033

After the show at his apartment she relaxed in the huge double bed and had a drink. Then the door opened and he strided in, regarding her for a moment through narrowed eyes before approaching her as she quivered with anticipation. Then he kissed her firmly and urgently stripping her off her clothes. Her panties got snagged so he ripped them off her hips. He stood in front of her, one arm around her neck pulling her closer to him and the other hand down between her legs, his middle finger inside her and his tongue inside her mouth. She sighed as his kisses fell on her naked skin one after the other.

A few moments later she lay on the bed heaving and whrithing as she climaxed, her arms thrown back behind her head while her hand circled the bar of the headboard. 

June cried out and...woke up.

That night had ended in a completely different way.

Instead, Jon had showed up, as she expected, at her door after the show, only to find her suitcases almost ready to leave the house.

"I thought you...I mean...ain't ya gonna...?", he was so dumbfounded by the scene in front of him he needed time to process before he could utter a whole, meaningful sentence. He realized for the first time the vagueness of his motives, since he didn't know in fact what kind of response he expected from June. It was not easy to say why he'd come. Force her to stay, asking her to leave behind something she'd been working so hard for? Beg for a chance? Was there any? 

He tried once more. "Do you really have to leave now? It's so early...I was counting on...", his expression was pleading, and hurt. The intoxication of success (and a fair amount of liquor) had vanished and he was now himself again.  "It can't-it won't end, June. Not like this, not here", Jon said with slightly trembling voice. 

Another way? Could it really have ended in another way? The unknown answer tormented her, and as she lay there, alone in her new bed, in her new apartment in Hong Kong's Kowloon district, she tried with all her might to shut down the sounds of her mind, but from time to time, a phrase managed to make itself heard.

"But it was fun", she insisted once she felt and sensed that Jon was seemingly able to let her go. "Wasn't it?". Whether she was ready to let him go, was another subject.

"Oh, yeah, crazy fun", Jon replied, but with such a painful, bitter tone in his voice that June suddenly felt how any possible triumphant feeling vanished. She knew that what she was saying was absurd and unfair, but despite knowing all this and admitting to it, she tried to find something else to say, only she wasn't able to find it.

"But I want you so much...", Jon leant closer to her with his lips parted, "...and you want me too...", close and closer, "...why not...?". Suddenly she wrapped her arms around his neck and Jon felt her soft lips against his, so deliciously soft, warm, electric. 

Maddening, his words resonated in her ears and she felt compelled to get out of bed and do something. That's how it had been for the last month since she had arrived, and since she'd found that if she kept her mind and body busy, then she was able to numb all the emotions she could be feeling if things had been different.

However, if she wasn't careful enough during the day, she'd close her eyes and involuntarily evoked, with total precision, the magnificent sensation of Jon surrounding her with his arms, going over her body with his touch, pulling out of her throat the same chords he was able to produce with his guitar. Who knew...the future is so pregnant with possibilities that maybe someday...June opened her eyes as soon as her mind produced the idea of that day coming too late for both of them.  

The second month, contrary to what she'd hoped, was even worse. Now, asleep or awake, eating or working, indoors or outdoors, in the bath or in the bed-no escape. It was too strong. 

She might have felt miserable not to have loved before, but having loved, so deeply and having to do without it now felt like a huge hole in her heart without nothing but room for real, excruciating pain. So that was love, yes, and there wasn't any cure for it. She was invaded by an enormous feeling of emptiness, apprehension, almost nausea. She felt her heart had stopped beating, crossed by the last words she'd say to him.  "You're asking too much...and all I can give you is good-bye".

That's why more often than not, she lay on her bed or on the couch and tried to recreate some of the sensations she'd felt, the familiar feeling of him rolling on top of her, individual gestures, bedroom jokes, the smell of wine in his breath, the slight sweatiness...and his aftershave. She remembered all this in small, both painful and delightful glimpses.

She also remembered his arms around her waist and the whispered "Stay here, with me". 

...

After June left, Jon buried his desperation in his job and the excitement of the tour, as June's name slowly disappeared from the conversations with her brother. In fact, after separating from his wife, Jon had never trully adapted to the single life, despite his success with women, specially the splendid teenagers who the moans of his voice seem to  lit up in flames. Others tried to force their way into his life, but ended up forcing him to reject them delicately. Sometimes, when he saw them sighing in front of him, he closed his eyes for a second and thought about June, her body, her warm breasts, the thin corner of her mouth. Every time he tried to allow any of them to go just a little further, there was an invisible barrier he just couldn't pass. 

He liked looking at women, he saw it as a sort of aesthetic pleasure, almost spiritual, but only June inspired in him a concrete and immediate desire. Despite the short time that they'd had actually been together, Jon had managed to keep recorded in the tip of his fingers, the exact geography of June's body. Only to her he could make love untiringly, so he didn't feel tempted to look for another woman. 

When it came to intimacy, June was the one and only, and the only thing that was left after everybody else was gone. Her, a song, and more, inexhaustible imaginary caresses.

While I wait for you I die

But I gotta keep drinking from this cup

I'm gonna do it for the time we've had

Cause looking for your smile all my life I'd give up

I wanna be the only one to part your lips

I wanna know that life with you still exists...

"I'm yours", she'd said the night they'd stayed at the cabin by the lake, but Jon knew that June didn't belong to him and probably never would. He wanted so much more than just her body, he wanted to get hold of that luminous matter that was inside her and constantly oozed subtly from her pores and that streaming out in those moments when she seemed to be agonizing with pleasure. 

As days passed by and June slipped further and further away, greater was Jon's need of her. She had become a sort of physical necessity, something he not only wanted, but felt entitled to. He had the feeling that his heart had vanished, leaving a hole in its place. Yes, he felt empty, cold and even a little nauseous.  The swollen balloon of Jon's self-confidence bled through a thousand wounds during endless, sleepless nights. It was always the same thing, over and over: he should have tried harder...but it would have been useless. He felt that even if he grabbed her with both his hands and hugged her tightly, he wouldn't be able to imprison her. The scheme repeated itself night after night after night: there came a point when his will and his brain just shut down, Jon cursed his invincible sentimentalism and abandoned himself to the pleasure, and the suffering, of loving her. 

Then morning came and Jon found himself once again amongst the miseries of time, space and uncertainty. But there was always hope in uncertainty. 

...

June, however, was more used to living alone, and busy as she was, kept drowning herself in the chores of his job, her reading and establishing a new social and professional network. They had agreed on keeping in touch and so they did for the first month until it became just too painfully frustrating. At one point, she'd even had the impulse of leaving everything behind, taking her suitcase and going back to him, but as soon as the idea sprung inside her head she discarded it as ridiculous and, with the help if reason she let it go. 

Then one day she was going through the list of guests for the opening party of the Asian branch of the editorial when she run into his name. "He's a friend of the family, isn't he?", her PA asked when she saw June's baffled look. "He probably won't be able to come, anyway, he's on tour, right?", she added and all June was able to do was nod with a certain disilusionment that could be easily mistaken by relief.

In her consumption with work, she'd become obsessed with the case of the Chinese author that had been haunting her for months. She had finally been able to receive his book and was now editing it as the translators elaborated the English draft, but they had to manage to get Li Peng and his family out of the country before they were able to publish it...and before the government found out. More commonly, people who had incurred in displeasing the party simply disappeared or were never heard of again without leaving behind  the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. June felt a shiver down her spine everytime she thought about him and his family. 

It was at the beginning of the third month that Diane came to Hong Kong and witnessed first hand what she had guessed through June's e-mails. She'd secretly prayed that June had just entered those brief periods of fictional rapture where she lost touch with the world around her, absorbed completely in her stories, but deep inside she knew that was not it, and she confirmed it when she laid eyes on her friend on her trip to Hong Kong. Diane protested energetically at June's physical, but above all psychological condition. "It's absurd that you give in to this estate, absurd. How can you do this to yourself?".

June seemed to barely have any strength to answer, she was visibly exhausted and underfed. For the past week she'd been feeling like a stranger in her own head, and she didn't even know what she was doing anymore. She only knew that those weeks she'd spent with Jon had been the only moment in her life when she'd felt for once that she was truly herself, when she understood with that absurd clarity of inexplicable things that she would never be able to love another man as she loved Jon, even when she spent the rest of her days trying. She lived, she slept, she ate, she talked to her friends but she didn't seem to listen to them, and they ignored there was something lurking under that golden skin. Except for Diane.

"How about trying to experience not being conditioned by yourself? Aren't you always talking about being free? Well, let me tell you that you look pretty much enslaved, my friend", concluded Diane.

"But Diane...", June protested. She knew what the answer was: she was too afraid. She feared that the great love she felt wouldn't be able to stand the toughest test of all: rutine. 

"Just think about it, at least just to please me", Diane's tone was firm. "And eat, I beg you".

...

Another long and sleepless night. June's voice seemed to stick into Jon's brain like jagged pieces of glass. He put a cigarette in his mouth and pressed his fingers agains his lids. He glanced at his watch and calculated the time zone difference. It wouldn't be the first time he tried calling her, and it wouldn't be the first time he chickened out, but he'd come to terms with his cowardy, he admitted he was just scared of dialing her number and the possibility of someone else answering the phone. 

Placing both hands on either side of her head, he finally said it. "I love you, look into my eyes, believe in me baby, have faith". He knew he loved her as well, and it frustrated him to the point of anger that June was still determined to end it right there and then. But he couldn't blame her, she was the one sticking to the rules. 

"Just make sure you're happy", was the last thing he said to her before kissing her good-bye.

He groaned softly again. Fuck. He felt like a piece of a single equation with two unknown. 

Aching of sleep-depravation and plain boredom, he glanced at his watch once again. In four hours he'd be once again surrounded by his entourage, once again on another plane and once again in front of a roaring crowd. Which one was it this time? He looked at the folder his PA had left him in the evening, he lifted it up and opened it, but the loose pages cascaded to the floor. Jon cursed in a whisper. Bending down to pick the pages up, he lifted a bunch of printed e-mails stappled together. Stuck to the front page on the right hand upper corner, was a post-it note that read "In-flight reading material". The handwriting was his PA's. He quickly brushed the pages and found an e-mail from June's PA. As his eyes scanned the paper and checked his tour dates once again, a piece fell into place in his mind.

This time, when morning came, he wasn't in a bad mood, and when he got into the car, he cracked a smile: he had a plan.