Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven Page A

yellow, blue and the sexual beat of a drum. He felt an unexplained nervousness for the first time in his life. She was bellydancing in mango scent, candle hue and mosquitoes. As fast as she was moving, he was transfixed by the sweat rolling down her stomach. Lena liked the hot climate, like him, and after they made love, they would sleep in the hammock on the deck, wake up with mosquito bites.
    They still made love like teenagers, with the audacity to try something new.
    Sweat was forming on the top of Janet’s lip. The car was rolling forward of its own accord, she wasn’t in control. She could almost see the peak of the mountain.
    They’d met again in Brisbane, in a professional context, though at a vulnerable time in each of their lives. Charlie and Lena’s child had just started school. Janet had never gotten over him, and it must have been obvious in the way she looked at him in their meetings at a West End cafe. They worked late, found ways to linger. They grew closer than they had before without being physical. One night he showed up at her door, rain trickling in behind him and she knew, as he knew, what could happen. She didn’t want it to be this way.
    She reasoned with him. ‘You have a beautiful wife, a beautiful child. What are you doing here?’
    Trying to get closer, he said, ‘Things won’t feel resolved for me unless you kiss me. Kiss me and that will be enough.’ But as soon as he said it, they both know that it was not true. That the kiss would only open up the mass of feelings and turn those feelings into actions.
    ‘I can’t,’ she said.
    His eyes locked into hers, he showed her his desperation. He took a step up, his chest forward, a hand in his dreads, keeping them from his face. The rain had soaked his sleeves. The necklace moved against his neck, closer to her. And then her words must have sunken in, he remembered himself – let his hair go, and she saw the back of him as quickly as he had come at her. He strode away with a flat stride, detached from the pace of the increasing rain. The swagger had gone.
    She wondered what would have happened if she had let him in, if they had started the affair. Just one touch, his hand in hers, a thumb to her lips and she would have lost her objections. She didn’t want to be the other woman, but she was never anything else.
    She knew the woman Charlie had married was an exotic dancer with browned skin, flowing hair. Why would Charlie bother with a plain Jane like her, when he could go to the Greek islands every day of the week? Lena enjoyed life. From Charlie she knew Lena found vitality in music, was creative, pursued things to abandon, could be like a child. Janet could never do that. She was too serious, too aware, especially of herself.
    Still, she remembered the intelligent conversations about art, politics and philosophy they’d had in the brief times they were together.
    ‘Whatcha reading?’ he would say as he came up to her in the cafe, planting a kiss on her cheek, close to the lips.
    He was shaped by his parents. He said about his father: ‘He was from a rich family. But they gave him away when he married his own kind. They raised him white and the moment he remembered he was black, the moment he tried being himself they left him.’ About his mother: ‘The strongest woman I’ve ever met. She would do anything for us.’
    Charlie was the youngest, and both women would agree about one thing – he had been spoilt rotten by his mother and his sister, Irma. Janet teased he hadn’t learnt to wash himself, except in the sea.
    When he talked about being a spokesperson for his mob he often said, ‘My ancestors died for me to have this right.’
    Janet felt a warmth spread across her hands just from listening to him talk. He was so passionate about his family history, and he had great, wild ideas. He’d look at her like they were going to change the world together.
    Gary, on the other hand, was kind, but not wanting. He was, like her, driven