STOLEN GLANCES

STOLEN GLANCES

She looked at her wedding ring and hated it. Over the years she had gained weight and she could not slip it off her finger and pocket the disaster of marriage she was trying to keep going.

The young man sitted next to her in the crowded matatu reminded her of her youth. She dreamt of and yearned to revisit the hour and time she was young and carefree. What she had retained over the years, as time took toll, was the inferno that her husband could not quench. She had a blazing craving for the forbidden, that only she understood.

***

Dorned in a pair of tight Denims, she deliberately moved her legs to touch his  each moment the matatu hit a road bump. The scrawny fellow who was the object of her fantasy kept reading his copy of the days newspaper. His face a blank mask, save for the moments he read the irking political stories and editorials.  The embers were stoked and the flames burnt the spot that we can surely say was every man’s weakness. Ironically, as the flames fanned by emotion razed on, water dripped from the holy of holies. She could feel the flash flood breaking the river banks.

In a public service vehicle (matatu) one can’t do much. She clung to her fantasies and closed her eyes. You and I might have thought that she had surrendered to the whims of exhaustion and sleep. How wrong we would have been had we taken that position!

She created a new world. Eyes closed and the fire burning. She looked back at the events of her fifteen year marital live.  Save for the children, she was bitter. She had covered the pain of a dysfunctional marriage under the hood of the love she had for her children. She had endured and tried as much as she could to hold the arrangement that passed for a marriage together. That day was a turning point.

As the matatu driver fiddled with the stereo, playing banal songs that excited him ignoring the passengers, she fell into a wave of desire and longing. Her arm momentarily rested on the young man’s thighs. She was scared of how he would react. Only if, only if she had known! she had poked a hornets nest.

All along, As he perused the pages of the cheap newspaper he had bought earlier in the day, he had kept stealing glances at her. The fake gold ring on her finger crushed every wave and tide of emotion that formed within him. As much as he wanted to cross over to the forbidden land, he had qualms. He was scared for she was a married woman. As much as he ingested this truth of life, he could not, no matter how much he tried, bring himself to admit the bare knuckle facts of life that whatever has been marked and surrendered to the solemn marital vows bears a caveat emptor sign in the name of a ring. It was difficult to make the pulse of his heart rhyme with  his desire.  Dicky’s adventures kept resurfacing in his mind  http://stankyenze.blogspot.co.ke/2016/11/dickie-dick-dicky-was-always-horny-boy_3.html . However, the fool hardy dare devil enchambered within him prodded on an produced a caricature or a semblance of a lop sided smile. In his pea sized brain, floated waves of fantasies , butterflies, flowers, moans, rain and thunder….

***

She noticed that they did not have much time. By 7 pm, African time, so to say,  they had reached their destination. She softly held his hand, ignoring the matatu driver sitting next to them, she looked at him, straight in the yes and flashed jezebel’s smile.  He saw the raging fire of desire, longing and want floating in her eyes. He dared not breath, he dared not spoil the moment.

She said , “ Here is my number. I wish you would call me.” To him, it was the manifestation of the powers that be. He felt like Mary felt that day when she had a one with  angel Gabriel(her fiancée busy making coffins, stools, chairs and crosses not withstanding).  He was sure that he wanted to break the rules. She craved for a new experience.

……….