Silver

Chapter 63 - then

I had to wait until the winter to see Jarvis again. There had been a few clandestine emails and maybe three phone calls in between, but it wasn't nearly enough to satiate my hunger. He'd been sent to Melbourne to oversee the installation of one of Van Darger's sculptures on the banks of the Yarra River. He had to work all day Friday, but he'd arranged to stay the whole weekend at a hotel in the city. I met him there Friday night.

My heart was throbbing with his name when I knocked softly on his door. He answered straight away. He was wearing dark pants, and a soft white cotton shirt, unbuttoned to his chest and bare feet. We hardly said hello, but found ourselves lying on the queen-sized bed, on our sides, staring at each other, like something so precious we were afraid it would shatter if we spoke. He weaved his fingers through mine, lifted them to his lips and kissed my fingers gently. A tear sparkled at the edge of his eye.

'One word,' he said, finally. 'Symbiotic.'

'What?'

'I've been thinking this all the time. Our relationship ... it's symbiotic. I depend on you for survival.'

My heart grew a peacock feather and it tickled me with emerald greens and aqua blue.

'I almost know what you're thinking,' he continued, 'I can feel when you're down, when you need me. I can feel things from Sydney. You're going to think that I'm crazy.'

'No, I'm not,' I said. 'I love hearing this.'

'We've got this intense connection, it's out of this world. People wouldn't believe me if I even tried to tell them about it. Like the other day, when you emailed me out of the blue, I'd just woken up from a sweet dream about you. Or when you said sometimes you sense when I'm thinking about you. And even this conversation, I feel like we've had it before. It's like we live in this abstract reality together. Oh, I'm not making any sense ... it makes more sense in my head ...'

'No, no ... I know what you mean. The other day, I was lying in bed, in that waking up moment. And you appeared like this vision in front of me, and you looked really pale and skinny, wearing navy blue and I log on ... and I do this sometimes, I check out your work's website, and there's a new photo of you in the studio, wearing dark blue overalls, up a ladder working on a mould of that giant megaphone. It's like I imagined it before I saw it.'

'Two weeks ago, I knew that you were sick. I had this feeling in my stomach and I knew something was up with you. And then you told me how you'd passed out at school. Are you okay?'

'I'm fine. But Alistair knows about the colour thing. I'd rather he didn't.' I thought about telling him about the diapers, but there was something so embarrassing about being married to a grown baby, that I couldn't bring myself to say it.

'Let's run away together,' Jarvis said. His voice was a gear faster than usual. 'I'll leave Nina. I don't care. I'll leave her with everything, the apartment, our furniture, our car. You and I can get some money together somehow. We'll work hard. You can design a house for us. We'll call it Sylvie's White House, or Casa Blanca, just so it sounds more exotic. You've always said that you love white houses. I'll make a series of bronze sculptures for the back garden. We'll plant silver leaved plants and they'll look amazing against the bronze. I've been thinking about it all.'

'But I haven't even finished school. How will we live? Where will we get money from? You'll lose your job.'

'I haven't worked that bit out yet. I just know that I need to be with you all the time. We're two different organisms, but we need to be together to survive.' His eyes were searching mine for answers. But I had no answers, only questions to how would we truly live. It was fine to say we'd get money, but from where? We may need each other to live, but how would we eat, what would we do? Our families and friends would shun us. We'd have nothing except each other. Would that be enough?

Is love enough? Love can't feed, can't shelter, can't provide. It can light one's heart aflame, give one joy, it can caress one's soul. Yet love alone can't sustain two people. And without those other things, without a roof over one's head, without heating in winter, without food to eat, love could turn to soot.

'What are you thinking?' he asked.

'I love you, you know that. We have to be practical. I don't know where we'd find money from. It's tough out there. I met a lady the other day, her husband, he used to be one of us, but he left his first wife and now his life is miserable. He went from working at a high-profile job, to working at the local pub. He's got no job security, he's depressed all the time. I don't know if I want to live like that. I mean, I don't want to live like I am with Alistair either. We're trapped. You and I are both trapped. I don't know how we can get out together. I'd love to. You know that I'd love to. But we have to be sensible. We have to wait for a time when we can both escape with some sort of security. Like maybe when I've finished university and I'm working finally ... I can save some money secretly ...'

'I can't breathe when I'm with Nina. She walks into the room and I feel as though there's someone with their hands around my neck strangling me. I'm serious. She has this affect on me now. What's it like with Alistair?'

'We live two completely separate lives. We avoid each other. He sticks to his space, I stick to mine. We can go for days without even seeing each other in our small apartment.'

'Wow, that sounds like heaven. Nina's not like that at all. She's in my face all the time. It's suffocating. She's so demanding. She wants so much from me. She wants to have her friends over and for me to act a certain way, she takes me to work dinners and wants to dress me beforehand, like I'm some doll of hers. Then we drive home and she tells me all the things that I did wrong in front of her boss. She hasn't got a creative bone in her body. And I haven't got a corporate thought in my mind. We're like two aliens. I don't care for money, or status, or driving a top model car. I want to live a creative life. We want completely different things.' He took a deep breath. 'Oh Sylvie, I'm sorry. I didn't want to lay all this on you. I don't want to put pressure on you. We'll do what we both feel right doing ... And I can wait. I'll be patient, I promise you. I won't make you do anything until it feels right for you. Oh ... I'm such a bastard, make me stop talking.'

Words slink away downstairs, and were replaced with fingertips and lips. We undid buttons and zips, a bra strap, and then it was just us and the white sheets contorting and resting until the morning.