Neither House nor Home

Bob doesn’t know how it happened. One day they were laughing down at the pub, the next screaming at each other. She got their daughter, he got their cat (but he, of course, pays for both of them.)

There hadn’t been much time to contemplate life, leaving college halfway through his degree to help his father with the house building company. “That’s what we are,” said his father, in his stout Nottingham accent, “Builders of houses – homes – not some swanky developer putting old ladies out on the street or buying up dockland to build yuppie penthouses. Nay, lad. Remember that we are house builders and you won’t go far wrong.” And then he died, leaving the business to his son, who would rather have continued with his English Lit. degree, but there you are. One moment you’re discussing the meaning of life in student digs, the next you are watching your mother dress a corpse in his favorite tie and walking down an allée of doffed hard hats.

Sybil, the cat, is a comfort to Bob. He can come home any hour he chooses, connected as he is to the office via Internet. Often he returns mid-afternoon, picking up Sybil and holding her close to his nose, the soft white fur tickling his nostrils and making him long for human hair, soft hands, a silk wrap…

He doesn’t know how it happened – the Bulgarian women. He misguidedly went on a site that offered, "Meet your ideal match," and instead met Eleonora, and Leila, and Mira, who insist on sending him virtual teddy bears and satin hearts on Facebook. Gemma now, she’s a bit of all right. Boobs like ripe summer fruit and legs up to her armpits, but he doesn’t know how that happened either – South African women posting pictures of themselves in jaunty sailor outfits or in scanty dresses. He supposes there are a billion women out there who consider a 46 year-old property developer (“House builder, lad, house builder”) a good catch. Never mind that he sometimes gets caught up in the mystery that we are the only animals that can contemplate our mortality, that biology has produced Shakespeare and tears and a propensity for sunsets…

He opens his laptop to find “Alexandrina has sent you a kinky gift.” The economy must have dropped another couple of points in Bulgaria. Naturally, a kinky gift warrants a second look, but Bob doesn’t really go for the plucked and oiled curves of pornography. It’s like looking at motorbikes – all sleek molded perfection but cold and hard underneath.

He doesn’t know how it happened, how he became the Master of Kittylitter and the object of affection for skinny Bulgarian women sitting in Soviet era apartments in sunglasses and jeans. “Have my own tool belt,” he types onto the website, wondering if he might snag an English girl if he baits his trap with irony.