Long-suffering

Margaret closed her eyes and rested her head against the cool vinyl of the booth. 

“I loved you the first time I saw you; I’ve never stopped loving you.”  It was the first time he said it, even though she had known for twenty years.  The problem was she loved him back.  Wilson’s voice bounced dangerously around the confines of her mind.  It was so clear, so overpowering that she felt everyone could hear it.

She had been in love with her husband when she met Wilson.  She was admiring her reflection in the hall when she first saw him.  His image invaded the mirror as he entered the corridor behind her.  He was tall and serene, handsome and strong.  Her pale eyes glowed like blue flames as she met his gaze through the glass.  Her heart skipped a beat.  She turned, pressing a sweaty palm to her royal blue gown.

He smiled out of the corner of his mouth and extended a bronzed hand.  “Wilson,” was all he said in introduction.  A million words couldn’t have made the impression that lone word did.  His voice had resonated in her mind ever since, an eternal vibration. 

For Margaret, everyplace was an opportunity.  She hoped to smell his cologne when she entered a room, hear his voice from her husband’s pool parlor, clear his empty glass from the cigar room.  She glanced at her husband, Jack, then finally at Wilson as he entered the lounge and joined the company.  Twenty years of torture.  She tried not to contrast the two men she loved the way a child tries not to have nightmares—in vain.

They were everything the other was not.  Jack’s extroversion and ready laugh had won her love, but they didn’t intoxicate her like Wilson’s half-smirk.  Nothing about Jack set her on fire; everything about Wilson made her crazy.

They had gathered that night to celebrate life—and a close call at that.  Wilson came and sat with the group.  The party was for him.  A silence swept over the table as their eyes perused the lengthy scar that ran from below his nose and down his neck, stopping just above his collar.   

Jack took control of the situation.  “Here’s to the lion,” he said, raising his glass in a toast.  The people laughed a little and the tension broke.   “I can’t ever thank you for what you did,” he said on a more serious note, directing himself to his friend.

Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to Wilson.  “Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.  Wilson looked at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.  His eyes burned into hers with the same message he had just whispered to her on the veranda.  She willed herself to tear her eyes away from his gaze and accepted Jack’s hand that was nuzzling into hers beneath the table, swallowing her feelings down with her Malibu and Diet Coke.