The buzzer rings, she gives me a soft kiss on the lips and goes down to open the door. By the time she has come back up with the man I will be safely in my place in the cupboard by the bed.
There it is dark with the doors shut but it is very snug and comfortable, I have cushions on the floor and I can curl up into the shape of the cupboard, and I am amongst her hanging clothes, dresses and trousers and shirts and coats, which all hold her scent and her own gentleness, against my face my eyes and my nose. I stay very quiet there and shut my eyes tight.
I can hear them in the sitting room, talking and laughter, wine and music, and the silences which are where they watch each other and where they kiss. I am just like a cat that, when a strange dog is brought into the apartment, leaps into the highest part of the cupboard above the bed and perches there with wary eyes following everything. While I can't jump so high to the top cupboard, and in my place I can't see out at all, I follow everything with the fine hairs on my skin.
Her voice is dark, it crackles, she likes to say the dirty words. His voice is low, indistinct, always responding, and I can't hear much of what he says, anyway I'm sure he has nothing original to say. They fuck a lot. I can smell the man. The bed isn't even a foot away from me. I can smell them. I can hear him grunting when he comes, and her rubbing and her moans after as she brings herself off with her own hand.
At that moment some tension knot in my stomach lets go and I feel like I want to shit, but of course I don't shit, just there are tears running out of my eyes. They fuck a lot more. Maybe they'll fuck all night. Still, this is the best place for me to be, I'm very close and I know there are times when she thinks of me, she's told me this, indeed she makes a sound that is a special sound for me, that he can't recognise at all, only I know what it means.
Also, I remember what it was like before when I had to go out if she had a visitor, I remember just what these streets are like walking in the night alone, the streets here are straight and dead empty except for yellow light and closed iron doors and rubbish and that nameless wind blowing off the flat ugly river through the empty grid of the city.
It's much better to be here near her and even though I am so aware, my ears my blood the fine hairs on my skin, I press into the scent of her until my chest burns and the darkness becomes very red, and here I am curled up a tight red pellet inside the cupboard. That is why I asked to make this my place in the cupboard. And in the pauses I can drift, maybe I sleep, or I wander, I have dreams, I go far away, but I am always near her and wrapped in her scent.
It is becoming dawn I think and she opens the door of the cupboard. She touches my head and signals for me to get up onto the bed. The man is gone. She lies back on the bed all heavy and exhausted, her worn out fingers tapping my head, playing with my ear, my head resting on her belly in her heat.
I moan, it can all go, here on her belly in her heat. She presses my head down, there baby, good baby. My tears warm on her thighs as I lick and suck at her sticky pussy, filthy with stinking cum, my mummy's flowing pussy, flows out all the cum, all the juice and all the salt, all flows out, her hand on my head, her belly breathing, my wet face mouth empty belly freedom.