Marianne

  I remember watching her from the porch of my lake house in Maine. Marianne had looked beautiful sitting on my deck. The day had been hot and humid and I had spent most of it out on the boat sailing, the slight wind keeping me from dying of heat. Even now, at the end of the day, drips of sweat were collecting on my forehead. I was trying to cool off before I went inside to shower and get ready for dinner. A gin and tonic was my sole company. 

Marianne had been sitting on the deck, swinging her feet, skimming the water. It was twilight, both of our favorite time of day. She was an artist and, even from this distance, I could tell that she was looking at the colors of the water and the shapes of the boats in the horizon, trying to place them within a frame for a painting. I loved that she was an artist, that she saw things as strokes of colors. It gave her an air of thoughtfulness and sensitivity that I found intoxicating. 

We had known each other since she was a little girl. I had been her brother’s friend, ten years older. I had watched her body change, her flat chest get rounded and swollen when her breasts developed. I had taught her to play many a card game and drank hot cocoa with her at family parties. It had never been romantic between us until she was a woman, when I ran into her at a cocktail party, almost a year ago.

That night she had been wearing a green dress that showed off her legs. Her face was almost bare of makeup and her only jewelry was a jade necklace. When she saw me a slow smile spread across her face. Everything about her was slow and gentle. It made my blood boil. I gave her a cocktail party hug, low and sexy and not as warm as I would have liked. I really would have liked to lift her up and take her home and feed her strawberries and watch her throat as she swallowed and then make love to her. Instead I asked if she would like to have dinner with me sometime, to talk about her family and the old times. 

We started seeing each other often after the first dinner. Her family loved that she was seeing me. I was the kind of guy that parents loved. They thought I was a good influence for Marianee who had always been a dreamer, a drifter, slightly distant. I was hardworking and ambitious, having worked my way up the corporate ladder without accepting any help from my parents or their friends and currently working as the vice-president of overseas operations of a big multinational that specialized in auto pieces. At the age of thirty-five I had never been married, having preferred to focus on my career. Recently the idea of getting married was on my mind. I had gone into Tiffany’s last week to look at engagement rings. I wanted to take care of her, sleep with her every night for the rest of my life.

A slight breeze was finally beginning to come in and it was lifting Marianne’s hair off her shoulders. God, she was beautiful. I set my drink down and walked down to the deck. I startled her, lifting her from her state of contemplation, by touching her bare shoulder. Even when startled, her emotions registered slowly on her face. 

“Paul, I have something to tell you.” Her lips were beautiful; they mesmerized me. 

“What is it darling?” 

“I’ve fallen in love with someone else.”