Silent Affairs (Part 1)

He matched the seat number with the ticket and sat down nervously, still unsure why he chose to attend her performance. He didn’t want her to recognize him, after all, he worked so hard to erase her from his mind with hopes that she had done the same. Her words were clear in the last letter, “I’ve written to you 17 times in the last year with no reply from you. I think maybe I did something to make you angry, I don’t know what, but I’m sorry. Happy birthday. I wish you the best in life. “

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, however, his presence was well justified. His job required traveling all over the world, and by chance, sent him to Italy where she happened to live. Moreover, it was a Friday night and he had nothing better to do than tour the place, so if he happened to purchase a ticket to an opera there was nothing unusual or concerning about it. If the justification was good enough for the rest of the world, it was good enough for him. If only. Questions such as why he spent eleven days before his departure from Canada to locate the city, time and place of her performance and ordered the ticket as soon as he stepped on the Italian soil; or why he fought with the ticket vendor for thirty minutes for the front-center seat and paid three times the cost to the original owner of the seat, remained unanswered.

(Contd...)