White Love is Love

His Uber touched the roof of the Waldorf. He felt the vibration of the vehicle cease as the driver turned to nod his thanks and the doors automatically opened with a hiss.

“Mr. Domino.” A doorman uttered his fake name with a bow.

“Is the penthouse ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

He passed the baroque doors into a decadent lobby. In the middle of the room, a stone Persephone frolicked under the protection of a bronze Hades. Water spewed from his hands instead of fire. The clerk behind the desk nodded his acknowledgment as Mr. Domino disappeared behind a private door. The penthouse was one floor beneath the lobby, accessible by a private staircase.

He entered a large, scarcely furnished sitting room. One wooden dining table, wooden chairs, a white couch, and white curtains gave the room a mid-20th-century pre-modern aesthetic. A small frame stood in front of the window. He crossed the room quickly towards her and embraced her from behind.

He felt her melt into his embrace as he covered her neck and shoulders with kisses. She turned around to face him, and he lowered his face within a centimeter of hers. The moment before the kiss was better than the kiss. His eyes were slitted open so he could watch her long eyelashes, cheeks that grew increasingly rosy, tendrils of brown hair that escaped a prim bun and graced her almond shaped face.

“You are so beautiful.”

“I am plain like you.”

“Nothing about you is plain.”

Every slight movement was magnified in the stillness. Barely touching her was his favorite place to be. Afterwards, when they were in a lover’s embrace, the guilt and shame of breaking the law would cover them as a cloud, but now, when he still had the power to walk away, the infinitely small space between them was charged with electricity. He wished he could stay in that second forever, like the adulterers doomed to be in one another’s embrace for all eternity in Dante’s inferno. He found his paradise in hell. She was his morality loophole. When she was this close to him, he couldn’t feel the burden of right or wrong. Morality burned away by strikes of lightning. The static electricity between their skin singed away their armor, and then their resolution.

“You are my Garden of Eden.”

Her eyes snapped open. She pulled away from him sharply. “Shhh! You know it’s wrong to blasphemy.”

“I don’t care.” Silence.

“I don’t care!” He repeated to himself, slightly louder.

“I care,” she whispered.

He felt her body go limp in his arms. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her and bent his knees to bear her weight, walked her two steps to a white armchair and placed her gently between its arms. He fell to his knees before her. “You are a good person. You are a beautiful, kind, loving person.”

Tears slid silently down her cheeks. “I am not a bigot. I love children. I love them so much.”

“I know you do, you have such a big heart.”

She stared at him intently with glassy eyes. “We could adopt.”

His blue eyes locked with hers.

“We could flee the country disguised as a exporter and his wife. I will wear head scarves, and we will adopt babies from the orient.”

Her beautiful ivory complexion reminded him of fresh linen, sunlight shining through clouds, and the soft petals of a lily. “Cream and coffee makes everyone happy. Milk and cream is only milk’s dream.” A government maxim turned schoolhouse riddle echoed in his mind. He cupped her face with a blue-veined hand. “You would be a wonderful mother.”

That’s when eternity ended. A boom, and a crash, and within a few moments they were surrounded by police. “Hands up! Put your elitist hands where I can see them, supremacist.”

He stayed where he was, slowly lifted his hands above his head. He never took his eyes off her. Now they were both crying silently, but they never looked away. This would be his last chance to look into her eyes. “I love you,” he mouthed.