by Gabi Moore
‘Mark Cane furniture’ I typed and hit enter.
The screen washed over with pictures that were predominantly black, red and purple. It took me a while to understand what I was seeing. That was him all right. I clicked a few links and found his webpage.
I gasped and flopped back in my seat.
Sex furniture.
Sex. Furniture.
Plain as day, there it was in tasteful black and red. Was that …yes, some of the pieces even had that same carving as the table I’d cheerfully received this morning. “Not the usual Balinese style” indeed. I scrolled through the gallery. Big wooden crosses that looked like they came straight from a medieval dungeon. Cages. Chairs with holes in them. I zoomed in on an innocent looking bed that on closer inspection had a pillory built into it, and heavy steel rings on each of the four posts.
“What’s so funny?”
I slammed the laptop shut. Melissa had come in with coffee and was looking at me with interest.
“Nothing, just …it’s nothing. Have you heard from Masooma yet?”
Melissa gave me a knowing look and plunked the coffee down on my table.
“Yeah, she’s on her way now, you ready?”
“Absolutely,” I said, and watched her walk out again. I instantly peeled open the laptop again and greedily scanned page after black page. And then there he was. I froze and took a good look at him. He was posing in a simple photograph against a giant saw, all his inky scribbles visible all along his arm. He was smiling right at me.
I clicked “contact” and saw a custom request form. Ah. So people made requests. I smiled wryly. Perverts.
I briefly wondered if Anthony had any idea. My eyes hovered over the “submit” button and I smiled to myself at the choice of word. In hindsight, he did seem like the type. The strange darkness in the eyes. The tattoos. The outrageously flirty smile. Did he use any of the things he made…?
Without thinking, I started to type. The request form was anonymous, so what difference did it make? It would just be a bit of fun. It didn’t mean anything.
I want something made for me, I don’t care what. Money is no object. I leave the details to you. I only know that when I’m finished using it, I want it to leave marks. LOTS of marks.
I giggled and clicked “submit”. The screen went dark. Nothing would happen of course. He probably got loads of curious chancers just messing around, what with an open form like that just right on his website. I closed the laptop again.
Still. It would be kind of cool if he responded. I had no idea what I’d do if he did, but the idea was a thrilling distraction, what with the poster girl for female genital mutilation likely to take up my entire afternoon with somber chat about the political state in India... I checked myself. That was unkind. I took a sip of coffee to clear my head. I had work to do. I knew when I committed to this job that I would be dealing with unpleasant facts, with hard, sometimes unrewarding work. I just had to be an adult about it.
And with that I made off towards the meeting room, composing an argument in my head about why I was just mistaken, and that I couldn’t possibly be turned on right now. By the time I reached the meeting room doors and flung them open, I had completely convinced myself I wasn’t desperate for him to reply.
Chapter Seven – Mark
“When you get older, you’ll understand,” Anthony said. “The impulse to be a father is inborn, it’s just something natural that every man has to arrive at, sooner or later.”
I laughed. “Spoken like a man who already has a kid.”
“I’m serious, Mark. I used to think the same as you. If someone told me at your age that I’d one day be a devoted father, I would have laughed at them.”
Ever since Anthony’s wife passed away these little chats about my future were getting more and more frequent.
“Christ, Anthony, you’re like, five or six years older than me.”
“Whatever. You’ll see. You’ll meet the right woman one day, and you’ll see just how much can change in five years. Or five days. Or an afternoon even, I promise.”
I held my tongue.
I rolled around the possibility of playfully prying about his new girlfriend, the flame-headed Miss Kat Lilith. But I was well aware that these occasional chummy moments were mostly on his terms. To my surprise, he laughed and said, “For instance with Kat. I don’t want to scare her away or anything, but I think she might be it. I just know.”
I exhaled loudly into the receiver of the phone.
“Wow. No offense, but how long have you known her for?”
“Not long. But that doesn’t matter,” he said quickly.
“Yeah? What does she think about all this?” I asked, suddenly aware of how badly I didn’t want to seem too interested in his answer.
‘Well, I think she’s been hurt in the past, you know? A divorce. But she’s interested, trust me.”
I said nothing.
“We’re seeing each other this evening, so I’d say yeah, she’s pretty keen. Anyway, let me get back to the grindstone buddy, I won’t keep you.”
I briefly wondered about the ins and outs of this man’s love life, and wondered what had prompted him to suddenly share so much of it with me. But he cheerfully hung up and I found my thoughts coming undone for a moment.
I snapped myself out of it. It was easy to scoff at his hokey old school relationship ‘advice’, but what did I know about love anyway? I didn’t exactly have the most amazing track record with women myself. Maybe he was right. Maybe not. I checked my mail again and looked at the time. An interesting consult coming up this afternoon.
Now, I’ve be selling my wares for a long time and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the timid, curious sorts that come all shy and reluctant to the shows, end up being my biggest clients.
It’s always the quiet ones. The ones who start out unsure and conflicted, who say that someone else pushed them to it, that it’s just for a ‘joke’, that they don’t really mean it … it was always these customers who end up being my biggest fans, coming back for more over and over again.
I read the enquiry again. Yup, no doubt about it. It was shot through with a desperation you could almost smell. I had asked her (if it was indeed a her!) to do some quick measurements and come for a half hour consult. If I were right, she’d be giving me the go ahead within ten minutes.
The gate bell buzzed and I opened. And then I stopped dead in my tracks.
It was her.
Her copper hair came bobbing up the stairs before she did, but when she caught my eye she froze on the middle step and looked at me, waiting for me to say something.
“It’s you,” I said.
Her expression was strange. She hurried up the remaining steps and blushed a little.
“Yeah, I know, it was just a bad joke, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t resist.”
But her attitude seemed forced. Somehow, I just knew she had rehearsed that line over and over before coming here.
“A joke?” I said, and took her jacket from her.
“Yeah, you see, I wanted to say thank you for your table, right, and I didn’t know how to contact you, and so I tried to look for you online and then, you know …” she waved her hands nervously. “And then I found your website, and I thought it would be just hilarious to send you a request.”
“Hilarious?”
I watched her deflate before my very eyes.
“Yeah, just a joke, kind of embarrassing now actually…”
Watching her squirm was amazing. I said nothing, only pinned her to the spot with my gaze. Eventually, I took a step towards her and looked her up and down.
“Did you honestly think that I would believe that little story?” I said and smiled softly at her. Her face flashed a violent shade of red.
“What story? Oh, God, it was just a bad joke, I’m sorry, I was just trying to be funny…” she started again, but this time she knew I knew. I stared at her and watched her flounder. It was beautiful.
“Jeez, I was ju
st curious,” she said defiantly.
I love a lady that doth protest too much. She was so deliciously obvious. I said nothing; just waiting to see what amusing hole she’d dig for herself now. I almost felt a little embarrassed on her behalf. I checked my watch.
“Oh, I shouldn’t have come without telling you that we’ve actually met before,” she said quickly, trying to regain her composure. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me, I didn’t want you to get embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed? About what?”
The color came right back to her face.
“You know …about …about the sex furniture,” she said, bashfully hissing the words under her breath and gesturing nervously around the workshop.
She was adorable.
“Sex furniture?” I said loudly. “Why would that embarrass me? I don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. I make things that make people happy. Very happy,” I said, drawing out the last words and catching her eyes deliberately.
She giggled.
“Oh my God, that is hilarious. I can’t believe I’m actually here…” she said, laughing nervously.
“You can’t believe you arranged an appointment with me and came with the deliberate intention of wasting my time?” I said, voice edged with sarcasm.
The smile fell from her face.
“Oh God. I’m so sorry” she mumbled. “You’re offended…”
“Yeah, a little.”
I saw her scrambling to say something, but I cut her short.
“Look, though it’s clear you don’t take my work very seriously, I have plenty of people who legitimately are. If you wanted to see me, you should have just said so.”
“Oh no, no, I didn’t want to see you,” she said quickly, literally waving off the idea.
I tried hard not to grin.
“Oh? So you really did want to commission a piece then? Fantastic!”
The look on her face was priceless.
She smiled. Embarrassment was a good look for her.
“Ok, you got me,” She held up her hands. “But honestly, I’m probably not like your other customers, really. I admit I thought it was kind of unusual, kind of interesting. But I’m just curious...”
I looked at my watch.
“Ok, well, what did you want to know?”
She looked alarmed. It’s like she hadn’t thought this plan through in the least.
“What …do I want to know? Um…” she said, eyes darting everywhere in the room to avoid mine.
“Well, can I see some of them?” she asked. She was a good few years my senior, but at that moment, she had the face of a schoolgirl.
I smiled.
“Sure.”
She followed me into a separate room and I lifted some tarps to reveal a piece ready to ship out the following day.
“Oh my God. What …how does it…?” she said, and instantly her hands were trailing over the steel bars.
I loved the look on her face as the mental cogs worked and she tried to figure it out. Tried to imagine which body parts went where. She looked charmingly puzzled. Then she laughed.
“I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but I cannot see what you’re supposed to do with this.”
I gave her a naughty wink.
“See this? This is for hands.”
“And this?”
“For the other pair of hands.”
“Ok, but then what about this then? For the feet?”
“No,” I said naughtily. “It’s for a third pair of hands.”
Her eyes went wild. It took her a few seconds and I looked at her looking at the device, watching her fill in the fleshy blanks.
“Oh my God… How do you come up with that?”
“Intuition.”
She looked around the rest of the room.
“Oh yes, I remember, dreams and things. Magic and hocus-pocus,” she said playfully.
“There’s nothing magical about intuition.”
“No?” She was walking slowly around the workshop, taking tools in her small hands, examining them, and placing them down again. “Then what’s it about?” she asked.
“It’s just about noticing things, I guess,” I said, and followed her at a close distance. “For instance, I’ve noticed you’ve deliberately worn a dress today you know accentuates your beautiful waist.”
She flashed me a hot look.
“This? No, that doesn’t mean anything. I just like this dress, I just wore it,” she said quickly.
“And I also notice, for instance, that whenever you’re telling a bit of a lie, you tighten your fists, just a little,” I said, holding eye contact. She quickly looked down at her hands and, shocked, released them and folded her arms.
“That’s just... that’s…”
“I notice that you’re very keen to say that nothing means anything.” I was standing very close to her now. I didn’t need to check the time. I knew she had only been here for six or seven minutes so far.
“Maybe it is ‘magic’ that you reached out to me, drove all the way out here and put on that dress just so you could stand in front of me right now, for no reason at all…”
She parted her lips.
I took a step away from her and pulled back just as she leaned in for a kiss.
She frowned. “By the way, I didn’t come here to see you. I seriously did want you to make a piece for me.”
I turned to look at her. Her hands were held arched open at her sides. She had a beautiful body. She was long and graceful, with the hips of a ballet dancer and thighs lean as a gazelle’s. The fabric of her green dress clung suggestively to the gentle curve of her lower belly.
She was perfect.
I took a step closer to her.
“I’d love to,” I said quietly, and before I could think about it, her lips were on mine.
She whimpered softly as her warm tongue folded into my lips. It was as though I could taste the tension melting off of her. We paused there with one another, eyes closed, delicately touching this new moment. There was no excuse she could make now. This is what she had really come here for.
To my surprise she kissed me passionately, her hand reaching up for the base of my neck and anchoring there to pull me deeper in. I found myself smiling as she sunk her greedy tongue further in, completely ravenous. And without thinking my body responded, my hands darting to her tight waist and pawing at the delicious curve where her flanks met her hipbones.
I leaned in deeper, my tongue caressing her, sending her staggering back and bumping into the wall behind her, tools clattering to the floor.
“Mark…” she breathed, but I kissed her all over, planting kiss after kiss on her opened lips, her little tongue, her neck and shoulders…
“Mark, I…”
“Fuck, you’re beautiful” I breathed into her neck. I was nearly dizzy with how quickly she was turning me on. Rock hard, I pressed my eager body into hers and her hips curled to meet mine instantly. Her hair smelled like cinnamon.
“Mark, I shouldn’t,” she moaned, but the way her little hands clutched desperately round my shoulders, the little shuddering breaths she drew as her hips started grinding into mine …they all told me that yes, she sure as hell should.
She pulled away and held up her hands.
“I can’t. I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
She looked around, flustered, then soothed the lower half of her dress.
“I just can’t.” She cleared her throat and started scanning the room for her jacket. “I mean it, though. I really was curious about the furniture. I really do want you to make me something.”
“What should I make?” I said, suddenly feeling like someone had let all my air out.
“I don’t care,” she said with irritation. “Just make something. Anything.”
“Sure,” I said, and watched as she made for the door. “You’re the boss, after all.”
“What? I’m the boss?” she turned to look at me.
“Yeah,
but you don’t want to be, do you?”
She shot me a fiery look.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I casually looked at my fingernails and took my time answering her.
“You’re in charge. You’re the boss. You have everything under control. But I think you wish I’d take that all away from you.” I paused and caught her gaze, staring at her intently. “Force it from you, even.”
She fumed and turned on her heel for the door.
“I can’t believe I came here,” she muttered.
“Hey, Kat,” I said quickly. She turned to face me, hand on the doorknob.
“What?”
“I’m glad you came.”
She looked embarrassed.
“I was just curious. I don’t know what all your other weirdo clients want or whatever, and why they even come to you, but –”
“They come for the same reason you came.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“Because they need to. Because some part of them, even if it’s just a small part, wants to surrender.”
Before I knew it, she was out the door, slamming it behind her.
Chapter Eight – Kat
If there’s anything in the world I’m good at doing it’s deciding things. And I had decided I would never, ever go back to that stupid workshop and never, ever seek out that man and whatever immature ‘lifestyle’ he was peddling.
It was fine for some, sure, and I wasn’t going to be judgmental, but if I allowed myself to go down that path, who knows what dumb shit I’d do. After Jeff left I promised myself I was going to do things properly. And Mark and his elaborate toys were decidedly improper. A waste of time.
My phone pinged. It was Anthony.
Hope I haven’t been stood up ;)
I don’t know what had gotten into me, but I loathed that little winking face with everything in my heart. I hadn’t been myself all morning, and now I was running late (if there’s a second thing I’m good at in this world, it’s being on time …or so I thought) and couldn’t find a parking space on his busy street.
By the time I arrived flustered on his front doorstep, I was a full twenty minutes late. He opened the door, all pressed chinos and tight smile, and welcomed me in. He felt good to hug, but in a strange way. Oh God. I realized he smelled vaguely of my father.
