Illegal Liaisons Read Online Free PDF Page A

his high rank had little to do with it.
    “Andrea, we should be going,” the man said in excellent English.
    “An Englishman, from Eton,” Jonathan quickly surmised.
    “… Simon,” Andrea finished, “my partner.”
    That night, Jonathan reached for Megi but he didn’t like the taste of her lips. They ended swiftly; Jonathan got up and went out on to the terrace for a cigarette.
    He gazed at the clouds rolling over the dark mass of sky. He had immediately taken to the weather in Brussels, warm with an undertone of damp. He loathed southern climates, the vertical sun and blind stubbornness of heat.
    “Simon, my partner.” There was not a single woman at that strange party – and that included Megi – who had not stared at the man. Jonathan stubbed out his cigarette. Childish unease signalled its presence again, the tiresome “I want,” just as when Andrea had been leaving with Simon and Jonathan had taken the chance to look at her beautiful backside again. And now the sway of her hips was irking him like the hook on which a stupid pike – Jonathan – had let itself be caught.
    Daily life slotted back into its course. Jonathan unpacked more cardboard boxes until he felt the days themselves had become rectangular. Reach for a box, open, pull out the contents … Finally, the vision of a trip to IKEA acquired the exotic taste of escape and Swedish meatballs offered an opening into the wider world. Sitting at a plastic table, he savored the thought of the jaws of their home in Brussels, hungry for equipment and objects, snapping at a safe distance.
    On the way home, he stopped off to buy some bread rolls. Megi couldn’t get used to croissants and preferred ordinary bread, while the children loved the little rolls with a slit down the middle which they had immediately called “bums.” Jonathan asked for six bums and a take-out coffee.
    He was just leaving the counter when he started. He had “met” Andrea a few times since their first meeting – running across the road, glancing at her watch, getting off a tram. But it was never her. He didn’t blow the impression she had made on him out of proportion; he often allowed himself to fantasize about women he hardly knew, rewrote scripts for which in real life he had neither time nor courage. It was one thing for his cock to dive into the hole of an appetizing thirty-year-old, another to wrestle with questions about whether the sex would lead anywhere.
    Jonathan’s principles, too, acted like a bucket of cold water. He was too young for a bit on the side; that was fine for old men needing to invigorate themselves or bores with the mentality of elderly pensioners. Women found him attractive; he’d had quite a few before Megi and knew he could have one at any time. And even though monogamy wasn’t easy, when fantasies of other women – or the women themselves – became too pressing, he repeated Stefan’s maxim: “If you can’t knock her up, forget her’. In his case, “can’t” had meant “didn’t choose to.”
    As for an honorable attitude to a woman who belonged to another man, he had to admit that abstract male honor stood on a par with the fear of catching HIV.
    When he saw Andrea, real in the light of day, he assured himself it was the sight of a familiar face that made him happy. As a seasoned traveller, he believed that a new place only became home when you bumped into people you knew on the street. And there – a few weeks and he was already meeting someone!
    She noticed him, stopped hesitantly.
    “Jonathan,” he jogged her memory. “We met …”
    “I remember. Fairy tales – and a creative writing course.”
    She was wearing a pale blouse and a skirt with a slit that aroused his imagination.
    “A croissant, please.” She leaned over to the salesgirl.
    “A croissant at twelve?” he asked. “Isn’t it time for something more substantial?”
    “I’m just off to lunch. I’ve got to eat something before.”
    “You must be going