A Touch of Red

Where Elaine was, a glass of wine wouldn’t be too far away. She was fortunate enough to have married a man who, shortly after the honeymoon six months ago and as per his sudden job promotion, would often leave her to her own devices while he took luncheons and met business associates here and there, across the country, and sometimes even further away. It was over a glass of fine red Rioya, aged more than a decade, that she had fallen in love with the man. Initially. Upon the first night she had spent in his Suite 719 she had realized that his bottle collection consisted of barely a dozen flavors mixed in with about two dozen empties waiting to be returned. Nonetheless, Elaine’s senses perked up, as she would savor the potential she’d sipped in each and every taste.

Where Elaine found herself, she would never hesitate to refill her glass, and where Elaine found herself was never too far away. Upon that first morning after she had spent that first night with her soon to be fiancé in Suite 719, had she entered into the hallway and immediately took notice of the taller, younger and more handsome neighborly-boy-next-door kissing his wife goodbye. Elaine fumbled with her pockets as the wife marched past; and as the elevator door slammed shut not one thought had occurred to her that the two would still be matching each other’s curiosity, eye for eye.

Ah yes, wherever Elaine found herself, a glass of wine was always nearby. Always refilled and always ready for a good time…

It just happened that on that last sunny afternoon of this past month she'd had maybe a bottle too much. The lipstick smeared and half-finished glass was left clumsily alone—on top of the living room table in Suite 721. And when Stephen’s wife of almost twenty years came home early from work that Thursday afternoon and found her unemployed husband exhausted and asleep, she shocked him into consciousness, curiously intrigued.

My roommate told me this as she'd just happened to be leaving Suite 720—where she by now has spent several afternoons enwrapped within her own scandaloucious affair (sneaky, sneaky)—and was witness to the various thuds and bangs from next door before the door itself swung open. A fully nude and drunk Stephen, whom she had once, at the mailboxes, and just that once, met before, was thrown out of his suite by none other than his angry wife, whom my roommate had never met before.

The wife called him a liar, several times, loud enough for anyone on the seventh floor to hear. While she worked all day, he pleaded, it was customary of him to sit and drink wine in the nude, and secretly try on different shades of red for that added, special flair. The wife threw her own lipstick at him and it bounced off his bare chest, rolled to my roommate’s feet. The door slammed shut. The lock loudly bolted.

The pounding on Suite 721’s door echoed down the halls as my roommate made her way downstairs before her own affair’s ‘other’ returned back home.

Elaine, in the meantime, was no party to this at all. Where Elaine was—two doors down—was passed out on her living room floor. It would not be until late that evening that she would finally learn of what had come undone. Upon leaving Stephen’s apartment, her hands were full with not just the remainder of her clothing, but also with the empty bottles they had (well, mostly her) drunk over bad daytime talk shows and even worse take-out lunch. The whereabouts of the glass did not even occur to her; in fact she didn’t even need it. Drinking out of the bottle was easier for where she lay, snoring away the rest of the day.


Ldm