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Need a break from the world of business? Take a few minutes to read this story from Canberra writer, Anne-Maree Britton
How to spell love by Anne-Maree Britton
M
ark is reading his book on the plane while Diana is holding his hand and looking out the window, so he doesn’t notice when she softly traces the words: I adore U, into his palm.
On the bed Diana sees the shirt Mark wore that day. She buries her face in it, inhaling the smell of his body, visualising the air travelling down into her lungs, making its way through the fine capillaries and into her bloodstream.
When they land he complains that his ears are still blocked. ‘Oh, you poor thing’, she says, then turns away and adds, ‘Then you will not hear it if I tell you how absolutely sexy you look in that black shirt’.
When she showers the bathroom mirror fogs up. She writes into the condensation: You are 15 out of 10 on my list of what I want in a man. Then she turns on the fan and shuts the door.
They check in to the apartment then walk to the shops to stock up on food for their seven days in paradise. He leans into the taxi to unload the shopping bags and doesn’t hear her say, ‘You have such a cute bum.’
The music at Laidback Lounge is loud and Mark has had nine drinks. He stands behind Diana on the dance floor holding her around the waist, moving her in unison with his own body. Her small voice is lost in the noise as she sings to no-one in particular, ‘No one will do, no man but you.’
On the night they had first met, Mark had said, ‘I don’t want a relationship right now’, as he kissed his way down her stomach. ‘No, not right now,’ she smiled enigmatically. Yet for some reason he has kept inviting her back to his bed for the last three months, and now here she is with him on his holiday as well. Mark eats the pasta that Diana has cooked and asks, ‘Yum, what’s your secret ingredient?’ ‘I can’t possibly tell you,’ she grins. With his head under the stove’s exhaust fan, he pulls a cone. She stands next to him at the sink washing their dinner dishes and says, ‘I would cook for you for the rest of our lives’. He closes his eyes, smiles and holds his breath. She pretends to herself that it is because he has heard what she said. She lights a special incense stick to fill the apartment with the sweet scent of Amour. Soon they will go out to explore the nightclubs. Mark is in the shower and cannot hear her. She dances through the apartment singing loudly and badly: I-I love you, even when I’m slee-eeping… when I close my eye-eye-eyes, you’re everywhere…
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June 2010 | B2B in Canberra
Back at home Mark mindlessly watches late night TV while Diana massages his back with the specially blended massage oil she brought from www.lovespells.com. He isn’t aware that she traces the words ‘you will be mine’ onto his skin. Nor does he notice the way she touches his toes to make the words ‘I want you’, in sign language, while pretending to massage his feet. Diana’s uncle was in the Navy. While making love, Diana clenches her muscles around Mark. In Morse code she spells out the words ‘marry me’. When she slides out of bed the next morning, she is not surprised to find that the drops of sweat they have left on the sheets are all in the shape of hearts. At the beach Mark swims in the warm clear water without a care in the world, while just below the tide line, Diana draws stick figure pictures of their future family in the sand. Anne-Maree Britton is a writer of short stories and long emails.