonds are to Kate. And so, occasionally, I’d be in a hotel or someone’s toilet and there’d be almond soap. In those instances, it was almost as if a hologram of Kate appeared on my lap in a millisecond, hugging me as she did now. Smells are an incredibly powerful way to trigger memories.
My janitor once bought a tray of almond soap dispensers for our restrooms, a perfectly normal thing to do. I had to tell him I wanted them replaced, which he found odd. But I just didn’t want to be reminded of Kate, or rather Kate’s absence in my life, two to three times a day. And more importantly: I was afraid the effect would wear off. If I’m honest, I needed to feel as if Kate was around sometimes. Apart from mom, she was, for ages, the only woman on this planet who gave a shit whether I lived or died; who was actually glad to see me, came looking for me when she missed me.
Our tea was cold by the time I stopped crying. Not that I was actually done, but there just comes a point where your body says: ‘Okay, we need to shut this down or we will dehydrate.’ Kate had hugged me all that time, occasionally moving her head to my other shoulder. Sometimes I’d try to say something, an apology for being so weak, and she would tut in my ear and say that it was fine, that there was nothing to be ashamed about.
Eventually she got off my lap. She tried her tea and pulled a face.
“Stone cold. My God, Martin. She really did a number on you, didn’t she?”
“Well, you know… Seeing a multimillion euro company go down in flames may have had something to do with it,” I said, defending my ex-wife as ever.
“Keep telling yourself that,” said Kate. “Let’s turn in. Turns out I am not in the mood for tea.”
I nodded and got up. Then I took the cushions and the plaid off the sofa and moved the coffee table towards the wall.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m afraid I’ll bang my knee against it if I get up in the night,” I explained, stacking the cushions on that terrible chair.
“We sleep in the bed, Martin. It’s a double bed. That means TWO people. I’m not getting on that sofa and neither are you.”
She was right, I suppose. We had shared a bed often enough, on vacation. My parents liked luxury and could afford it, so Kate and I would have a hotel room to ourselves, rather than the four of us sharing a room with two doubles but still only one bathroom. That worked fine: we simply made sure the bathroom door was locked. Well, I did. Kate was never that bothered.
We brushed our teeth and I undressed to my underwear, after having turned off the lights in the rest of the house. As I wear shorts and an undershirt, that’s not a very shocking look. Kate showed up from the bathroom in slightly racy knickers, silky and black, but she wore a very long shirt with Lisa Simpson on it, which covered most of her bottom. I was already in bed and she jumped in like we were having a slumber party.
“Finally, a woman between your sheets!” she laughed, crawling around on all fours.
“Don’t remind me. This bed has seen less action than Pavarotti’s home trainer. The light is on your side. You can feel the switch embedded in the cord, just behind the radiator.”
She got under the sheets and turned off the light.
“It’s been a while since I was in bed with a man,” she mused.
“I don’t want to know,” I answered, turning to my side and settling in.
“No, really. How long was it for you, did you say?”
“I’ve never been in a bed with a man.”
“Funny. With a woman. How long ago did you say it was?”
“I didn’t.”
It had been on Friday, June 17th 2011. Twelve minutes of very mediocre sucking and fucking, for which Monique tried to get rewarded with a new car. I didn’t even think her performance was worth a new inner tube for that bike she never used, to be honest.