The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 2

by Maxim Jakubowski

  London’s full of fantasy, people come here and they leave their names behind. My boyfriend, he grew up here, he doesn’t feel it maybe. But I’ve never felt it as strongly as I did that afternoon. Air Street is this little passage, right? It runs you from Regent Street into Soho, from one side of London to the other in the moment it takes you to pass under the arch. That’s how close the two sides are: silk gloved fingers and dirty fingers, interlinked and gripping tight. Does that sound stupid? Does it sound right? When it rains, the water pushes trickling fingers between Air Street’s broken paving stones, under the arch and out. Into Regent Street’s bright sky. Into its open road. London is everything, it’s the pornographer, it’s the audience, and it just breathes with being them. Full of fantasy, and never more so maybe, than when you open a black cab’s door. You could be anyone then. You could be a princess then, you could be spending stolen five-pound notes. Or you could be ten minutes away from fucking a man whose name isn’t given to you. London allows fantasy, needs it like a camera trained on people without clothes.

  We love each other, London and I. I could put my hands down on the street and grey my skin with it. I could stand in its centre, my eyes closed, and feel every sound and every movement like things I’ve always needed to feel. I came here, I left my name behind. I never went home again. And, parked up under that archway in Air Street, we fucked that day, London and I.

  A November day, it was, the sort that blows people and litter before it like it doesn’t care which it moves. The sort that bruises every face. And this is how it happened: on Embankment, me standing there with my arm stuck out and no idea, no idea. I saw the cab slow, standing there. Cold air and breath and traffic fumes, caught in the river wind. I was going home.

  This guy, he was early 30s maybe, dark hair and brown eyes. He poked his tongue into his cheek, looking up at me, like he didn’t give a fuck if I was beautiful or ugly, didn’t give a fuck where I was coming from. Like I shouldn’t expect him to. They like to talk, cabbies, but they only talk through the glass and they don’t look back at your face. And I talk, and it’s London I’m looking at. There’s something very free, I think, something absolute, in speaking to a stranger without ever meeting their eyes. He had brows that almost met in the middle, this guy. He had a wife, two sons and a daughter, he told me. He had a life, somewhere else. He asked me if I was going home.

  “Home, yes,” I said. On the other side of the glass, I saw him nod. “My boyfriend’ll have the kettle on by now.”

  “That’s the best thing, isn’t it? That’s what you need, cup of tea when you get in. Just sit down with someone for a bit.” He told me that he didn’t like to talk when he got in. He just liked to sit with her, relax without having to talk. He told me, sometimes the talking gets on top of you, doing that job. Always having to talk. And one of the best things about being married was that you could sit in silence, without coldness, without awkwardness.

  “I could never get married.” I looked out through the window: Embankment and the shadow of the footbridge, moving over us. People moving, everything moving, like the wind could rattle and shake every person in London, and no one would ever come loose. “I’m not the right sort of person.”

  He told me that you didn’t have to be any kind of person to get married. Marriage, he said, was a good thing for anyone. I looked at him, his neck, his shirt collar, and my reflection was painted across the glass, in shadow.

  “I don’t know. You get married, you’d have to be the same person every day. I mean, you wake up, he’s the same . . . he makes you the same.” I looked away from his back, and I said, “He’ll have the kettle on when I get in now, but we’re not like that, see? You get married, you’re always the same.”

  “No, it’s not anything like that. Everyone changes. You spend a few years with someone, both of you are going to change, aren’t you? Try having kids. No, I mean, my wife, she’s a completely different person from the one I married. Totally different, like. But she’s still the same underneath. Anyway,” he said, “you’ve got a boyfriend, just the same with a boyfriend.”

  “I came home, a couple of months ago, I’d just got paid. You know what I said to him? I said, ‘Let’s go to the airport.’ And you know what he said? He said yes. We went to Rome that weekend. You get married, you don’t do things like that anymore.” I looked at his eyes in the rearview mirror. “How’s she different, then?” I said. “How’s she changed?”

  “Lots of ways. I don’t know, lots of ways. Got a different job, hasn’t she? Different friends.”

  “What does she do?” I said, “Your wife.” And London was going past us in low gear. I listened to him answer and then I said, “My boyfriend, he’s got a different job every six months, and we’re always skint. And you know what? I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck. Because he’s never the same, week to week. But that’s not it anyway, it’s not that they’re always the same. It’s that they make you the same.” I looked at him. “You know?”

  “I know what you mean. Course I know what you mean, but – ”

  “See, you do have to be the right sort of person for marriage. I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t be the same person every day, you know? That’s what I love about London,” I said. “You can put on your make-up and clothes and be someone different, any time you want to, any moment, you know? You can walk out the door and meet somebody and be a different person.” I met his eyes then, and we were smiling at each other, but I couldn’t see his mouth. “I like that,” I said. “I like to have that, you know?”

  She imagined the sort of wife he would have. She imagined his wife reaching up, the tiniest touch with the tip of one finger, where his brows met in the middle. His eyes would be closed, she thought.

  Through the glass, I could see his arms moving. And we were turning now, and all the grey streets turning too. He stopped to let a woman go past. In London’s winter, people move as if they can’t stop for the wind. And I saw her look in through the windscreen, maybe she saw me. I met her eyes.

  We were eight minutes from Air Street then. He had dark hair, just like his eyebrows, thin on the back of his neck.

  I said, “How old are your kids?”

  I’ve never found people attractive by their faces or bodies. The look of someone is a blank thing, dust on a TV screen. It’s the way that someone wets the corner of their mouth, it’s what’s in their eyes when they take you in, and you can imagine the sound they might make as they come. It’s the way that they would hear your sounds, and feel the need to move, hearing them. The smallest things, do you know what I mean? I want you to know.

  I watched him answer. And outside: Londoners walking. Londoners, brushing against each other, and feeling the touches without a flicker of expression. The engine ground as hard as the wind out there, through Charing Cross and onto Haymarket, filthy grey.

  No one here seems to look at each other. No one needs to look, everyone knows that it might break the spell. Everyone in London walks as though they’re walking alone, but they can only keep that expression because of the people by their sides. This place, it scrapes people against each other, until they could crackle and scream.

  You have to believe in London to love it, like you have to believe in pornography so you can let it make you come.

  I said, “I couldn’t do it, marriage, children. I have to be able to get up in the morning and know, I can do anything I want to do.” I saw his shoulders move, shrugging. On the glass between us, my reflection was still. “It’s playing,” I said. “That’s what it is. It’s the best kind of playing in the world, to pretend, to do something really new, you know? To do something mad. I’m the sort of person, I couldn’t live without that.”

  She imagined how he’d sit with his kids, how he’d go home to them. She imagined them on the sofa, crowding round him, all grabbing for a little piece. He would look out over them, trying to find the television screen with his eyes.

  I said, “How do you live, without that?”


  Coming up to Piccadilly Circus then, where every street spits people onto the road and lets them press together there.

  I said, “When was the last time you did something mad?”

  She imagined the flickers of anger on his face, trying to find that television screen, the way his hands would push them away. And on the screen, she could imagine it, people fucking. She could see how it would be.

  Here on Piccadilly Circus, with every person pushing dryly against each other, I can see it all: Soho’s ragged edge. The clean, tall shops. The traffic. The sky. Here, this is where I’d stand and close my eyes. This is where I’d put my hands down onto the pavement and let them come up grey. There is a noise here, there is a feeling. Do you know the feeling where everything strains? Back arched, muscles tensed, and eyes closed like that, everything in your landscape body tries, everything in your city mind. London is the fantasy; it shows you what you want in every window, in the reflections sliding over every car; it gives you everything that you want to believe in. It gives you yourself.

  I said, “When was the last time? Something you’ve never done before? Something that was nothing like you at all?” He had big hands, I could see them on the wheel in that grey afternoon light, changing as he drove through shadows. He laughed, told me that he didn’t remember. And I asked him then, if he wasn’t afraid, just having to say that out loud.

  I said, “My boyfriend does what he wants, I don’t ask him. It’s better that way.”

  He looked in the mirror and he asked me, “Oh, yeah?”

  And I told him, “Yes.”

  She knew how he must be looking at her now. She could hear it in his voice and see it in the glance of his eyes. But when he spoke, she couldn’t tell what words he said, through the taxi intercom. And when she spoke herself, her hands were sweating. She could have wiped them on the vinyl seats and seen her palm prints there. They might have faded slowly after she got out. There might have been a trace left by the time that someone else opened the door.

  I looked at him then. I said, “If someone asked you to do a mad thing now, could you do it? Would you do it?”

  His eyes were half caught with all the traffic, the lights, and with trying to look at me. There wasn’t any trace of going home in them now. No trace of silence with his wife. And on every side of us, the people walked without looking. No one looks in London, but everyone sees. London is the pornographer. It gives you the fantasy, holds steady all the things that you need to believe in, long enough for you to take what you want.

  “Would you do it?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Depends what, doesn’t it? Depends — ”

  “If it was something that you’d remember for the rest of your life? Something that you might never have the chance to do ever again? Would you do it?” I said. “Now?”

  He looked away from my reflection, out at London and every person moving there. He looked back at me. And then he said, “What?”

  I’ve used pornography, used it with people, used it on my own. I like it put that way, in the same way that London will never be home, but you can use it to shape your life. I like the films though, not the magazines. A page doesn’t cast light and shadow in your room, there’s nothing to believe in on a page. Pornography shows you people, just the way that London shows you them. I like to think, when I watch it, that the people on the screen are watching me back. They could be the audience, as much as I am. And London, fantasy, pornographer, must be the audience as well. You could vomit on the street in London, and people would run their eyes over you, just like fingers. London is the audience, because it breathes and wets its mouth with fantasy, and every fantasy needs an audience to live.

  I asked him, “How long is it since you had sex with someone apart from your wife?”

  And while he laughed and sputtered, we were stopped at the traffic lights, caught between other black cabs, caught between other people’s glances. Maybe they saw us.

  His hands shifted on the wheel.

  “I mean it,” I said.

  “What do you mean? You mean what?”

  In front of us, the traffic lights changed. Traffic needs to move, we jolted forwards.

  I could see his shoulders and his tense neck, the way his hair shifted against his collar every time he shook his head. And I didn’t care what his body would look like, and I couldn’t really remember his face. I told you, we fucked that day, the city and I.

  “How long?” I said, “You could do something now, and you’d never forget it.”

  What is it about the things that aren’t handed to you, that you want them so much more? And he was still laughing, still shaking his head, but there was something new in his movements now. I watched him. The things that aren’t handed to you keep you running. Maybe people, like engines, just need to be moving, and in London, no one stops. It’s built to show you the things you want, the things that keep you moving. Try watching a porn movie, there’s always someone who’s just about to come.

  Let me tell you how we parked up on Air Street, how he looked both ways, every way, before he got into the back of his cab. He wiped his hands on his trousers once he’d closed the door. He looked at me like he was scared, but I could have told him, you could have told him, there was nothing to be scared about. It’s only fantasy, only porn.

  Let me tell you, I want you to hear.

  She saw spots of rain on the windows then. It would be raining on the little path that led to her front door. She thought, watching him shift as he tried to find answers to give her, of that little path, that door. When she looked out from there, the only view showed houses. There seemed to be a million of them, a million little paths. And she thought sometimes that, if London was the flickering screen, then all these houses she saw, they must be the silhouettes, the shadow shapes of a room, waiting to be seen in daylight again.

  I said, “Pull over. Get in here.”

  “I’m not going to pull over, fuck’s sake. You want to go home or not?”

  “I told you what I want. Pull over, and get in here. And when you go home tonight, you won’t be looking back at another day at work – ” I wanted to tell him, it was only a fantasy, and how often do you get that chance? The chance to live one, to actually be one. I wanted to try and explain, this place was full of fantasy, and it was only right to live it, when you had that chance. It was right to try and be a part of it.

  She kept thinking: London fucks you. London fucks everyone, every chance it gets. She kept thinking: Either you take it, or you take part.

  The floor of a black cab is hard rubber, relief patterns, and I looked at it then. I drew my legs up. That floor would put marks on my knees, patterns in just the same shapes. And if there hadn’t been glass between us, I would have reached out then, ran my own finger over his hairs. Tiny, soft little things on the back of his neck. I would have dug my fingernails into his skin. There was glass, though. And when I put my hand up and touched it, it was cold as a television screen.

  She had touched the television screen once, she had put the flat of her hand against it and felt no flesh, no breath. The screen had been dry. Static electricity had flicked at her like a parody of movement.

  He looked at my hand, pressed there. He could see it in the rearview mirror. And he was driving still, flicking glances from the road, to me. From London, to me. My hand must have been only three inches from those soft little hairs. Maybe the glass didn’t even matter. He was tense now. Under his clothes, his shoulders were hardening up. On either side of us, London moved in grey rainwater, with grey, hunched bodies. The pavements, the roads, they felt like they could have squirmed with it. Air Street was there, up ahead.

  “Pull in,” I said. I didn’t move my hand from the glass.

  “Look, you don’t understand. Fuck’s sake, I can’t — ”

  “You see it? There. Pull in there.” I put my other hand up, framing his head with my fingers, on the other side of this glass. I swallowed. “I want to go home, see my boyfriend,
and know that nothing about today was ordinary. I want to think about this, remember it. I want to do it, and go home and write every detail down. I want to write down, that you got in the back here, that you looked at me, reached out, touched me. I’ll write, that you put your tongue in my mouth. That you put your fingers in my mouth. Pull over. There.”

  When he looked around us then, all he saw was London. There was nothing to stop him in what he saw. There was nothing out there that could break apart the things that I’d just said. What was out there, it made true the things that I’d said. It made them real.

  And when he turned the wheel, his movements jerked, quick enough that he couldn’t change his mind. I saw the side of his face for a moment as he pulled the cab in, but I didn’t look at it long.

  From Regent Street’s bright, reflected sky, we came to a stop. The arch of Air Street, damp, dark stone and broken pavements. And when he turned the engine off, I could hear the sound of people walking there. I could hear their voices in the traffic’s noise, and they were shopping, walking, moving. London shows you the next thing, and the next, they couldn’t stop. Think of a porn movie, five people fucking on screen. None of them can stop. You build a fantasy so fast, so constantly, that no one can step out. Are you ready to hear it? I’ll show it to you, I’ll tell you how it was.

  I watched him turn the engine off, and he didn’t sit for even a second. In front of the windscreen, Air Street closed us in. Dripping stone and scaffolding, buildings pressed almost close enough to touch. If their walls were faces, bodies, they would have been close enough to catch each other’s breath.

  I watched him get out and come around to my door. I ran a hand across my mouth and it was wet and my tongue wanted to move. My whole body wanted to move. They were built to move.