There’s some strange Spanish music on television. The only words she recognises are, “No passport, no visa! I’m coming home back to you.” There is a buxom Latina thrusting her pelvic bone at a black man. Her short skirt flares as she pivots on a high heel. He grins from behind his sunglasses.
She’s in the living room perspiring from scrubbing the sink and hobs and hoods, while her tea cools down just an arm’s length from her yellow rubber gloves. Then she stands up and lets the aircon dry the film of sweat on her back. She adjusts her garter belt and the lacy garters of her stockings and goes down on her knees and tears off the newspaper that lines the cat’s food and water bowl, crushing it carefully so that the grit doesn’t sprinkle on the floor.
He’s still mopping the floor in his underpants. For a while, he doesn’t want to fuck her, not just yet, not until the house is clean and they are both lying down in bed in the new sheets, smelling the antiseptic of the floorwash and the shit skid remover of the toilet bowls.
She needs to get back to writing, she thinks. The silence of this turning point of time is heady. For three days, the sun moves up and over the horizon and disappears again, but it’s peaceful. Nobody’s asking for unpaid rent or proposals, even the late cheques seem to be unimportant. She has enough to live for today and tomorrow and maybe Wednesday but it’s enough, she thinks. It’s enough for me. It’s the perfect state of mind for the stirrings of a new chapter. She draws a card and it tells her to write. It says the universe is stirring in her and wants her to tell a story.
In the other room, he catches a glimpse of the outline of her cheeks just under her tiny black skirt. He leans the mop against the corner of the room and goes over to her for a cuddle. She squirms and giggles as their sweaty skins meet. The cat sniffs at the curious whiff between their legs and jumps into bed wondering if they would be in the mood to play.