Decay

On his old, frail fingers, the smell of her private parts still lingered.

The old man sat hunched over his bowl of noodle. He dabbed his temple, then his neck, with a handkerchief. He ran his fingers through his balding hair. They were cold. So cold.

He looked at them. Under the dim light of the noodle bar, it amazed him how frail and wrinkly they looked, glistening at its corners with cold sweat from his balding head.

He wiped them with the piece of light blue cloth his wife gave him for Father’s Day. Light blue was his color, his wife said. He stared at it for a while. No — it was her color, not his. It had always been her color.

He wondered how much his wife understood him after all these years. How her reaction would be if she found out.

The voice of a woman called out his name.

He looked up. She was beautiful — very beautiful. Her thick brown locks betrayed the fact that she was of foreign descent. He thought it made her look like an angel.

“Y-yes,” he stammered. “Please, have a seat.”

Her red dress was cropped very short, and the sight of her thighs as she sat down gave him a guilty erection. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on other things.

Red was a color his wife would never wear, except on special occasions like the Chinese New Year. He wanted more red in his life. But all his wife could be was light blue.

She ordered her bowl of noodles, and together they ate and made small talks. He had prepared for the worst, but it was not as awkward as he had expected.

Yes, he thought. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.

His wife was one of those ladies. Frail, hunched over, always invisible. She was one of those ladies that was really not that old, but have yet somehow stopped living any kind of life worth talking about. She was the boring neighbor. The less attractive sister. The poor aunt. The forgotten family member outside of Christmas.

He had sacrificed so much for her. He wanted a thrill — just one thrill in his life. He wanted to paint his world red, to break free of the suffocating baby blue blandness where sex is never more than a chore.

And so he did.

They met through an online dating app. At first he just did it for the fantasy, no expectations of an actual affair — who would be interested in balding old men? But some, apparently, were. Most seemed to be bots or prostitutes, of course, but one caught his attention. They conversed and finally agreed to meet.

Hayakawa Noodle Bar, 8 p.m. on Friday.

“Overtime again,” he told his wife. “I’m sorry I can’t make it for dinner.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “I made you your favorite sweet and sour pork.”

He hung up.

He sat down on the foot of the bed, hunched over the way he does. He watched her undress in front of him.

“I’m sorry to hear about your marriage,” she said. By now they had connected so well that he’d told her everything. “It happens, sometimes.”

She leaned forward, and they began kissing.

He took off her underwear. It all happened much more naturally than he could have hoped. He had missed this feeling — sex without the pressure of it having to be over as soon as possible because his partner wanted to do more important things. Sex that is truly, genuinely red.

How long has it been?

After it all went down, he told her just as much.

“Me too,” she said. The wind made a whistling noise through her window pane. She was staring at the ceiling. It was eleven p.m.

“You’re probably wondering why I chose you, of all the men I could have been with,” she said again after a while. She rolled over and smiled. “I wanted to be with someone gentle.” It was a sad smile, he noticed.

“What do you mean?”

“My husband — he likes to look at me with this disgust, this suspicion,” she said. “It was a look that pierced me harder than anything, a look that hunts for the slightest sign that I might be lying, that I might be faking it, like an eagle hunting down her prey.

“And of course I was always faking it. How could I not, faced with such a gaze?” She was still wearing her tired smile. “Sometimes he would shake me, as if it was all my fault. Outside of the bed he would also grab me by the shoulders and shake me hard, whenever I didn’t… react the way he desired.”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know.” She rolled over and stared back at the ceiling. “I’m just… never good enough for him.”

“Does he…” He hesitated to ask. “…hit you?”

“Sometimes.” She shook her head, “Nothing too dramatic. But he always apologizes profusely afterwards. He always does that, after hitting or shouting at me or shaking the hell out of me. Tells me how sorry he is, how much he’s working on becoming a better person and that he needs me for it. All that bullshit, you know? He always does that.”

She gave a long sigh. “Men are often like that, you know? They treat you like shit, then apologize for it every time. And they’re good, most of the time. They seem like ideal partners, and everybody loves them — their bosses, their friends, their neighbors. And that’s the problem. Nobody would believe you when you tell them they would come home and snap, and start destroying everything.”

“I believe you,” he said.

She smiled. “Thanks.”

They were silent for a while, listening to the whistle of the wind.

“Why don’t you leave him?”

“Same reason you don’t leave your wife, I guess?” she shrugged. “You get too used to it. Comfort, I guess? The thought of bureaucratic hell and family drama of divorce. The kids.”

When he came home that night, it was almost 2 a.m. His wife had fallen asleep long before, sprawled on her side of the bed as usual. She passed gas loudly as he changed into his pajamas. She must be cold. He covered her with a blanket.

Without turning on the lights, he took out the sweet and sour pork from the fridge and reheated it in the microwave, then prepared himself some rice.

In a corner of their dark dining room, he sat and ate. On his old, frail fingers, the smell of her private parts still lingered.

This has been a short story by Bonni Rambatan. For more stories like this, please follow Pleasure & Pain, our Medium publication that explore the complex intricacies of love, sex, and relationships. To write for us, simply tweet the editor at @bonni07.

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