Style 605796

He was hanging out a load of washing when he happened across them. There in his hand, small, black and slinky. Like thin rubber that was smooth to touch. He couldn’t recall her wearing them. Most of the underwear she wore was large and flesh coloured, the kind of things his aunt might wear. He hung them on the horse and finished the rest of the load. As always, he did the socks last, placing them on the bottom rungs. He returned the basket to the laundry but went back and picked them up again, stretching them out between his thumbs, rubbing the fabric in his fingers.

He walked through to the study. She was sitting at her computer, browsing. He stood in the doorway, holding the knickers up on an extended index finger. She swivelled.

“These new?” he asked.

She craned her neck to get a better look. “No. Got them a while back. Why?”

“Can’t remember seeing you in them,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow. “You like them?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I do.”

There was room between them, space for something good to happen. One of them just needed to slip into it. Instead, he was struck by a thought. The wrong thought.

“Hey, how come you don’t wear G-strings anymore?”

The twinkle left her eye. She stiffened in the chair.

“Well, they were never very comfortable,” she said.

“Oh … you used to wear them all the time.”

“Yeah? And you used to have a job.”

“I wasn’t having a go … I’m sorry,” he said, but the damage was done.

“Oh, fuck off Peter,” she said, turning back to the computer.

He took his leave. He tried to shut an intervening door, but the house had shifted so much on the clay foundation that some of the doors just couldn’t close anymore. The underpinning needed to be fixed again, the second time since they’d been there. The foundations would always move, the builder had said.

He went through to put the knickers back on the horse. He looked at them in his hand, read the printed-on label.

“Cotton On BODY
Size M 
Made in China
Style 605796
86% Polyamide 14% Elastane”

Peter looked out the window. A bee kept battering into the same square pane, over and over.

He thought of when he and his wife were young. Their first holiday, to Albany, and how they hardly left their motel room. The next year they went back but stayed at a bed and breakfast. For the experience. He had to put a hand over her mouth so the elderly owners couldn’t hear. He remembered the black dress she wore at his cousin’s wedding. After a few drinks they’d wandered off into the car park for some privacy.

“Here. This one here,” he said, when he came upon a blue sporty looking thing.

“Why this one?” she’d asked as she propped herself up on the bonnet with her hands.

“It’s a Suba-root,” he answered, and they laughed like boys.

He lost himself back there until his cheeks hurt. And his heart.

Polyamide and elastane. Just the right amount of each.