Super Host

by Kate Russo

  When she removes her coat, he’s able to take her in more fully. She’s obviously been motivated by his drawing of her breasts. After her shift, she’d changed into a black top that’s cut much lower. Her cleavage spreads apart, leaving a valley of milky-white skin between her breasts. A long gold necklace with an amethyst pendant is resting tantalizingly in the valley. A pair of dark, tight jeans glaze her legs like ganache. She’s got black boots that zip up almost to her knees. Does she dress like this every day, he wonders, or is she just prepared?

  Shimmying onto the stool, she swivels it back and forth, testing its movement. The man to her left looks across to Bennett as if to say, Control your woman. Bennett looks away, unsure of how to react.

  She studies the back wall of the bar, which is covered in navy blue and green tartan wallpaper, above which a large stag’s head is mounted.

  She leans into Bennett, who has only just gotten himself situated in his stool. “Is that real?” she whispers.

  Of course it’s real.

  “Yeah, I knew him.”

  She scowls at him. Exasperated already. That didn’t take long.

  “They chopped his head off, because he wouldn’t stop swiveling in his barstool. Tragic.”

  She punches him in the arm. “We can’t all be as posh as you.”

  The barman, dressed in all black but for a bow tie that matches the upholstery, brings them cocktail menus.

  Claire claps her hands in excitement. “I’m so excited to drink something that’s not wine.” She pulls the elastic band from her hair and shakes out the red waves, so that they fall just below her shoulders. The scent of orange blossoms suddenly wafts under Bennett’s nose. Women get all the good smells.

  “Have you been here before?” she asks. “Who am I kidding, I bet you bring lots of women here.” She taps her fingers, nervously, on an empty coaster.

  “I haven’t been for a while,” he says in a tone that implies Let’s leave it at that.

  “What? Last week? Ha!”

  He glances, slyly, at the painting that she so far hasn’t noticed. It’s a damn good one, he thinks. Maybe he really will start another series of nudes. Not just for money, but because he’s good at it.

  “I’m too sarcastic,” she adds. “Bartender problem. Sorry.”

  He’d like to run his fingers through her beautiful strawberry hair. He’d like to cup her rosy cheek in his hand and stroke it with his thumb. Anything to stop her rambling.

  “Well, I’ve never been here. You’re my excuse.” She has to take a deep breath to stop herself from saying anything further.

  “Pleasure.” He slides the cocktail menu under her nose, trying to focus her.

  Opening it, her eyes land immediately on the cocktail she wants. “Lavender martini! Wow, that sounds gorgeous, doesn’t it?” She asks the question, but doesn’t look to him for a response. “Done!” She closes the menu like she’s just finished reading a thousand-page novel and only then, finally, she looks up. Her eyes hang silently on the painting before asking, “Okay, what do you think of that one?”

  It’s damn good.

  “I’d rather know what you think.” He knows it’s kind of a dick move, but he doesn’t want to answer her question.

  “Do men think women just lounge around naked all the time?” she asks, pointing at the cross-legged nude in the chair. “Poor woman was probably freezing while that was being painted.”

  “I’m sure the room was heated,” he says with a nervous laugh.

  “Yeah, probably to the ideal temperature for the clothed artist. Not her.”

  Bennett thinks back to the day he painted it and wonders if she’s right. He always set his thermostat to twenty-one degrees. Considering he doesn’t sit around in the buff, well, ever, he has no idea if that’s too cold for a naked woman. Huh.

  “So, not a fan, then?”

  “I’m sure it’s well-painted and all that. She just looks . . . uncomfortable.”

  Bennett makes eyes at the bartender, signaling that they are ready to order. He doesn’t want to talk about the painting anymore.

  “Oh, I’d love one of your lavender martinis, please,” Claire tells the bartender. She watches with genuine admiration as the bow-tied man scoops ice into a martini glass, like the thing he does and the thing she does are worlds apart.

  Bennett orders an old-fashioned and hands him the menu with a flat, nervous smile.

  “Are you?” she asks.

  He swivels in her direction. “Am I what?”

  “Old-fashioned.”

  If Eliza were here to field this question, she’d be nodding her head so furiously she’d give herself whiplash. To Bennett’s mind, it’s his father who was old-fashioned, a drunken armchair preacher who prided himself on never having washed a single dish in his life. So, no, Bennett doesn’t think he’s old-fashioned. He thinks he’s decent. Unless decency is old-fashioned.

  “I guess that depends on your definition?” He doesn’t mean to keep turning all her questions back on her, but her questions are hard.

  “You’re very polite. That’s pretty old-fashioned.”

  Polite. The compliment every man yearns for. Still, he is polite, his mother hardwired him that way. Bennett could be polite to a man who’s stealing from right under his nose. He was never anything but polite to Jeff. Fucking twat.

  “Well, I’d imagine you deal with enough impolite people to make you an expert,” he says, yet again turning the conversation back to her.

  “Tell me about it,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Like most bartenders, I hadn’t intended to still be doing this in my forties.” She looks over at him for a reaction. “I know you must be shocked! ‘How could she possibly be over forty?!’”

  He looks down at her tits, which he probably shouldn’t do, but they do tell a different story about her age.

  She looks down at them herself. “I know, right?”

  Caught in the act, he can’t help but laugh. Her self-deprecating humor is gentle and strangely sexy.

  The bartender places their drinks in front of them, torches a branch of rosemary, and rests it gently in Claire’s drink.

  She waves the smell of the toasted rosemary closer to her nostrils. “Beautiful,” she says, eyes closed.

  Indeed.

  Bennett picks up his glass. “Cheers.”

  They clink glasses, looking into each other’s eyes again, though it doesn’t feel like a game this time.

  “What do you wish you were doing?” Bennett asks. “Instead of bartending.”

  She laughs to herself, as though her dreams and aspirations are a private joke. “Growing up I could never decide what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a lawyer, but I’m too much of a nervous talker for that.” She holds her cocktail beneath her lips. “I wanted to be a doctor, but I hate blood. I wanted to be a chef, but I can’t cook. Nowadays, I think if I could do anything I’d probably own a bookstore.” She finally takes a sip.

  “Really?” He wasn’t expecting that, not that he knows what he was expecting.

  “It might not be very ‘highbrow,’” she says, with air quotes, “but I love mysteries. I’ve read all the Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christies. I guess I’d like to own a mystery bookshop. I know that sounds ridiculous.”

  “There used to be one not far from here when I was growing up.”

  “I remember!” She lights up, happy that he knew the store, too. “My dad used to take me to see matinees on Saturdays, then we’d go to all the bookshops on Charing Cross Road.” She smiles into her cocktail at the memory. “He’d never buy me sweets at the theatre, but I could have as many secondhand paperbacks as I wanted.” She looks at Bennett with misty eyes. “The deal was, I had to carry them home myself.”

  Bennett hopes that someday, when Mia sits across from some man at a bar, she’ll speak as fondly of him.
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  “Where was home?” he asks. It’s nice to listen to a voice that isn’t his own.

  “Bermondsey.” She puts her hand up to hold his silence while she takes another sip of her cocktail. “It was not the place it is now. I wish I still had my parents’ house. It’d be worth a fortune.”

  She swirls the rosemary branch in her cocktail with her red-painted fingers. Christmas has come early, he thinks, focusing on the sprig resting between her middle and index fingers.

  “Sorry! I’m terrible! I need to keep my hands busy. It’s such a bad habit.” She puts the rosemary on a cocktail napkin and pushes it out of reach. He does his best to hide his disappointment. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”

  “Hammersmith.”

  “See. Posh,” she says, as though she’d put money on it.

  He remembers his dad saying, “Only poor people talk about class. We don’t talk about class.” But Bennett knows better than anyone that growing up with means doesn’t preclude you from a miserable childhood. He can’t imagine his dad ever taking him to the theatre or buying him old mysteries. To his father’s way of thinking, men read the paper, that’s it. Books were for girls and poofs. He once threw a Stephen King book of Bennett’s into the river. He readjusts himself in his seat. “It wasn’t so special.”

  “Where do you live now?”

  “Chiswick.” He smiles, knowing what’s coming.

  “Of course you do,” she says, taking a victory sip of her cocktail.

  He can tell she’s imagining his big house, his studio, his expensive things, but all he can think about are the damn Eastons and their crap all over the place. He wants to be the man Claire thinks he is. The man he used to be. Well, except not married.

  “I’ll be right back,” she says, getting up from her chair. She puts her hand on his knee before heading back toward the bathroom.

  Bennett looks up at the painting and shakes his head. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he scrolls through the phone numbers until he reaches “Mrs. Easton.” His thumb hovers over the “send a message” button. It’s my damn house, he’s thinks, then clicks it.

  Hi, Emma, I have a collector asking about a painting that I have stored in the house. Would you mind if I popped in tonight to grab it?

  It’s a desperate move to make up an imaginary art collector. It’ll likely have terrible karmic consequences for his future sales, not that they can get much worse.

  Claire is on her way back from the loo, and she’s swinging her hips again.

  Hi, Bennett, Emma’s reply pops up on the phone. Sure. I won’t be coming back to Chiswick tonight. Good luck with your collector. Good luck—that gives him a momentary pang of guilt. Now she’s being friendly.

  He sets the phone facedown on the bar, trying to suppress an idiotic grin. Claire slides back on her stool and puts a hand on his shoulder. He turns toward her, her soft lips glistening with newly applied lipstick just millimeters from his own.

  “Did she have a nice smile, too?” she asks, pointing a sexy finger up at the woman in the painting.

  * * *

  ||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Slipping his key into the front door lock is a peculiar feeling. Even when the house isn’t rented he enters through the garden, but Claire is expecting the full effect of a grand entrance. She waits, gazing up at the windows on the top two floors.

  On the cab ride back he plotted how to answer all her inevitable questions. “Why is there a fire exit map tacked to your fridge?” “Why is that room locked?” “Why is there a binder on the coffee table that says ‘Welcome!’?” He’s decided he’ll say the fire exit map was a school project of Mia’s, from childhood, and he doesn’t have the heart to throw it away. She’ll love that. The welcome book he’ll try to toss into a drawer before she notices it. He’ll say the room with the paintings is locked for extra security, because of their value. Then he’ll unlock the door and let her have a look around, thus making her feel special and hopefully turned on. What he isn’t prepared for is all the Eastons’ stuff. He can’t make up stories for that shit because he doesn’t know what to expect. He wants to take her to the master bedroom, but the Eastons are probably sleeping there and women’s clothes will be everywhere. There is no reasonable explanation for that. They’ll have to use one of the other bedrooms, but not Mia’s old room. Definitely not Mia’s old room. He’s already made up a story about tomorrow morning. He told Claire in the cab that he has to catch a seven a.m. train to meet an art collector in Edinburgh, so he’ll need to leave the house by 5:45 a.m. Unable to take a hint, she suggested sharing a cab to King’s Cross, which means he’ll have to wake up at an ungodly hour, take a cab all the way to King’s Cross Station with Claire and a real painting for a mythical collector. And, if she follows him into the station, he might actually have to board a fucking train to Edinburgh. This is a lot of bother for sex, but it’s worth it.

  Flipping the light switch, he braces himself for whatever state Emma has left the house in. “Blimey, this is huge!” Claire says, dropping her purse on the ground and casting her eye from kitchen to dining area to lounge, all one enormous room, all beautiful parquet floors. “I’ll take my shoes off!”

  The house looks untouched, like Emma’s not even used it. Just one empty bowl and spoon in the sink.

  Thank fuck.

  The marble countertops in the kitchen glistens just like the one in the bar. His books on Victorian London are stacked on the coffee table in order of size. The herringbone throw blanket is tossed artfully over the back of the sofa.

  Claire balances herself against the entryway wall as she unzips her shiny black boot. He follows suit, unlacing his shoes. They both notice Emma’s ballet flats tucked under the radiator at the same time. Claire looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “My daughter’s.” The lies just keep coming. “She stays here a lot.”

  “That’s sweet. You have a daughter? How old?” She flings her boot onto the floor. It makes an awful thunk on the hardwood.

  “She’s nineteen.” No more lies. The truth this time. He beams as he says it, because he always beams when he talks about Mia. You’re a massive moron, Dad. That’s what she’d say if she knew what he was up to right now.

  He waits for Claire to turn her attention to her second boot, before he tiptoes over to the coffee table, locates the “Welcome!” book, and stuffs it in a drawer.

  “Are you hiding all the embarrassing stuff?” she asks.

  Yes, obviously. Stop asking so many questions.

  He changes the subject. “How about some amaretto?” There’s a bottle locked up in the room with the paintings.

  “Lovely. On ice, please.” She looks puzzled as he goes off in the opposite direction from the kitchen, but she doesn’t follow, wandering instead into the living space and stroking everything from the light grey sofa with the soft wool blanket, to the dark wood floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of hardbacks, and then to the kitchen where she strokes the marble countertops with her whole arm, just as she’d done in the bar. He studies her from afar. She even picks up an avocado from a giant wooden fruit bowl and fondles it.

  He rejoins her in the kitchen with as much confidence as he can muster and the bottle of amaretto. “I don’t have your palate, but I don’t think avocados and amaretto are a match made in heaven.”

  “Even your avocados look better in West London.”

  “You can have it,” he jokes, secretly hoping she won’t take it because he won’t have time to replace it tomorrow.

  Thankfully, she puts it back in the bowl and returns to the sofa, swinging her hips softly and continuing to touch everything along the way, including the leaf of a standing ficus tree. She nods to herself, impressed, when she discovers it’s real.

  Bennett pulls down highball glasses from a cabinet—right where they’ve always been for the last twenty years—and reaches into t
he freezer for ice. He doesn’t dare remove the “in case of emergency” card on the fridge, just in case she’s noticed it.

  “You like textiles, don’t you?” she asks, standing next to the mantel above the gas stove. She’s looking up at a red and blue painting that resembles an intricate weave. “The chair in the other painting had a beautiful fabric.” She looks back at him. “The one in the bar, definitely. Plus, the drawings in your sketchbook.”

  She’s thinking about what he does, he can tell. Like he’s a jigsaw and she’s putting together the pieces. He likes being her puzzle.

  Stepping in front of the mantel, he hands her the amaretto, then sets his own drink down next to a remote control, which he points at the gas stove and suddenly flames shoot up from what was previously a cold void. Her face screams Magic. It feels nice to have someone to impress. Eliza was never impressed by anything.

  “Cheeeers.” He draws out the word.

  She tilts her head like she’s singing along. “Cheers.”

  He waits for her to finish her first sip before he kisses her. Her lips are cold and almondy, softer than he remembers lips being. He wraps his free hand around her and rests it on the small of her back. Her shirt is wonderfully soft and unfamiliar. She steps in closer and wraps her arm around his neck, eagerly, still clasping the amaretto glass.

  When cold condensation drips from the glass onto Bennett’s neck, he shudders.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks, worried.

  “Cold glass.” He reaches back for her arm and pulls it down from around his neck. Taking the glass from her hand, he sets both drinks down on the coffee table.

  She pulls him in for another kiss, mouth slightly open, before he even has the chance to stand up fully. Her lips are warming up now, but her tongue is still icy. Sliding his hands down her hips, he inserts them in the back pockets of her jeans and squeezes her bum, because, as far as he can tell, she’s really into this. She grabs his neck with her cold, clammy fingers and pulls him in tight, her tongue deep-sea diving all the way to the back of his throat. Wow. Sexy hips. Great tits. Very aggressive tongue. He’s uncertain whether he wants to speed up or slow down. Slow down, he thinks, given how out of practice he is. There’s no rhythm, no balance. He pulls away for a moment and returns his hands to her hips.