Autumn

by Vina Jackson

  He was not a patient man. Likewise in bed where he assumed the dominant role and seemed to find much satisfaction in my own, naturally submissive reactions to his touch and actions.

  But our honeymoon as lovers and artistic collaborators barely lasted a few weeks.

  I was lounging on the settee in a state of casual undress, both daydreaming and playing tunes in my head, one of my violins set down beside me and untouched for over an hour now, my mind wandering off in all sorts of random directions and my body on edge, casually thinking it would be rather nice if we dropped the task at hand for an hour or two and repaired to the bedroom, or the bath tub or the kitchen floor or anywhere really as I watched his long fingers juggle with his Biro and remembered how earlier that morning they had toyed with me and orchestrated my lust almost to perfection, eliciting sharp cries of welcome pain, sighs and a thorough sentiment of well-being.

  He looked deep in thought.

  Then turned to me, with a reproachful look in his eyes.

  ‘Summer,’ he said, ‘I really need a musical reference point of some sort for this middle act, and you’re just sitting there with your head in the clouds and your fingers between your legs …’

  I hurriedly drew my hand back. I hadn’t realised I was distractedly touching myself, lost as I had been in the realm of waking dreams. I also happened to be pantiless.

  ‘Oh … sorry …’ I mumbled, switching back to reality.

  ‘I realise that on the day you’ll be improvising, but I do need some clue from you at least, a tune or something that would set the mood.’

  ‘I know …’

  He barely waited for me to respond at all before continuing with his lecture, full throttle. I noticed that his hands remained still, clutching his paper and pen. He did not gesticulate for emphasis, which somehow made the weight of his words even heavier.

  ‘I can’t go looking for backers with an unfinished proposal. Without the musical identifiers, it would be like presenting a project with no script and just telling people to trust us on the basis of a verbal pitch.’

  ‘I understand,’ I apologised.

  I picked up the violin and brought it to my chin and was about to play something and suddenly dried up. I had no ideas remaining.

  ‘Remind me again of the setting and the characters,’ I asked Antony.

  He stared at me silently, apparently so angry that he was finally lost for words.

  ‘Fuck’s sake Summer, you’re just pissing me around.’

  Antony rarely swore. He was too genteel for cuss words. When he did, it was a sign that he had well and truly lost his temper. He threw his pen down, stood up and began to pace the room in front of me, alternating between balling his palms into fists and running his hands distractedly through his hair, a gesture which only served to make his slight quiff even more unruly.

  He looked quite mad, but still managed to enunciate his words in his usual, bland way. As if he had totally perfected the art of keeping his emotions bottled up.

  ‘You really have to concentrate more …’ He hesitated. ‘Or maybe we should just stick to the work and forget about the rest.’ He obviously meant the sex. You couldn’t say it was a relationship yet, or even the blueprint for one. The sex was great, animalistic, improvised, intense, but we never spoke of anything emotional, or made plans. It just happened. As often as possible. But we both knew that something else was bubbling under the surface.

  I must have looked totally nonplussed at his animated reaction. A happy fool.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I need to decompress. I’ll leave you alone for an hour or two. Go out. Clear my own mind. Maybe on your own, you’ll be able to concentrate better and have something for me when I get back. OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’re falling behind. I need something to present at the end of next week. It’s important,’ he added. As if I didn’t know.

  He slipped on a sports sweatshirt that had been hanging on the back of a chair and walked out of the apartment.

  The door slammed behind him.

  It was pitch dark by the time he returned. I’d in the meantime come up with a rough idea for the act, based on a Prokofiev concerto although I wasn’t totally satisfied by it, but knew that when the day came I would inevitably manage to get caught up in it in performance and improve on it. And then I’d waited. And waited.

  I wasn’t the worrying kind but still felt concerned by the way his absence was dragging on.

  I couldn’t phone him. In his haste to depart, he had left his cell phone behind and it sat there on the glass table next to his papers.

  Finally, close to midnight, Antony arrived back.

  I opened my mouth to question him but closed it as soon as I noticed the dark look on his face. He was sullen and withdrawn.

  Silent. Did not even greet me or ask how my work had fared in his absence.

  He sat down and began shuffling his papers.

  I was unsure whether to move next to him, pick up my instrument and play him a rough version of what I had imagined or even hug him in a gesture of closeness.

  Finally, I decided to remain silent and wait for him to speak first, but to move alongside him on the sofa nonetheless.

  The moment I sat, I knew where he had been.

  The strong smell of alcohol was unmistakable. Cigarette smoke soaking his sweatshirt and his hair. And the familiar odour of booze on his breath and skin.

  Antony was not a happy drunk. On the rare occasions I indulged myself, I got tipsy, gently merry and over-talkative, which annoyed me as I felt I was not in full control of my faculties. He, on the other hand, retreated deep into himself, frustrations and past resentments festering away, trying desperately to keep the lid on a volcano of rage and anger.

  Until now, I had never seen him drunk and truly angry or upset. Just sensed those dark emotions boiling inside him when we finished too many bottles of wine together over dinner and then fucked afterwards. Me, inhibitions even lower than usual, and him fearsome and tempestuous in a way that I found deeply arousing.

  He saw me gazing at him.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  His tone of voice was sharp, resentful, as if by implication I was the one who had forced him to walk out and find solace in drink.

  Which only served to increase my profound irritation at finding myself in this situation.

  He read my thoughts.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the pressure gets too much and one drink turns into more. I’m quite aware of it.’

  There was nothing apologetic about him. Even an ironic sparkle appeared in his eye. ‘Why don’t you join me? We can explore the depths of our self-loathing together. Only fair, don’t you think?’

  ‘I think I’ve thought of something,’ I said, nodding in the direction of my violin.

  He stood up and began to move towards the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, it can wait, can’t it? Everything can wait,’ he added, disappearing past the glass door. I heard a cupboard or drawer being pulled open on its casters and the sound of glass clinking. He arrived back holding a half full bottle of bourbon and two glasses. Turned on his tail again, and then returned once more with a bowl of ice and pair of silver tongs. He raised one eyebrow and smiled, as if he found his attention to detail in such circumstance highly amusing. The smile did not reach his eyes.

  ‘It’s good for the inspiration,’ he said, setting his bounty down on the table, shuffling the papers to the side.

  ‘I don’t think I want to,’ I said.

  I’d never found any comfort in artificial stimulants, whether soft drugs or booze, and my alcohol intake, though admittedly increased since I had begun dating Antony was normally restricted to at most a couple of glasses of wine at meals. Only twice, once out of a stupid sense of shame following a particularly harsh descent into the sexual
depths prior to Dominik and I finally coming together and the other after his sudden death, had I gone binge drinking in search of emotional release and all it had achieved was to make me feel even sicker, and in no way provided any relief to speak of. My only indulgence was for expensive cocktails and only then as a way of celebrating and not in search of escape.

  Ignoring me, he filled each tumbler to the brim, adding ice to mine but not to his own.

  He looked up at me, silently imploring me to join him.

  ‘No.’

  A darkness passed over his face and he brought his glass to his mouth and began drinking, steadily sipping the bourbon as if it were water.

  Once he had gulped the drink down, he nodded to the other, still full, glass.

  ‘Come on …’ he said. ‘We’re collaborators, partners in crime, lovers … Show me some spirit …’

  ‘We’re not lovers, Antony. Not yet. It’s just sex,’ I pointed out resentfully.

  In my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe that to be true. Or at least, I hadn’t, until now.

  I was beginning to think again.

  Previously, I sensed that the sex we shared was becoming more intimate than ‘just sex’. Maybe that was all in my head. I was behaving like countless women’s magazines told me I would and reading too much into an entirely physical act.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Same thing, right?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Far from it.’ I was becoming increasingly bolshy, provoked by his unfeeling attitude, disappointed in him and I could see a huge row looming unless one of us took steps to defuse it. I also knew that my pride would prevent me from being the one to make the first conciliatory overture.

  I was saved by the bell. Literally.

  The intercom rang, shaking us out of our uncomfortable status quo.

  We both fell silent.

  Looked at each other quizzically.

  Antony finally stumbled to his feet, walked over to the wall and pressed the button, without even bothering to switch the sound on and query whose presence it might be. Maybe he thought, despite the late hour, it was the post or some salesman, and didn’t wish to even waste his breath on the delivery.

  He returned to the sofa and for a couple of minutes, we continued to face each other, resentment simmering beneath the surface of our breath.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘You get it,’ he ordered. Beginning to pour himself another bourbon. Four Roses, I noticed from the label.

  I was barefoot. His wooden floor was cold, and perfectly smooth. Never an iota of dust in this place, I noticed, even though I’d never heard him mention or seen any hint of a cleaner, or him cleaning. Perhaps he waited until I was well out of sight before attending to such domesticities.

  It was Alissa.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘You?’

  She looked me over with an air of connivance.

  ‘You’re a fast worker,’ she remarked, brushing her way past me. She wore a dark green parka that ended at her knees, and shiny black leather boots with tall, block heels.

  ‘I turn my back for barely a month to embark on a regional tour and here you are making yourself at home.’ She glanced at my creased white shirt and likewise crumpled skirt and saw all the signs I had partly moved in.

  I was about to retort that Antony and I were just working on a project together, or that the sex had just happened and, particularly now that I had stumbled across his dark side, that I probably had no wish to replace her in his bed on a full-time basis, but she had already reached the main room and saw Antony lazily reclining on the couch with a glass in his hand.

  ‘Ah,’ she muttered. ‘Back to his old ways, I see. You must be providing some forceful form of inspiration …’

  All I could do, following in her footsteps, was nod. It appeared she might know him better than I thought I did.

  She stepped out of her parka. She was wearing a tight little black dress and those shiny boots that made her look a whole foot taller than she was, not a tousled hair out of place and polished to perfection as if on her way to a party.

  She noticed the other glass I hadn’t picked up, looked back at me and then back at Antony, the low slung table and the glass. Weighed up the situation.

  ‘Not partaking, are you?’ she asked me.

  And without waiting for an answer, she took the glass intended for me and began to sip from it.

  ‘Cheers, guys,’ she said.

  Antony had remained silent throughout, not even acknowledging her presence.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, darling,’ Alissa remarked, setting her glass down. She hadn’t drunk much at all from it. ‘He has these moods. But they pass quickly. Makes him interesting, no? But I can assure you I’ve seen him drink others under the table and he still remains totally functional. As good a fuck drunk as sober, in fact.’

  As he listened to her, Antony’s face remained expressionless.

  Alissa turned to me.

  ‘Tempted?’

  I followed her gaze and looked over at him.

  He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, elbows balanced on his knees, glass between his hands, staring blankly out of the opposite window. He wasn’t wearing anything under his grey sweatshirt and the loose collar revealed the bulk of his shoulders and part of his throat. His dark blond hair was tousled and his jaw line unkempt. He hadn’t shaved in days, maybe even weeks, and yet still managed to look as though he sported designer stubble rather than a half-grown beard.

  Groomed, Antony was the perfect representative of an attractive dandy, the typical hot man-in-suit with an arty twist. Ungroomed, he was what you might call a hot mess. Even during his worst moments he could not be considered anything besides utterly handsome.

  Alissa spoke again and I turned back to her. She had shifted her gaze from him to me.

  ‘I know,’ she said, as if she could read my mind. ‘Enough to make you sick, right?’

  She had moved nearer to me and prodded her elbow into my ribs as she spoke. Alissa was the polar opposite of Antony in that respect. She communicated with her body as much as her voice.

  I nodded. Cast him another look, but he still refused to acknowledge our presence. He didn’t look lost in thought, or even just lost. He looked bored. As if he was waiting for something to happen. A stone to come smashing through the window. An earthquake. Anything.

  So I gave him something.

  I turned to Alissa and kissed her.

  Her breasts were so large that they pushed against me before I had covered her lips with my own.

  She responded in kind immediately, opening her mouth and caressing my bottom lip with her tongue.

  Alissa was a good kisser, and once I had made the first move she was all too ready to take the lead. She pulled me closer and ran her hands up the back of my neck under my hair, holding my head in place as she began to really kiss me in earnest.

  Finally she pulled away, picked up the glass with what remained of the bourbon and swallowed the lot of it.

  ‘Summer darling,’ she said. ‘You’re so full of sweet surprises.’

  She set the glass down and pulled me to her again, this time shifting our positions so that my back was now to Antony and her body likely invisible to him, covered by mine. Our lips met again and I tasted the half sweet, half smoky flavour of the bourbon that lingered in her mouth.

  Her hands found the hem of my skirt. She ran her palms up the backs of my legs, lifting the thin material that covered my thighs as she went and not stopping until she had reached my waist, leaving the entirety of my bare arse on display for Antony’s perusal.

  I knew exactly what she was doing. Playing with us. With him, with me.

  Manipulative little cow, I thought, on one hand. And yet on the other … her actions triggered all of the buttons that I loved to
have pushed. Being (wo)man-handled. Being on display. Not knowing what would happen next. Knowing that Alissa was baiting Antony, trying to get a rise out of him and wondering what he would do, how he would respond. It carried the same kind of dangerous excitement as running down dark roads at night time, cycling without a helmet or passing my hand quickly across an open flame.

  ‘No panties, huh?’ she said loudly. ‘I take it back. That’s no surprise.’

  Her nails dug into my buttocks. She was lifting and spreading my cheeks with her hands, displaying my arsehole, still careful to keep the fabric of my skirt hitched up on her wrists so that Antony would have a perfect view.

  I was silent. Partly on account of the fact that I couldn’t think of anything to say and partly as I was so aroused, my mind couldn’t focus enough to articulate a sentence. I might not be drunk, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Sure, there was a voice inside me that said that an angry threesome wasn’t the wisest course of action right now. But that voice was not nearly as strong as the vast current of desire welling up inside me, a massive torrent of lust that required very little provocation and outweighed my sense of reason by a mile.

  I moved my body a little so that my right leg was now between hers and pressed the weight of my thigh against her pubis. Her dress was so short that there was very little fabric to lift. I slid my palms up the back of her legs and cupped her buttocks. She wasn’t wearing any panties either.

  ‘Amazing how we keep finding things in common, isn’t it?’ she said to me, still throwing her voice loud enough to ensure that Antony heard every word.

  Finally I heard the chink of his glass coming to rest on the coffee table in front of him, and the rustle of his clothing as he pushed himself to his feet and approached us.

  His hand came down on my shoulder, half wrapped around my throat. He pressed his other hand against the space above Alissa’s collarbone and pulled us apart. One hand travelled into my hair, the other into hers. He had us both almost by the scruff of our necks, like a dog-owner about to collar his charges.

  I stifled a moan, but try as I might, I couldn’t hide my obvious arousal. I could feel my nipples straining hard against my blouse. Alissa’s were hard too. He stared at my tits, and then at hers.