The Lover by Helene Flood

Author:Helene Flood [Flood, Helene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Published: 2022-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

I devour Jørgen in huge gulps; he’s mine, at least here and now, and I am ravenous. I want all of him, skin and hair. To taste him, to wolf him down into me. I run my fingers through his curls, my hands over his entire body, over the muscles of his thighs and upper arms, the smoothness of his lower back, the fine hollow at the back of his neck. Want to know everything about him – how did you get that scar on your leg, why is the nail of the little finger on your left hand cleft in two, does that mark on your earlobe mean that it was once pierced? – but I don’t have the time to ask. I want to consume him. Am so greedy.

Afterwards we lie in the clean, white sheets, in the bed that fills most of the hotel room, and I turn towards him and think about how strange it is to know this intimate side of a neighbour, a person you’re sort of predestined to share pleasantries with at the mailboxes. You’re supposed to offer something of yourself, of course – tell a few anecdotes while weeding the same flower bed, or share dinner tips when pushing your shopping trolleys past each other in the Kiwi supermarket – but the relationship is so limited, you’re neighbours, you’re the father or mother of, you’re those above or below. I pass a hand over Jørgen’s stubborn curls and ask him what he’s thinking about. He props himself up on his elbows.

“I’m thinking,” he says, “that this trip to Bergen was an excellent idea.”

*

What is rarely mentioned when these types of affairs are discussed is all the practical problems they entail. Time and space, with space being the most precarious, at least when you’re neighbours. There was no dependable place where Jørgen and I could share a bed. We tried his car, and one night we sneaked into the co-working space where he rented a desk. A couple of evenings we set things up so that both Åsmund and Merete would be out at the same time, and then I went up to his place. It felt risky, even though our spouses weren’t in the building, because in Kastanjesvingen the walls are paper-thin.

But meeting out somewhere was possible. We found an Italian restaurant in Enerhaugen, a place our partners would never think to go, and sat on either side of a table covered with a red-chequered tablecloth, getting to know one another. He had grown up in central Oslo, in a big apartment full of books, he said. When he was young, he messed around for a couple of years, bumming around Europe. He got drunk in Prague, was mugged in Bratislava and fell in love with an Italian backpacker he met in Athens. When his money ran out – and he meant ran out, to the point that he couldn’t even afford breakfast the following day – he borrowed a few coins from his Italian girlfriend and called home to ask for more.

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