Free Illegal Liaisons by Grazyna Plebanek

celebrations.
    “Even with Aunt Barbara,” he repeated after her.
    “Shhh, they’ll realize we’re not asleep.” She put her hand over his mouth just as Adelka’s face appeared in the door.
    “Magda dear, where is the colander with the small holes? So, off in forty minutes, are we?”
    Adelka found Grand Place small while Robert paid no attention to the buildings because he was telling Jonathan about the sick system of promoting employees in his bank.
    “If he got a new Toyota Picasso at the start why can’t I choose a car? Why do I have to drive around in what’s practically a wreck?”
    “Look at this Art Nouveau building.” Megi indicated the narrow building with windows shaped like portholes covered in seaweed.
    “It must be dark in there,” Adelka pondered. “Italy’s got better ones but you can’t really live in them either. Stucco’s all well and good but I need a new bathroom. Oh, I didn’t tell you in the end about the tiles Robert’s found for our kitchen! You know how much they cost?”
    “There’s a very good café here. Shall we go for a coffee?” Jonathan suggested, catching his wife’s grateful eye.
    They returned from dinner just before midnight. Jonathan avoided the tunnels so as to show his guests the Avenue Louise lit up.
    “Chanel,” squealed Adelka in the back. “And Dior!”
    “That’s all women think about,” muttered Robert, leaning over to Jonathan. “So when are you going back?”
    “In about ten minutes?”
    “I’m talking about your country.”
    “Poland? But we’ve only just left!”
    “You’re right, must make some money to take back with you.”
    “I don’t want to go back,” Jonathan let slip. “Well, certainly not now anyway.”
    “Look, Adelka, Tommy Hilfiger.” Megi’s voice reached them.
    “Well, brother, you’re lucky your wife brought you here, then,” Robert said, bridling.
    When they got back, the babysitter, exhausted with looking after the three children, needed someone to drive her home.
    “I’ll go,” Jonathan was quick to volunteer.
    He dropped the girl at the seedy end of rue Dansaert, which was famous for its expensive shops, and turned back to the city center. His cell beeped – he was to be in Ixelles within ten minutes. He made a sharp turn right.
    He’d be late coming home. What would he tell his wife? He’d think of something. That there was a traffic jam. Or a detour. That he’d got lost – after all, he didn’t know the city all that well yet. “Sorry, Megi, I got lost,” he repeated as he sped over the limit to Andrea.
    On Sunday, Megi drove their guests to the airport while Jonathan gave the children their supper and put them to bed. Once they were asleep he stretched out on the bed in the conjugal bedroom and gazed at the sky through the loft window. Two stars shone brightly, moved toward each other – no, they were airplanes.
    He closed his eyes. Last night’s quick rendezvous with Andrea, and then the next; lust pressed them more than time. She’d pulled a condom on to him, murmuring with feigned gravity, “Securing a condom is probably more effective on a cock that’s thicker at the base, not one shaped like a baseball bat.”
    They’d made love with such force she’d scratched his sides with her fingernails. With her, he discovered new depths of erotic imagination; he wanted things that had never entered his mind before. Instead of pinning reality down with “to do” notes, he jotted down ideas in his memory to try out with Andrea. She was his inspiration, so unremitting that he started to wear his shirts pulled out over his trousers in order to hide his frequent erections.
    The church bells chimed. They arranged to meet in churches because hardly anybody went there apart from them. The temples of their love. They would meet there and then go to her place. Even now, on hearing the bells, the head of his cock stirred gently in his trousers.
    He reached for his notebook to make some notes for his