summer heat
in the winter months
she would not push him away
when he curled his body around hers:
his warmth was comforting
but when the seasons warmed
she grew too hot and banished his arms
from around her delicate frame
and on those nights he would go out
to a nightspot he liked for its
smoke and booze and damp heat
sometimes he'd seek out the manager
who would give him a key and
let him unlock the faux
mahoganny piano cover
beneath which a row of hard white
soldiers awaited the command of his
stodgy white finger tips
he would play, on those nights,
melancholy tunes of warmth and clarity
and women would come to listen -
sometimes two or three at a time -
gathering around the piano,
not talking to him, but watching intently
or just standing nearby
acting nonchalant and disinterested
but carried by the music to his strange
sad world
his fingers swept up and down those
keys as was his childhood fashion,
playing out his heart and watching
the women whose insouciant attention
gave him such silent gratification
when the nights were over
and the mornings were well worn
he would taxi home, a whiff of
whiskey or brandy on his breath
and there she lay, in their bed
beautiful and still
but she lay awake behind closed eyes,
woken always by the slam of a cab door
and the drunken fumblings of her husband
as he
climbed into the cold half of the bed
reeking of alcohol and perfume
she knew what he did and it hurt,
all those other women who looked at
him
with the adulation she could no longer
bring herself to feel
she had followed him out one night
and watched as a woman chatted to him
saw how he had lit her cigarette
smiled
and kissed her hand;
always the charmer
so she had sought to make him jealous,
found herself going out more and more
wearing less and less
until she drew the indiscriminate eyes
of
every male she passed,
provoking whistles from construction
workers
and straightening of ties amongst businessmen
she caught herself in the reflection
of
a tall glass skyscraper
and stood transfixed by her transformation
a tall hourglass of a woman
in high heels, high cheekbones, high
style,
wrapped in a dress cut from the dark
cloth
of raw sexuality
and from the lobby of that building
her husband watched her as he waited
for
an appointment with a blonde property
manager with a styx accent but a polished
demeanour and heels higher and rounder
than those of his wife
she had a glint in her eye when they
met
and he knew how to play it, suave and
controlled
the skills of his youth returning to
him,
his seduction clean and smooth
buttons popping
elastic stretching
moans unvoiced. . .
afterwards they had conducted business
with burnt lust giving way to ironic
professionalism and innoccuous banter;
and he left her office and walked
straight to the nightspot with the piano
to whose lid he now had his own key
he listened to the whispers of those
girls
who gathered around him and felt suddenly
as if he had destroyed something beautiful;
and from the corner of his eye he saw
her push through the crowd, dressed
plainly
in jeans and a black t-shirt that he
had
always liked her in
and when she looked at him, saw the guilt
in his eyes, she knew - as every woman
knows -
and sitting there at the piano he confessed
and they both had tears in their eyes,
held each other while a crowd of men
and women
gathered around their embrace and looked
on
as they kissed each other for the first
time in weeks
and she asked why, to which he replied:
you pushed me away
and she said she was just hot in this
goddamned summer heat
he held her gaze for a while and looked
down
at the keys of his piano
and after a while, his fingers found
their
way to those musical warriors again
and she reached out and played two octaves
above,
the simple, wistful duet they had once
shared as young lovers
and all was forgiven
but all was lost
