Keeping silent is the only way..

I was occupied with flagrant thoughts of my own prophesized damnation when, thank goodness, he caught my attention again.

"You're dressed differently today." He said, as a matter of fact, looking at my dress with some perceived interest.

It caused me to skim down along the lengths of my dress. I did not think he wanted an answer. It was a statement.

His eyes were on the embroidery of red poppy flowers at the edges of the sleeves and bodice of my otherwise pastel blue dress. I had dressed down today because yesterday he had made comments about my little black dress restricting my movement while sitting straight up on his bed. I neither knew if it was a sarcastic remark nor one in which he made with empathy, or perhaps with no innuendo intended. I had to keep myself in check from plunging too deeply into his emotions, trying to analyse them as if it were scripture. He was like opium fuelling my desperation to be free of something.

Despite that, in my standard formal tone, I asked "How are you, Mr. Boardmann?"

"I'm so pleased to see you again. I know I made a good offer, but I did not know for sure if you would accept. I had made you upset last night and I was quite sure that I would never see you again." He said.

Why was he making so many statements today? Or could it be that he was not? I had already gone into stealth mode and made every emotion brew with double meanings when it was that simple. I kept silent. It was the only way I knew how to deal with his dispassionate statements which betrayed not an inkling of emotion. I did not quite know how to react when I heard no subtle cues which could bring me within the periphery of his emotional compass.

I should have liked to gravitate my answers towards what I thought were well-suited and as honest as it could be by matching this emotional undertone. With my other clients, I had managed to read their emotions and they could always count on my empathy towards them. They felt that I had understood them. It was fulfilling somewhat. My goal was to relate to clients. Sex came easier when they warmed up towards me.

But Mr. Boardmann was in a league of his own. In addition to his current emotionless statements, he had displayed a variety of strong emotions in the course of the two nights. It was a behemoth ordeal to get a hold of those emotions quickly enough before he transfixed himself onto a different emotion. He was so unpredictable that I could not get a grip of anything long enough to feel comfortable with it, even with those positive ones.

I bore the brunt of his stronger emotions and they were painful for me to bear. But what of he who had borne it? His burden must have been tenfold heavier. Oddly, I was transported back to a saying from my youth. It was a Malay proverb used by social workers to describe our situation, lived underground, bearing the illegal nature of it in a populous Muslim country.