Woman in the Painting: A Short Story |

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THE young woman was lying on a bed with white sheets. She was not sleeping because her round eyes stared ahead with a look of interest as if there was something interesting ahead. Her lips showed a thin smile that was almost invisible. A smile as mysterious as the Mona Lisa. Her left hand supported her head. Some of her long curly hair hung forward and covered part of her right chest. The rest was covered by a pillow that she hugged and held between her thighs. In such a state, it was not visible whether she was wearing underwear or not. Only she herself knew, or the person who had immortalized her in the painting.

I often imagined that there were several other people in front of the woman and I was often tormented by my thoughts. I asked myself, whether the torment was born from love or the selfish urge of a man who did not want others to enjoy the woman he considered his lover.

When I found myself being jealous, I reminded myself that such feelings should not arise. First, there was nothing between us, or there was nothing yet even without a declaration we could be called a couple. He called me “uncle” because my best friend was his mother’s younger brother.

Second, I was married and had two children. Jealousy was a thing of the past, now was the time to build a career for the future of myself and my family, hopefully useful for others. Lastly, the painting was part of his past so if he finally became mine and I became his, I still couldn’t be jealous of a time when I wasn’t present in his life.

The ringing phone reminded me that this was my last moment with the oil painting. I already knew who was calling without having to see the name on the screen. Time and my heart told me the identity of the caller, besides the ringtone.

“Yeah…?”

There were only two hours left before the day changed. And that was more than enough to finish my time with the painting.

“Is uncle with her?”

I hadn’t heard that voice for a week. He forbade me to contact him after our relationship was full of conflict in the last few weeks. We had arguments ranging from trivial to serious issues. Then he came up with the idea that we should not communicate with each other for a week. He called it “hibernation” for our week-long communication break. He didn’t say what we should do during that time. I’m sure he wanted us to use that time to introspect.

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“I’m not sure I can last a week.”

During the four months of our closeness, there was not a day that I went through without communicating with him. Sometimes he would send short messages to remind me to do routine activities that I could never forget, such as lunch. He rarely reminded me to have breakfast, maybe because he could make sure I was with my family. The first three months we spent were full of intimacy even though it was only through short messages, email, WA, or telephone.

We also spent our three meetings with intimacy like a pair of teenagers who were falling in love for the first time in their lives. However, the three weeks in the fourth month we spent like a married couple approaching their divorce. Our relationship was entering its most critical period because we had talked about serious things that were all contrary to the existing reality.

She considered me as her future husband, but I had not responded to her even though I did not mind the title. While I wanted to spend time together without any embellishments and leave the decision entirely to time, which for her was considered an irresponsible man's attitude.

"A week won't be long. With Uncle's busyness at the office, a week is like a day."
I have been busy since I met her and she knows me. However, it was that busyness that later made it possible for us to meet. In the last four months, I have always been assigned to go to Jakarta so that we could meet. In fact, for the last month I had to stay in Jakarta to attend training to become a branch office manager in the region.

We also had our fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth meetings, and so on. At first I thought that closeness would make our relationship more intimate, but it turned out that we had to hibernate to make us able to go through sweet days like before.

"I won't be able to. Let alone a week, I won't be able to even do it for a day. You forget, all this time we have never stopped communicating even for a day."

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To be continued...