And No Roses for Ivana

But instead of roses, after several months, he popped up with a brunette. He offered her a threesome without ado. Ivana accepted both because of curiosity and because she didn’t want to discredit him in front of the other. He was a nice guy – didn’t try to lie to her.

After they finished and sent off the brunette (nobody remembered her name anyways), under the shower, Ivana told him that next Thursday she would arrange the threesome. Bye. Bye. And no roses!

On Thursday, when he rang the doorbell, a long-haired, smoothy-shaved young man, at least ten years younger than him, opened.

“Do you like my choice” – called Ivana from the bedroom.

She heard the front door shut and she got it that this relationship was over.

She was without a man for some time. She didn’t feel like having sex. For the first time, she was feeling odd. She didn’t know exactly how, but she felt something was missing.

After a few weeks the emptiness grew deeper and deeper. She tried with one or two, but it didn’t lead to anything. For the first time it didn’t work out in the bed. She just didn’t like it. She couldn’t turn herself on. She was annoyed and asked herself whether she was becoming frigid. She waved the thought away with her hand, wrapped her housecoat close about her and poured herself a good deal of bourbon.

After a few more weeks she saw that she couldn’t concentrate. Small things made her nervous. A pencil dropped by a colleague. The blunt jokes of one of the many taxi drivers. The queues in the shop. She started forgetting the dates which she was supposed to pay her bills: electricity, water, phone, mobile phone, cable, Internet.

She was 33, a long way off from the warm and cold waves, the cool streams of life. But for the first time she was out of control and she couldn’t answer why.

Ivana who had a ready answer to everything understood that there are questions without an answer. Was this middle-age?

It was then when Ivan appeared.

He was past the forties, but looked 30-35. Ivana was wrong about a man’s age for the first time. But recently there were too many things happened to her for the first time. She asked herself whether she was not turning back into that childish country who was raped the very first time she went to a disco. She had erased that from her memories, but there it came out, suddenly.

She saw him on the street: short hear, slightly streaked with gray, warm eyes with only just noticeable veinlets around them, a straight nose, thick lips and tight, prolonged thighs. Ivana dropped the portfolio with projects which she carried under her armpit and when she bent to pick it up, she was overwhelmed by his hands. She had dreamed of such hands: strong, with long, straight fingers and nicely shaped fingernails. Ivana desired these hands.

But when Ivan handed her portfolio, she felt, for the first time, she didn’t know what to say to him, her mouth locked with nine k