Meet La Vellini and Strether

I first met La Vellini more than two years ago at a holiday party put on by the company we both worked for at the time. Her friend hit on me (I thought) as I was ascending the stairs dressed in a tuxedo. Not really my type. Certainly attractive, but not my type. Later in the evening I stepped outside. The friend was there, and so was La Vellini, wearing a mask that hid her entire face except for her eyes. From that first evening her eyes mesmerized me. They still do.

La vellini sat there. Not moving, revealing nothing except those eyes. I asked her her name.

Upon learning it I said,"Really?"mentioning an opera of the same name.

"Yes, the same," she replied. It's a name that carries a lot of weight. Hard to live up to, as Axel noted upon meeting her for the first time.

I pursued her, unsuccessfully, and felt foolishly shot down when eventually confessed her situation- she had been living with a man for more than twelve years.

There were hints, however, that a pursuit executed with a certain je ne sais quoi might yield results. And it did- but it took a year and a half and some fortuitous timing. My first, second, and third endeavors all met the same inglorious fate. Then one day, after attempts too numerous to mention without seriously damaging my male ego, something budged after a chance meeting. That's the thing about San Francisco- you will encounter everyone you've ever met here again. It may take some time, but whether you want to or not, you will. It's inevitable in such a small place.

However, positive as it may have seemed to me at time, in my heart I thought I would never be able to budge her from her perch. While she remained a bird in a gilded cage, I remained a man in search of a woman who could save me in a Jamesian sense.  Few may know what this means, but for those who do, you will intuitively grasp my attraction to this woman.

Soon after that she agreed to attend an opera with me and thus our affair began. The first time I had her in my bed I felt extremely fortunate, though I had no hopes it would happen a second time. I kept pursuing others, one Madame Merle in particular, who lives in NYC, who even at that great remove felt a more likely possibility than this woman who lived only two miles away. I considered Vellini to be married, even if no license existed, and knew from previous experience that while married women may talk a great deal about leaving their stale and sexless marriages, they rarely do so of their own volition. Instead they just have affairs with men like me and once they've satisfied their carnal desire, scratched the for awhile, they return to the secure fold. It's all so predictable.

After a fabulous but brief romance which took place in four cities in four months, Madame Merle and I imploded in a fury of melodrama and misunderstandings. I was devastated and drowned myself in a constant stream of bourbon. Through it all La Vellini was there as confidante and companion, acting the jealous woman at times, which I thought ridiculous as she would always leave me to return to her gilded cage upon the hill. I still had no illusions she was obtainable.

However, once Merle was cleared from the deck Vellini began to sing a different song. She wanted out of the cage, she said. Our relationship had caused her to realize what she had sacrificed for security and status and though she had come to grow dependent on these, she now longed for what she never had in her long-standing relationship- passion.

At first I took none of this seriously though Vellini sang a very pretty tune about what we could be like together. It was an appealing, tempting song but after seeing her cage one day when the bird keeper was away I realized it to be that of the siren, and if I gave in to it I was headed for another crash. I balked, ridden with insecurity, though in the end I found I couldn't keep away from her.

The siren kept calling.

Months passed and I kept waiting for the day she would announce to him she was going to leave, which she maintained was imminent, that she would stop leading a double life and I could have her to myself. I didn't want to possess her, but neither did I like always having to surrender her before I was ready. And I was never ready. I could never gain my fill of her.

Finally, after three delays and numerous obfuscations on her part, I realized we could go on forever like this, leaving me in a perpetual state of longing and frustration. I sensed it would eventually just end with her remaining where she was and I would be left wondering what could have been if only I could have convinced her to leave.

With nothing really to lose except the possibility of a relationship I'd always imagined yet never attained with a woman, I threw down the gauntlet and said she had 30 days to go or I would. the difficult part in all of this is that the current state of her life left her with few options. Jobless and in debt, it wasn't as if she could just walk through that door and easily start anew. I knew this. I understood this, yet I could no longer go on as it was. I didn't demand she leave the cage, but I insisted the double life end. How she achieved this was up to her, but I told her I would be pleased if she came to live with me. That I would love to wake up with her every morning. What I really wanted was to be able to fall asleep with her next to me. To be able to call her when I wished. To know that she was always available to me as I was always available to her.

Fast forward. As I write this it is day 28. Less than 48 hours remain and I do believe she's coming my way. It's messy. It's unfinished upon the hill, the birdkeeper remains largely in the dark about all of this and she's doing it all in a way I find problematic but how does one do this clean given the circumstances?  I would have done it differently, but I can't expect her to act like me. But I do believe this is actually going to happen. I'm filled with a sense of anticipation and a quiet dread it will all fall apart at the final moment when it was so close to being completed.

I'm leaving out so much, I know. But how do you condense 10 months of passion and desire into a single entry? A mug's game for sure, but know that I will backtrack and fill you in. The sex in public places, the stolen hours at lunch, the brief hours we had in my apartment, soon to be called ours, where we learned about one another. For some reason, because it feels like a novel to me, a film I'd want to watch, I feel the need to express it. To put it down and make it real in a place which exists beyond my mind.

I Strether, sit here alone waiting for her, as I have so many times, and yet this time it is different. For the endgame is under way and in just a short few hours she will be mine. There will actually be an "us." Or perhaps not. Then what? I refuse at this point to consider that possible outcome, though I know it still remains a possibility until she walks through that door on Saturday, thus changing my life, and hers, in ways neither of us can even begin to see from this vantage point. And the prospect of this thrills me. I'm ready.

I'm 48 years old and have lost count of the women I've been with. I have always been willing to walk away when I've realized there was something missing- until I met La Vellini, and I realized that I held out for this long in order to experience this. Her. It's just hours away.