Playing Away

by Adele Parks

  The assembly room is heaving. I recognize the corporate cocktail for disaster—copious amounts of alcohol and ambition. Rather than standing on the sidelines, deriving pleasure by laughing at the antics of my desperate colleagues, I am pulled to the apex. I pick up a glass of champagne from a passing waiter's tray, drink it very quickly and put down the empty glass, then immediately help myself to another. Sam watches me fearfully.

  "You look gorgeous."

  She ignores my blatant attempt at diversionary flattery. Her huge eyes widen further as she nods questioningly toward the champagne.

  "I just need a drink." I shrug a bit huffily. I don't really want a baby-sitter. Sam, a divine friend, laughs indulgently but gently warns, "Be careful, Connie."

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  "Yes. I know," I reply. "Look, if I appear to be in clanger of doing something stupid, not looking after myself adequately, will you come and look after me?"

  "Promise," she affirms. I'm lost. If I'd wanted to resist I wouldn't have had to ask for Sam's help. Although on the surface I'm putting checks in place to stop me charging toward corruption, I know I can outmaneuver Sam if necessary. I want to create the impression of a respectable struggle with my conscience, but in my heart and head I know that there won't be a struggle.

  Respectable or otherwise.

  I know this because I always make snap decisions, whether it is about entrees or husbands.

  I choose to sit with Sam, although Sue is sitting with John. I could have sat with Sue (John) except that I am holding off. This is nothing to do with hesitation, more anticipation. I know that if I hold back for a while he'll want me more. I've often acted the total bitch to increase ardor.

  The evening rushes by, a series of Technicolor images and vivid, pungent smells: expensive perfume mixes sweetly with perspiring bodies, the smell of lamb gravy and Coleman's mint sauce is tinged with the taste of metallic mass-catering trays. The noise around me is deafening; hilarity and excitement bump against indiscriminate wanting and general anticipation. Packing a passport has inexplicably led to scenes of gross debauchery. Women, who usually limit themselves to the odd G&T, are suddenly chasing shots better than George Best, and challenging each other to arm-wrestling competitions. Quite unassuming colleagues feel compelled to do the cancan on tabletops. The national anthem is burped out in baritone by people wearing party hats. All standards have flown out of the window. Chatter, constant chatter, buzzes and rushes around the room, accompanied by the dull thud of plates dropping onto white tablecloths, the clink of bottles hitting the rim of

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  glasses, knives and forks clattering against teeth and china, and the pop of corks bursting forth. People strain and shout, desperate to deliver their punchlines. Laughter, raucous and disproportionate, bounces around the tables. The laughter of successful escapees. No longer restrained by the formal, polite, small talk of strangers, or even the friendly cordiality of colleagues, the room oozes unrestrained, unashamed, riotousness.

  We are, in every sense, up for it.

  The champagne kicks the back of my throat, a cold, unquenchable, and addictive dryness. A thousand, billion bubbles dance excitedly on my gums.

  "No more champagne," I complain to Sam, as I drain the last bottle on our table. She hands me the white wine. A second later the white is finished, too, so we move on to red. I fake interest in the conversation at my table. Although the banter is high quality and well delivered and my retorts are as racy and pacy as ever, I am only devoting a proportion of my attention. My neck is longer and my body thinner, my skin clears to a creamy fondant, the alcohol makes me blush, so I am a strawberry fondant. I lean forward, elbows on the table, fingers linked to cradle my chin. Uncomfortable but flattering. I remove my jacket. Too hot. Too many horny bodies in a small place. My arms are bronzed and toned. I am attractive. This incredible metamorphosis does not draw my attention away from him.

  "Stop it." Sam kicks me under the table.

  "Stop what?"

  "That blatant craning."

  Embarrassed, I try to look away but it is hard. I am conscious of him in the pure sense of the word. I know when he is sitting, when he is standing, when he is drinking, or eating or looking at me. I know when he is laughing or flirting and I know that he is always wanting. Me. A number of times my

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  indiscreet staring is rewarded by my gaze resting on his glare. It soothes me to know he is looking at me. It soothes me to know that he is there at all. Somewhere here in my world. I don't know why it soothes me and I am too drunk to consider it. He is a totally delicious horn. I'm lusting after him. People always rush to say that they have never felt like this before and I always view such claims with skepticism. That insistent clambering to justify through differentiation. God how normal.

  Having said that, I am sure I have never felt like this before.

  I studiously avoid him, while constantly hunting him. Never quite with him, I am careful to remain in his eye view. He can't avoid me but he can't have me. The room degenerates into a more riotous state. The jokes and wine flow copiously. When nearly everyone is bouncing from table to table, flirting, antagonizing or socializing, I go to him. He sits alone with coffee cups and chocolate mints, discarded corks and dozens of half-empty wineglasses. I know he is very sociable and wonder if hanging back from other company is a sign that he is waiting for me. No false modesty, I sit next to him. He lights a cigarette and passes it to me and then lights another one for himself. I haven't smoked since I was eleven, in a friend's tree house, but I immediately take the cigarette from him and inhale. It hardly seems the right moment to tell him about the dangers of lung cancer.

  "It's inevitable, you know," he asserts. The pounding in my cunt and the dryness of my throat forces me to admit that he is probably right. I am frighteningly alive and awake.

  "No, no, it's not inevitable," I stutter. "It's not. It's not," I reiterate, without conviction.

  "It's strange that you keep telling me you don't want me, but by talking to me at all you are saying that you do." He laughs to himself. "The lady doth protest too much."

  He sounds like a man who is certain that he holds the upper hand. I stand up and bump into the table.

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  "Whoops, one too many," he comments, grinning. We both know that, as he is hoping for a shag, there is no such thing. I make my way back to my seat. Playing a game, wondering not if but when he'll approach.

  My head is cartooning.

  I nudge my dessert around my plate but somehow repeatedly fail to get the fork into my mouth.

  "Lost your appetite?" Sam's eyes flash concern. "Easy, slowly. You are flirting outrageously."

  "Do you think so? I think I'm doing it rather well," I quip.

  "You're married," she states with what I consider to be unnecessary honesty. I glare at her. She tries again. "Look, flirting is all right as long as you know how far to take it, when to stop. To draw the line." I smile, wiggling in my seat. I know what is coming to me and I squirm. I thank God that it is!

  "I think I'll have one more." Sam tries to pour some red wine into her glass but misses. "Shit." She pours salt onto the tablecloth creating little mountains in the red sea.

  "Not for me," I say, as I pour myself another, "I've had enough." We giggle.

  "You've had more than enough, you've drunk loads."

  "So has everyone else," I defend.

  Although it is only 10:30 P.M. getting glass to mouth, without spilling the contents, has become a major challenge for my motor skills. The waiters are trying to clear up around us and the management are encouraging us to stop drinking, so that we will turn up at the conference the next day. However their refusal to pay for any more wine is counter-productive. The majority of us wander through to the hotel bar where the drinks are frighteningly expensive; our intention is putting them through as "expenses incurred during mentoring." Suddenly, amongst the confusion, he is next to me. He puts his right hand
on my head, turns my head to face him, kisses me. There in front of everybody.

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  Warm, full lips; that pulse.

  I burp back the champagne and it fizzes round my mouth, the bubbles and air are like the sperm of an unexpected blow job, astonishingly intimate. The kiss is lingering but still. Certainly not a kiss exchanged between two friends, more than that. It silences the crowd. The women furious with envy that John has chosen to kiss me, the men grudgingly admiring as they see that I kiss him back. I look for Sam; she's not around. His lips are soft and firm at the same time. Kissing him is so different. Different from Luke, I suppose.

  It's a warm kiss, full of promise and intent.

  "I'm going to ditch this dump." He rolls his eyes disparagingly in the direction of the hotel bar. It usually irritates me when someone suggests moving venue. I am generally three sheets to the wind by the time the idea comes up and much keener to stay put. A move always culminates in a bar with even more artificial potted plants, even more cheesy music and more expensive alcohol. But the grass is always greener. However, when John says this I think it is the best idea I have ever heard, ever.

  Brilliant.

  Astounding.

  Sam's decided to call it a night but Sue is amongst the fifteen or so that are going into the center of Paris to find a "decent bar" and a nightclub. Sam looks appalled as I hop into the taxi.

  "Looksafter 'er, Sue," she slurs. Sue nods and then leans out of the cab to be sick, relieved that only a small amount of it sprays back into her hair. I insist that I am entirely sober, tell Sue that I really love her, I always have and suggest that we find a karaoke bar.

  We fall out of the cab, pleasantly surprised that for once we have not ended up in a really tacky bar. Indeed, some clever soul at the front of the convoy of taxis, carrying the rowdy

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  bunch of will-be-animals, actually had a clue about where we were heading. We grossly overtip the driver, who is furiously shouting, "Engleesh pigs." Although, at that point, he isn't aware that someone has thrown up in the back of his cab. I reluctantly agree that there is some justice in the accusation. The driver of the cab behind ours is smarter, he is forcing one of the "change navigators" of this century to wipe up his own vomit with his Armani tie.

  The bar is small, smoky and packed full of locals. A result. We try to tone it down a bit so as not to lower the tone. I immediately spot John, who waves me over to his corner table.

  "Piss off to another table, make room for her," he says considerately to his mates. There are about half-a-dozen people sitting around the table; I already know that I never want to meet them in a corridor at work.

  He turns to me.

  "So, how many people have you slept with?"

  "Isn't that a bit forward?"

  "Oh, you've lost count," he grins. He is cheeky, confident and wild.

  Like at Blackpool, conversation is limited to sex. How sexy he thinks I am. How sexy I think he is. We talk about how often, who with, when and where. We competitively compare. He outdoes me on numbers, I outdo him on variety. I describe, with gratuitously satisfying detail, conquests (numerous) and consequences (hilarious). I feel sexy and experienced, not in the least vulnerable or slutty. He understands it all. He is just like me, if anything worse. He has had sex with the most diverse and erotic array of women imaginable, which is exhilarating. Challenging.

  "It must be great to be born a bloke."

  "Why?"

  "It is easier to be evil and get away with it if you don't belong to the fairer sex."

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  "Unlucky."

  "Yes, isn't it?"

  He vacillates between begging me to sleep with him, and chastising me because I say I won't. He forcefully states the inevitability of my seduction one minute and then throws his arms up in the air with despair the next. It is a luxurious and irresistible form of interrogation. I cannot refuse him. I don't want to. I feel deliriously irresponsible, infatuated, irrational. I adore him.

  "Admit it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're just not used to people acknowledging it." I am describing that really amazing feeling of knowing when you are a step ahead.

  "God you're vain." He chuckles.

  "No more than you."

  "Guilty as charged." He looks at me, pauses. He looks away and back again. He shakes his head and grins. I wonder what he is thinking. I think he is in love with me.

  "You like games, don't you?" he teases.

  "Yes," I reply, adding flirtatiously, "especially those I win."

  "Checkers?" Hmmmm. I was expecting doctor and nurses or mummies and daddies. He pulls a wooden box out from what seems like nowhere. We are in one of those bars that supply cards, chess and checkers to allow people to amuse themselves while they drink. I reckon it is designed for people who have nothing to say to each other; John assures me that it is designed for men who want to introduce the subject of strip poker.

  "Would you like to be black or white?" he asks.

  "I'm white," I say.

  "But not completely."

  "You're black."

  "Come," he smiles, "not completely." He speaks very slowly and very clearly, and his words lick my conscience clean

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  away. Deftly, I start setting up the white pawns. He puts one black and one white counter in each hand.

  "Choose for who gets to make the first move."

  I tap the hand which uncurls to reveal the black. He smiles with his eyes. I shrug, battle not war. We are fairly evenly matched but I find it almost impossible to drag my eyes away from him and toward the board. My distraction makes me thoughtless and impulsive. He has more experience to draw upon and he plays a ruthless game of tactics and skill. I delight in surprise takings even if they jeopardize the security of the more important pieces. He's playing a longer game. With every piece lost a measure of Jack Daniel's is downed.

  "Are you playing to win?" he asks incredulously after I lose another piece and put one more in peril after an impulsive move.

  "Always," I giggle, lifting up the glass to my lips. I feign anxiety and confusion by biting my bottom lip, squeezing the blood out. I think the effect will be provocative. I am relishing my suddenly highly developed sexuality.

  "We are playing where you must jump," he reminds me, "and you know now that I will take all I can." I am counting on it.

  "First you take me," he says in a slow and luxurious tone, "and then," he pauses, "I take you." He jumps my king. I want him to jump my bones.

  "Oh, how stupid of me not to see that." I flop back into the wicker chair, momentarily wearing an air of defeat, actually I'm not too bothered. I am trying to work out all that double entendre bit. "It was staring me in the face." I twist my hair around my index finger, hoping that this looks cute and girlish.

  "But even if you had seen it, you wouldn't have done anything else." He is definitely after a shag.

  "Couldn't I have helped myself in any way?" I giggle, loving the sophisticated flirtation induced by thirty-five units.

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  "No. Once you started the form of attack that you were so determined to follow, you could have done nothing else but see the consequences through." Hilarious. He must see the obvious analogy.

  "You're drunk," I say to no one in particular and at the same time to everyone in the bar.

  "Yes, of course, but even when drunk I am very, very serious." The "s" of the serious falls into the air and hangs there.

  "Your move, the game is not over yet."

  "No, indeed not." He looks at the board where there are two white kings and one pawn and three black kings and one pawn.

  "Most evenly matched. The night could be yours yet."

  "Do you really want to win?" I ask, moving my king.

  "Yes." He slides his piece across the board, pauses and then removes his finger.

  "So you want me to lose," I reason.

  He quickly responds, "No I don't wa
nt that. We can both win." He jumps another piece.

  "A draw is dull and inconclusive," I say, sharply. My move.

  "And so who do you want to win?" His move.

  "You." I drop the syllable into the air and lift my eyes to judge his reaction.

  He moves again taking my last piece. "You have your desire."

  Then we dance. Right there in the little bar, with about thirty people squeezing onto a dance floor the size of a handkerchief. He is male and Northern so he doesn't spin me round doing a solo rendition of "Dirty Dancing," but he is a brilliant dancer. Shallow as it may sound, this is important to me. It's a point of distinction, not many men are good dancers, although most are convinced that they can show John Travolta a thing or two and that Michael Jackson is just begging them for lessons. And it shows promise. Good dancers are so horny. I

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  am sure that I smell of sex, my knickers are wet, dripping for him, I can probably wring them out. I simply want him with an appalling, agonizing intensity that should shame me, but instead excites me. We dance, suggestively grinding our toilet areas. Coolly swaying hips, leaving little to the imagination. The music speeds up and we maniacally thrash our bodies around the floor. I envy the beads of sweat that sit on his forehead, that slide down his temple and cheeks. I want to slide down him. We return to our table where a group of blokes are noisily arguing over a game of whist. We decide to use the noise as a cover and we slip out unnoticed.

  It is a nippy, clear night, the cold air runs up my sleeves and bites my body. He puts his arm around me to keep me warm and hails a cab. He is just so capable. Every action oozes sex appeal, which can't be learned, taught or topped. As usual the French cabbie drives at breakneck speed. However, instead of sitting with white knuckles hanging on to the seat in front of me and cursing that there isn't a seat belt, I actively will him to hurry. Ben-Hur's chariot would not have been quick enough for me. We don't speak in the taxi; there's nothing to say.