Sushi for Beginners

by Marian Keyes

  ‘Yes please, I’ll only be about fifteen minutes.’

  Briskly, Lisa tested the bounciness of the Morrison’s beds, the crispness of the sheets, the size of the bath – it was big enough for two – the amount of champagne in the mini-bar, the aphrodisiac foodstuffs available from room service, the CDs in the room and, finally, the handcuff opportunities. All in all, she concluded, you could have a very nice time here. The only thing that was missing was the right man.

  Returning to work, her eye was caught by a huge billboard advertising a new ice-cream called Truffle. She was going to the launch that very evening. Then she noticed the magnificent man on the poster, his ravishing mouth wrapped around a Truffle, his eyes glazed with what was meant to be lust, but could just as easily have been achieved with a couple of Mogadon.

  I’d love to have sex with him.

  God, she realized, I’m turning into a sad old spinster. Fantasizing about a photograph. The sooner I get laid the better.

  35

  The launch party for the new Truffle ice-cream started at six that evening. Because it was basically a choc-ice, it had no Unique Selling Point, in a marketplace crammed to capacity with products boasting USPs. So the manufacturers were pelting money at it, holding the launch in the Clarence and luring journalists there with promises of champagne. It promised to be a fairly glitzy affair.

  ‘Want to come?’ Lisa asked Ashling.

  Ashling, still uncomfortable after the way Lisa had humiliated Mercedes, was about to refuse, then decided it would kill an hour before her salsa class. ‘OK,’ she said, cautiously.

  Before they left, Lisa went to the ladies’ to do her hourly check on her appearance. Sweeping a cruelly appraising eye over her slender, tanned reflection in a white Ghost dress, she was pleased. This was no misplaced arrogance. Even her worst enemy (and competition was stiff) would have acknowledged that she looked good.

  She’d want to, she admitted. She worked hard enough at it. She was her masterpiece, her life’s work. Not that she was ever complacent about her appearance: she was also her own harshest critic. Long before it was ever visible to the naked eye, she could tell when her roots needed to be done. She could feel her hair growing. And she always knew – even if the scales and the tape-measure disagreed – when she’d put on even an ounce of fat. She fancied she could hear her skin stretch and expand to accommodate it.

  She paused and narrowed her eyes. Was that a line she saw on her forehead? The merest whisper of a hint of a wrinkle? It was! Time for another Botox injection. She was from the attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence school of beauty therapy. Get it before it gets you.

  Touching up her already perfect lip-gloss, Lisa was finally ready. If she didn’t pull this evening, it wouldn’t be her fault.

  It turned out that both Kelvin and Jack were also going along to the Truffle shindig. As Truffle was sponsoring the new drama series on Channel 9, Jack was reluctantly playing the corporate game.

  ‘And what’s your excuse? Which of your many magazines are you going to cover it for?’ Lisa sarcastically asked Kelvin.

  ‘None. But I’m in the mood to get stotious and I’m skint after the bank holiday.’

  Lisa flinched at the mention of the awful, endless bank holiday. Never again.

  As soon as they arrived. Lisa disappeared into the well-dressed, rowdy throng, Kelvin made straight for the bar and Ashling circled the room cautiously. She knew no one and couldn’t get too drunk because of her salsa class. And she must go to her salsa class, it was only the second lesson, way too soon to be skiving off. Occasionally through the crowds she spotted Jack Devine uncomfortably trying to be backslappingly jovial and failing miserably. Lack of practice, she deduced.

  Somehow she ended up standing beside him, on the edge of things.

  ‘Hello,’ she said nervously. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’ve a headache from smiling,’ he said grumpily. ‘I hate these things.’ Then he lapsed into muteness.

  ‘I’m very well too,’ Ashling said, tartly. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  Jack pulled a surprised face, then turned to the passing waitress. ‘Nurse,’ he waggled his empty glass, ‘something for the pain.’

  The waitress, a young, appealing girl, handed him a glass of champagne. ‘One of these every half-hour should do the trick.’

  She dimpled prettily and he smiled back. Sourly, Ashling monitored the exchange.

  As soon as the ‘nurse’ was gone, Ashling tried to think of something to say to Jack, any kind of vague conversational gambit at all, and couldn’t. And Jack was no better. He stood in silence, shifting from foot to foot, drinking his champagne far too fast.

  Another waitress passed, this time carrying a tray piled high with Truffles, which Ashling accepted eagerly. Not so much because she loved ice-cream, although she did, but because it would give her something to do with her mouth other than not talking to Jack Devine. She applied herself to it with gusto, twirling her tongue around the top. Abruptly she sensed she was being watched and peeped up to see Jack Devine looking amused and suggestive. A prickly blush crawled up her neck. Still holding his look, she bit the top off her choc-ice with a savage crunch. Jack winced and she laughed with serves-you-right wickedness.

  ‘I’m going now,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t leave me,’ he complained. ‘Who will I talk to?’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t been me so far!’ she exclaimed and picked up her bag.

  ‘Oi! Miss Fix-it, where are you off to?’ He sounded quite panicky.

  ‘My salsa class.’

  ‘Oh, your dirty dancing. Sometime you’ll have to bring me too,’ he teased. ‘Go on, abandon me to the salary-men, then.’

  Passing Dan ‘I’ll try anything once’ Heigel from the Sunday Independent, who was making his version of a Brown Cow by putting lumps of ice-cream into his champagne, Ashling departed.

  No sooner was she gone than Jack was flanked by Kelvin, holding two glasses of champagne, both of them his.

  ‘Look at Lisa. Is she wearing knickers or isn’t she?’ Kelvin asked, studying Lisa’s pert bottom through her white dress. ‘I can’t see any lines but

  Jack wouldn’t join in.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Kelvin said.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You’re thinking she could be wearing a thong. She might be, of course,’ Kelvin reluctantly acknowledged, ‘but I’d like to think otherwise.’

  Lisa was systematically working her way through the room looking for the best-looking man in it, but already she’d gone up a couple of blind alleys.

  First she’d met a mysterious, almost silent man wearing blue, roundy shades. He looked very cool and had a gorgeous, knowing mouth, a wicked smile, lovely hair and great clothes. Then he took off his glasses and Lisa recoiled. Suddenly he was horrific. His eyes were tiny, too close together, and kind of stunned and bewildered-looking. They belonged to a different face altogether, to someone with learning difficulties.

  Backing away she bumped into Fionn O’Malley, a self-styled eligible bachelor. He fancied himself as one of Ireland’s sexiest men on account of his pointy Jack Nicholson eyebrows.

  ‘Hello there.’ Evilly, he smiled at Lisa and raised his eyebrows with demonic intent. ‘You’re looking particularly luscious this evening.’ This compliment was accompanied with further raising and lowering of his eyebrows in a manner contrived to make Lisa feel uncomfortable with sexual stirring.

  Bored, she turned her back.

  And then she saw him. The model who was on billboards across Ireland. He was text-book gorgeous: pouty, lantern-jawed, dewy-skinned, his shiny, blue-black hair falling in a lick over his tanned forehead. A face so perfect he was a millimetre away from being boring.

  Bingo! She’d found her man.

  Shorter than she ideally preferred them, but it couldn’t be helped.

  The great thing about models was that, in her experience, they were dreadful tarts. Because their job entailed almost non-st
op travelling, they permanently had that ‘on holiday’ approach to sex. While this meant he’d probably be easy to pick up, the downside was that he could only ever be a Milky Way man, mere one-night-stand material.

  That was OK, Lisa decided, eyeing the long flank of his thigh and muscular hollow at the side of his bottom. Just sex was fine.

  It had been quite a while since she’d propositioned someone. And there was only one way to do it. There was no point pussy-footing around, being coy, hoping he’d be the one to notice you. Oh no – you’d got to march up to the man you wanted and dazzle him with your confidence. It was like being around dogs – you couldn’t show your fear.

  Taking a deep breath and reminding herself that she was fabulous, she widened her shiny mouth into a blinding smile and launched herself into his path. ‘Hello, I’m Lisa Edwards, editor of Colleen magazine.’

  He shook her hand. ‘Wayne Baker, the face of Truffle.’ Said with utmost seriousness. Oh dear, irony deficiency! Never mind, she didn’t have to like the bloke. In fact it was probably better if she didn’t. This was about sex and very often liking someone got in the way.

  She summoned every reserve of confidence, because the next line had to be delivered with conviction. Never let him think he had any choice in the matter. He couldn’t reject her. It simply wasn’t an option.

  Fixing him with her eyes, she cooed, ‘Make mine a large one.’

  ‘What would you like?’ He inclined his head at the bar.

  ‘I’m not talking about a drink,’ she said, with heavy meaning.

  Muscle by muscle, an expression of comprehension settled on his face. ‘Oh.’ He swallowed. ‘I see. Wha–?’

  ‘Dinner. First.’

  ‘OK,’ he said obediently. ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  She allowed herself a little exhalation of relief. He’d fallen for it. She’d thought he might, but you never knew…

  As they left, she sought out Jack with her eyes. He was looking at her, his expression closed. ‘See ya,’ she mouthed at him, and he responded with a stiff little nod.

  Good.

  In the restaurant at the Clarence, Lisa and Wayne had a competition to eat the least. Warily watching each other, they skated food around their plates. For one exciting, breathless moment it looked like Wayne was going to put a piece of monkfish into his mouth, and if he did, Lisa would permit herself a corner of artichoke. But at the last moment he changed his mind and Lisa reluctantly lowered her fork back to her plate also.

  Wayne Baker was from Hastings and was young – although probably not as young as he claimed. He said he was twenty, but Lisa reckoned it was more likely to be twenty-two or twenty-three. He took his career as a model very, very seriously.

  ‘It’s hardly rocket science, is it, sweetie?’ Lisa teased.

  He looked hurt. ‘As it happens, I don’t intend to do it for ever.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Lisa said. ‘Eventually you want to take up acting.’

  Surprise stamped itself on to his almost risibly perfect face. ‘How did you know?’

  Lisa swallowed a sigh. Though it pained her to peddle clichés, he wasn’t the brightest and it blunted the edge of his stunning attractiveness. She had nothing against people with little or no education – after all, she’d barely been able to write her name in the ground with a stick when she’d left school. But there was no reason for a person not to know who Meg Matthews was married to.

  ‘Where do you live, handsome?’ Lisa asked. Somehow she made ‘handsome’ sound derogatory, as if he was a piece of meat. Funny, Wayne thought vaguely. That was usually the way he spoke to girls.

  ‘I’ve an apartment in London, but I’m almost never there.’ He couldn’t hide his pride in this.

  ‘And how long are you in Dublin?’

  ‘I leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Here, at the Clarence.’

  ‘Top.’ Lisa didn’t want to bring him to Pine Cottage. She was afraid that he’d be put off by all that unstylish pine, but there was an even bigger chance that she’d have gone off him by the end of the taxi journey.

  As soon as the waiter took the plates of slightly rearranged food away, Lisa decided she’d deferred gratification for long enough. Wantonly she said to Wayne, ‘Time for bed.’

  ‘Blimey.’ He started at her brazenness and stood up obediently.

  Ascending the lift of the hotel, bubbles of anticipation simmered in Lisa. She felt wicked and decadent – sometimes what a girl really needs is fast and furious sex with a total stranger. And what’s the point of having a fabulous, starved body if someone doesn’t get to see it occasionally?

  Wayne’s smooth, brown hand shook slightly as he put the key in the door, and though she was really only acting a part, Lisa was thrilled at her power.

  Once in, her fizzy expectation built. It was like being on a film set: the modern, stylish room, the man, young and fit and firm and pumped. There was no denying it – he was beautiful.

  ‘Close the door and take your clothes off,’ Lisa said, getting more and more into her dominatrix role.

  Wayne anticipated her admiration. ‘You’re going to love this,’ he grinned, slowly unbuttoning his shirt. ‘I do two hundred sit-ups a day.’

  His stomach was a tight marvel of six taut mounds, veeing outwards and upwards at his ribs into a taut, tanned chest. He was so perfect that Lisa’s confidence stumbled. He must be used to sleeping with exquisite, skinny models. Good thing she never ate.

  ‘Now you,’ he said.

  With a minxy, meaningful smile – attitude was important – she pulled her white dress over her head in one fluid movement. Kelvin had been right – no knickers.

  ‘Snap,’ Wayne laughed, unzipping his tight, tailored trousers. His erection sprang forth, already semi-tumescent. No underwear.

  A thrill passed through her. She was so ready for this.

  He wasn’t the first person she’d slept with since Oliver. Shortly after he’d left she’d brought someone home in an attempt to get him out of her head. But it hadn’t been a great success, she’d probably tried too soon. This was far nicer.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Wayne remarked, touching her nipple with a professional interest.

  ‘I know. So are you.’

  ‘I know.’

  They gorged on laughter, on each other’s beauty, and he kissed her, not unsexily.

  ‘Come on,’ he tried to lead her to the bed.

  ‘No. The floor.’ She wanted it rough and hard and intense.

  ‘Kinky,’ he said.

  ‘Hardly.’ She was scornful. ‘You’ve led a sheltered life.’

  He wasn’t bad. He wasn’t great either. That was the problem with very good-looking men. They thought that if they just lay there it was enough to trigger a wave of orgasms. Luckily Lisa was very sure of what she wanted.

  She shooed him away when he tried to get on top of her. This was her gig.

  ‘Slower,’ she warned, when he looked like getting a little too frisky beneath her. It was a bother having to stage-manage events, but at least he was compliant.

  Some time later she shoved her hands under his buttocks and said, ‘Faster, faster!’

  ‘I thought you liked it slow.’

  ‘Well, I like it fast now,’ she gasped, and Wayne obediently obliged. In the throes of pleasure, she bit his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t,’ he yelped. ‘I’m on a swimwear shoot in two days’ time. I can’t have toothmarks.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ she exclaimed. ‘Harder!’

  Wayne gathered force and speed, bucking his muscular hips up into hers. ‘I think I’m going to…’ he panted.

  ‘You’d better bloody not,’ she snapped. And she was so frightening, his imminent orgasm receded obediently.

  Afterwards, they lay on the floor, still panting and breathless. Momentarily sated, Lisa idly surveyed the beechwood chair-legs at her eye level. That had been great, she thought. Just what she’d needed
.

  They continued to lie on the kingfisher-blue carpet until their breathing returned to normal, then Wayne began to make signs of life. Tenderly he stroked her hair and mused dreamily, ‘I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re so… strong.’

  She responded with a curt, ‘Is there a mini-bar? Pour me a drink, I’m going to the loo.’

  ‘Righto.’

  Righto!

  She could barely squeeze into his bathroom because it was so crammed with skin-care products, shampoo, mousse, setting lotions and cologne. This did not endear him to her. What a girl. She curled her lip in contempt. On the washstand there were some beautiful shower-gel and body-lotion freebies and Lisa promised herself that she’d nick them before she left.

  When she emerged, he guided her to the bed and put a glass of cold champagne in her hand. Climbing in beside her between the cool, cotton sheets he said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

  His hushed, serious tone gave her to expect it would be one of those wanky questions that lovers ask each other – Do you believe in love at first sight? What are you thinking? Would you be faithful to me?

  ‘Go on,’ she said shortly.

  He leant on his elbow, pointed to his forehead and asked, ‘Does that look like a spot to you?’

  There was nothing on his forehead. It was as smooth as a baby’s bottom, as the skin of a peach, as a millpond, whatever…

  ‘Ooh, yeah,’ she frowned. ‘Quite a nasty one, isn’t it? Looks infected.’

  He actually squawked with distress and pulled out a mirror he’d obviously been inspecting himself in while she’d been in the bathroom.

  Lisa guffawed, highly amused. ‘What’s on the in-house movie?’ she asked. She didn’t want to talk to him while she waited for him to get it up again.

  In between bouts of satisfyingly rough sex they watched films and drank champagne from the mini-bar. Eventually, sated and exhausted, they fell asleep. Lisa slept soundly and woke up in a marvellous mood, insisting on one more shag before she prepared to leave.

  But in the bathroom, as she squeaked her toothpaste-covered finger around her teeth, she came across something she hadn’t noticed the night before. Mascara and eyebrow pencil. Yuk. She’d thought his eyelashes were suspiciously spiky. And she was prepared to bet that his hair was probably dyed too, from some nondescript brown to its current ebony. Suddenly she went right off him.