"I want to show you something," said Mary.
It may have been the fact that she had spent her night off out enjoying great food and a bottle of good red with her old friend that she saw once a year. It may have been that she had her hair down, and eyes were smokier than she wore to work. It may have been that she wore a long shift dress in the colour of Shiraz with seed beads stitched on front and it flowed like drink around her legs.
It could have been that they were alone and in her place of worship. Or it perhaps was just instinct.
Mary reached for his hand, and caught it quickly like grasping a soft newborn animal. She was not the Mary that wore black to work and greeted guests with a smile that came easily but held no depth of her soul.
She felt young again, and a tingling hint of excitement stirred in the pit of her stomach. But she was not the young girl that had rebelled against her family and made choices that she felt she was paying still today, professionally and personally. The caution and schooled habit of an older Mary knocked like the dull drum that they were, reverberating in her mind.
But not quite reaching her heart.
Mary led Matthew around past the mahogany bar toward the locked interior front doors. Their hands still joined, both incredibly aware and tuned into the connection.
She stopped a handful of steps from the epic doors with curved door handles, at the nook just inside the entrance, and the quietness of the night enveloped them.
Her eyes wanted to seek the comfort of knowing that he stood next to her and yet also under her skin. The essence of his life seeped through her pores by osmosis, invading her pulse, causing and giving her reason to want to live outside this family soaked institution.
"I probably should have shown you this the first week you were here. But I always love to see the surprise when I do this…." She pressed her free hand, palm down, on a panel of wood, not unlike all the others covering the wall in the entrance hall, but one, directly under a gilded frame of a painted landscape.
Mary saw his eyes open wider as the crack in the wall widened and the panels moved to form the shape of a door. Her grin grew unhindered across her face at his open mouthed expression of disbelief as she finally unveiled the secret passage.
"Edith mentioned something of the sort. But I completely forgot to bring it up after she said I needed to ask you." He stood rooted to the spot, either from not wanting to break their connected hands or being completely dumbstruck.
Mary subconsciously knew the seconds of time ticking past would soon see them having to break apart, but also the timer on the open door demanded immediate focus. She pulled him through the panelled door just as she heard the faint hiss of the mechanism release to close it behind them.
Matthew and Mary stood side-on facing each other, squashed in the very narrow passage, the fluorescent lights flickering with unreality, only bright enough to see clearly down to where the passage tuned sharply. The door behind them locked with a click and Mary felt her heart jump at the sound.
She had rarely allowed herself to be put into a situation where her physicality of being alone with a man may have been misconstrued. And then there was the tiny woman in her brain screaming for this very moment with Matthew.
Her lungs breathed the same air as he did. Her skin felt the charge between them in the ozone that lit up his eyes like swirling glacial melt. The sound of Matthew licking his lips dragged her eyes to hover over them before coming up to see the question in his eyes.
She read it, as she read him, like a poem on thick velum paper. The tenderness that she saw laying there made her physically ache. With hibernated desire, with undisclosed care, with hope of what new promises might offer.
And the practical side of Mary kicked in and burst almost all the dreams that floated around the periphery.
They moved at the same time. He to angle his head as he leant forward ever so slightly, and she who raised her arm that had held his hand. Her middle fingers ghosted across his lips, stilling his movement as he realised they would never connect.
The echo of her fingertips tickled into his soul.
"I'm sorry." Her neck muscles worked to swallow. "I can't." The pause in her sentence weighed heavily with all that she wanted to say, but knew she couldn't yet. Nevertheless she conceded a little more with the beseeching look in his eyes. "I've already made that mistake once."
The walls around them felt smaller than they actually were, the pressures of past lives and current possibilities enclosing them both in the dead of night.
"Mary. I…"
"Please Matthew." She shook her head as her eyes cast down, her voice breathless. "We work well together." And I need to make sure that is all.
Yes. We do. He wondered if she comprehended that the words she spoke held more than the obvious meaning. And we would.
There was a conviction to his thoughts, a strength not born from previous experience, but one of recognition to finding a lost piece of one self. The feeling he was sure had been there all along, but it was at this moment that Matthew allowed the creeping dawn of understanding flow over his heart. The pale light, the colour warm like a zinfandel, dispersed from within and spread through the veins to his extremities. He felt drunk, and yet fully in control.
He saw the shadows play across her face, the muscles on her forehead rippling with emotion. The shade of her eyes caught the storm, her makeup accentuating the depth, and he wanted to brush back the long dark curtain of hair that fell across her face like a shield.
"Mary…." His whisper permeated her clouds inside. "I didn't mean…"
She cut him off before there was more talk of an already too much disclosed possibility. The slightest shake of her head pushed the air between them away.
"Come, we have limited time to exit."
As she turned down the corridor her dress billowed out behind her, reminding Matthew of women that inspired Greek literature. Of Goddesses and tragedy, and passionate love, which also pulled his thoughts to the first night they had met. She had been uniformed in black then, and tonight she pulsed alive before him in colour. Dark red as blood, as wine and the soft velvety edges of rose petals.
Mary flowed through his veins like that: life giving, intoxicating and all that reminded him of the possibilities of love. He was drunk on her, refreshed by the clarity that he saw behind her façade and challenged by the warrior she had maintained on the outer. And even as he walked down the thin corridor and turned sharply to see a door at the other end, the swell of frustration he felt as a man was overridden by the respect that Mary had seen and counteracted to what could be potentially problematic in their working livelihoods.
This dance around the dinner table that was the entity of their lives.
Their pirouette of love.
He surged forward to match her increasing speed, sensing her urgency. One of her hands swept in an arc as they rushed to the door, her arm indicating the alarm panel on the wall with insistent blinking red lights, just as she pulled the bar to open their escape.
"The alarm," she started as she swept them into a quiet side street beyond the restaurant. They jerked to a sudden stop after the momentum of being chased by their desires. Both turned to see the nondescript outer door close with a thick thud, locking behind air heavy with hunger.
Mary had to swallow hard to continue, forcibly calming the beating pulsing in her ears before she continued. "The alarm only allows a five minute window of use of either door. Before it resets and can only be used once every fifteen minutes."
She tilted her head to softly caress his face with her smoky eyes. The smile that played at the edges of her mouth looked apologetic.
Matthew licked his lips responding to what lay between them, "I am not sure I would have lasted another fifteen minutes. We may have…."
"Live life not with regret, but with measured understanding." She broke into his sentence, really not wanting him to imply that it may have been a mistake, had they allowed themselves.
"Sounds like a quote from a wise prophet?" And he chuckled at her succinct ability to deflect.
"Granny actually. She said it to me a long time ago."
Her eyes rose skyward searching for another kind of wisdom, or strength from the boundless energies of the universe.
"Do you need a ride?" She gestured to a row of cars down the street.
"No, I have my bike." He indicated his helmet and pulled it off his bag twisting it in his hands. "And Mary….thank you. For coming tonight and saving me. Really." The scuff of his shoes on the pavement showed his discomfort.
Her shoulders straightened, and her eyes flashed the all too familiar stance of Mary, and whilst his demeanour reminded her of an awkward school boy, she felt compelled to lighten their goodbye. "Let me remind you Mr Crawley that I have no intention of forgetting that you owe me a favour. And I will make sure that it will be recouped at the most inconvenient time possible for you. Mark my words."
Their banter often incited laughter, and he let it rumble in his chest at the thought of Mary deliberately plotting her revenge. "I am sure you will." They both smiled at the unspoken treaty between them. "May I walk you to your car?"
"It's fine, thank you Matthew. It's just here. And I have been alone in these streets more times than I have been hit on, on the dance floor."
She turned to leave, a solitary figure in the quietness of the night, her feet heavy with lost dreams, and yearning tugging on her dress. If she turned, would he be….No, her armour kept her spine straight and the rigidity would not allow her neck to crane a fleeting glance.
The flames whooshed thunderous amounts of fire into the air on the other side of the building, pillars of light from monolithic stone forms that lined the Promenade and marked the hour. The golden flash illuminated her retreating form, causing a camera flash effect on Matthews eyeball's, burning the image of her leaving into his heart. But the thought was too much for him and pushing it aside he sought to stay her departure if only briefly, calling to her.
"The alarm code Mary? You didn't tell me what it was?"
Her laughter tweaked his ears before he saw her twist, hair waving in the movement, and her hips sweeping the material of her dress like a splash.
"Four letters. Think Queens and battles and something almost out of your reach!"
Almost.