by Tom Barry
Jay ran his expert eye down the columns of numbers. Cash injection or not, it was hard refuting the figures; anything he did now would only lessen the speed of his demise. Eamon dallied at the bar before returning, expecting to find Jay chastened by the merciless clarity of Davide’s spreadsheet.
“Well, given all the doom and gloom this is a much better picture than I expected,” he said to the returning Eamon. “The important thing now is that we look forward, not back. We just need to stay confident, stay focused, and do our job well over the next few days. Apartment sales could just be the silver bullet that saves all our hides, if you and the boys work your magic that is.” He pushed a sheet across the table. “Get a couple of the guys to hit the phones in the morning. Call everyone on this list that has put down a deposit, and offer them a discount if they complete before the end of the month. Ok?”
“Offer a discount to punters already committed?” Again, incredulity was woven in every word.
“There you go again, doing the thinking. We need every penny we can get this month,” said Jay, finally sharing the plight they were both in, “or there won’t be a next month.”
He glanced at his watch; Lucy was now half an hour late and he did not want Eamon around when she arrived.
“Leave the papers and I will go through them this evening. You’ve done good work here, Eamon. Any problems we’ve got are in spite of your efforts, not because of them.” As Jay rose, signalling the meeting was over, Eamon remained seated.
“It’s great to be appreciated, boss. It surely is,” he said. “But as you’ve raised the subject of miracles, can I expect to see my last six months’ commission this week, or will it be next? Last time we met I think you said I’d have it this month for sure.”
“I expect to have some good news on that, but I can’t say more till after the board meeting.”
But this answer did not seem to satisfy Eamon. “That’s fine by me, but I’m not the only one waiting on commission. I think you might get a lot of problems if the best I can tell the lads is that the cheque is in the post.”
Jay bridled at the implied threat in Eamon’s message, but did not show it. His sidekick had picked his moment well.
“Eamon, my good man, I’ve always seen you right, and that’s not about to change.” He pulled a wad of notes in a money clip from his pocket and peeled off ten fifty-pound notes. “Sterling be ok? I’m short on Euros.”
Eamon nodded and tucked the notes into his pocket.
“That’s just between you and me, a personal thank you. It won’t be coming off your commission. You have a good time tonight with the boys, and let’s see you bright eyed tomorrow morning and fired up to get these sales over the line.”
“You can rely on me, boss. If it can be done, it will be done,” he said, signalling the no holds barred philosophy with which he went about his work. Jay nodded the nod of a man who chose to look the other way at the sight of blood. Eamon gathered up the papers, sank the last of his gin, and all but skipped off, as if the money had miraculously unburdened him.
Jay looked at his watch for the umpteenth time. Still no sign of Lucy. “What in fuck’s name is she up to now,” he whispered as he flipped open the laptop to compose an email to Greg.Thirteen
While Jay sat plotting with Eamon, three floors above him Lucy was similarly occupied. She sat cross-legged on a hotel bed looking up in admiration at the tall, hard-faced woman with the loud voice striding up and down the room. Tessa was a fellow flight attendant and newly appointed best friend; a battle-axe of a woman whose assertive views on the art of seduction had been absorbing Lucy’s attention for the last five minutes. Even Jay’s presence in the hotel bar was pushed to the back of her mind as Tessa praised her execution of their plan on the plane that afternoon and her subsequent reinvention as a woman in charge. Tessa expounded her views on this latter point with vigour, justifying every statement with a simple motto: “Men are bastards,” a conviction that tainted every observation and each piece of advice.
“All they are interested in is getting into your knickers,” she explained. “And your Jay looks to me the worst type of bastard. A smooth talking son of a bitch who uses money and good looks to turn an innocent girl’s head.” Her voice grew more ferocious as she fell headlong into her element, made huge and terrifying by her cynical derision. “Stringing you along, keeping your hopes up that he’ll leave that skinny American wife of his, just so he can get what he can’t get at home, and without even paying for it.” She surfaced for breath then thundered on, worsening everything with an acutely graphic imagination. “How many other Lucys has he got out there? For all you know he’s living the life of a fucking Pharaoh, shagging some olive-skinned tart right now in the next room.”
Lucy considered these images before dismissing each in turn. She was not a home wrecker; Jay cared nothing for Rusty, and he was not fucking any Italians. He had assured her of all these things and she believed him entirely, or at least until recently, when Jay’s elusiveness began to introduce the flames of doubt, doubts that her friend mercilessly fanned.
But Tessa continued, her tone rending Lucy’s thoughts in two with its authority. “As long as you keep giving him everything he wants, he’s going to keep taking it. Who wouldn’t for fuck’s sake? Before you know it you’ll be menopausal, and you’ll still be waiting for the bastard to do the right thing.”
Lucy felt the need to offer the case for the defence. “To be fair to Jay, he never tried to hide his marriage from me, and he has never said he would leave Rusty. We are two consenting adults, and I entered into this willingly. So I suppose he might think he doesn’t owe me anything?”
“Not owe you anything? Not owe you anything? The bastard’s got you brainwashed. He’s been fucking you; and when a man fucks you, he owes you. And forget that shit about two consenting adults. He’s married and you’re single. That is not what I call two consenting adults. One is a cheat, and the other is a victim. Jay’s a fucking predator, pure and simple.”
“Well, yes, maybe,” Lucy hesitated, “but I wanted it as much as he did, at the time anyway.”
Tessa looked positively offended. “Who wanted who more has fuck all to do with anything! You know what a meat market it is out there, but like in any market, you’ve got rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes, rules. Rules of supply…” She paused to convey the voice of authority, “…and fucking demand! You can get any man you want just by fluttering your eyelashes. Who can Jay get? A shrivelled up stick insect that’s well past her sell-by date. You listen to me, girl; the bastard owes you, and owes you big time. The guy is nearly forty and going downhill fast. The only way he will ever get a woman like you again is by paying for her. He’s been banging you for eighteen months, and what have you got out of it? Misery and heartache, as far as I can see. Has he ever bought you anything that cost more than a drink? No. Has he ever taken you on holiday? No.”
Lucy stopped her there, standing up to stem the flow of legs and speech.
“Tess, Jay is very generous. We eat at the most incredible restaurants.” Tess raised her eyebrow and dropped open her mouth in theatrical incredulity, the sight of her molars threatening another barrage of words.
“And we’ve stayed at such beautiful hotels,” Lucy continued, “famous ones, you know, like the Dorchester.”
Tess put a firm finger to her friend’s lips and laughed.
“Give me a break, girl. Where’s he ever taken you that he can’t put through one of his companies? You are giving the bastard everything he wants for free, and you are just an item on his expense report.”
“Look, Tess, I’m not sure where this is getting me. I could go back to my room and cry my heart out about all this but it won’t take me anywhere.”
“What you do with Jay and how you live your life is nothing to do with me. I’m happy to help but I’m the last person who would want to give you advice. All I am trying to do is to straighten your head out. To get you think
ing right. You’re his mistress, Lucy, and I hate to see it.”
“Well, sort of, yes, except I am also going out with Rob,” Lucy offered in some sort of mitigation for Jay’s sins.
“Rob’s got nothing to do with it,” her friend declared as she cut her short. “He’s a single guy, and you have every right to go out with him, or anyone else you want to. And, other than the fact he’s fucking you, Rob doesn’t owe you anything.”
“So what does Jay owe me then, exactly?” Lucy inquired, intrigued as to what perks she was apparently due as a newly declared mistress.
“Anything you want,” replied Tessa in triumph, “that is what he owes you. He wants to fuck you but keep you hidden away at the same time. Well, that comes at a price. Christ, girl, he should be keeping you, giving you an allowance, paying your rent, buying you stuff, and spoiling you at every turn. That’s the way this mistress thing works. And in return you fuck him, and stay in the closet!”
But this fairy tale, this carefully crafted image of a satisfied woman’s paradise, held little charm for Lucy.
“But that isn’t what I want. I don’t want his money, or to spend my life tucked away in his wardrobe or whatever. I want to enjoy myself, with Jay by my side, utterly and completely mine.” She scowled as her friend rolled her eyes in reply but continued nonetheless, the tone of her voice rising as she imagined the dream. “You see, the thing is there’s no sign of that happening any time soon, so things have to change. I know he’s not happy at home, and one day he’s going to have to make a choice, and I want that choice to be me.”
“So why not put him on the spot?” Tessa replied, pounding her fist on the bed as she cried, “Make him choose you!”
“Because I’m not ready to take the risk,” said Lucy, simply, “but the question is, how to get Jay to appreciate what he is going to be missing if he stays living a lie, to understand how much better his life would be if he were with someone he truly loved, and who truly loved him?”
The look of marked restraint in Tessa’s eyes was telling and Lucy wondered if true love was an alien, even hilarious, concept to a woman who seemed to be made of iron. She imagined Tess must have read about love in books and seen it at the movies but dismissed it as a weak fabrication of a lesser human mind.
“What makes you think he loves you?” demanded her friend in a tone that was dangerously close to derision. “Any guy is going to spoil you and tell you what you want to hear. As I said, that’s just about getting into your knickers.”
“Oh please, give me some credit,” said Lucy getting to her feet in exasperation. “I know a thing about men too. But Jay is different.”
“How is he different?” said Tessa, more in scorn than in curiosity. “And let’s not kid ourselves here. If Jay was a dustbin collector, would you have ever gone for him?”
An image of her mother, old and defeated before her fortieth birthday, cleaning up after a drunken slob, flashed before Lucy’s eyes. “Maybe that is how it started, I don’t mind admitting it,” she replied with sudden conviction, “but things have changed. He is the only person in my life who has ever really believed in me. He tells me I can be anything I want to be, as long as I want it enough and work for it. He makes me feel like nothing is too far anymore.” She did not tell her friend that it was Jay who, with understanding and patience, had helped her kick her cocaine habit; a habit she fell into when lapdancing until it seemed to her that because of Jay she no longer needed it.
“Words are cheap,” said Tess, ignorant of the debt and wiping away the romance with a gesture of dismissive disgust. “He’s no different until he proves it.”
“And how does he do that?”
“By changing his behaviour,” she said, “and the only way you are going to get Jay to change is if you change your own behaviour first. What you need to understand is that he treats you the way he does for a very good reason.” She fell silent, awaiting the question, relishing her advantage over the beauty before her.
“Which is?” said Lucy obligingly.
“Which is that it’s the way you yourself have taught him to treat you. So now you have to start re-educating the shit. To teach him how you expect to be treated. How you demand to be treated.”
“Do you have specific suggestions then?” asked Lucy with a smile, remembering her elation on the plane.
“Well, now that you ask, I do have a few,” said Tess, mustering a grim smile in reply. “You need to introduce a few obstacles into the relationship. Things that make him sit up and take notice, things that give him pause for thought. You need to test him.”
Lucy leant forward. “Test him? How?”
“Well, create situations that force him to start to step up to his responsibility to you. Obviously, you can’t set the hurdles too high at first, but once you’ve got him to take the first steps, then you can raise the bar, and get him to make bigger leaps. Until you’ve got him where you want him.”
“And where is that?” asked Lucy in mock innocence.
“Well, ideally, it’s at the altar,” Tessa grimaced, “if that’s what you want. But it’s small steps at first. What you are trying to do is move him out of his comfort zone with the lizard, until he’s in a new comfort zone with you, and doesn’t want to move back. That’s when you’ve got him where you want him.”
“And you’ve got the manual? That lists all the things I need to do and not do,” said Lucy with scepticism bordering on sarcasm.
“I’m only trying to help. There’s no recipe for this one. But maybe you need to start giving out a bit of what you’ve been taking, stop being such a pushover and make him do some waiting around for a change. Then you need to get him to do things, to go places, things that impact him and his married life. You need to start to show that you won’t settle for being kept in the closet.” She pulled at her ponytail before continuing, “And then there’s also the sex of course, you’ll probably need to scale that back, maybe even withhold it for a while.”
“Oh, come on,” Lucy exclaimed, her eyes filled with doubt, “let’s be realistic here, I am still his mistress. If I start withholding favours, then I’ve got nothing left, nothing.”
Tess slapped her back and squeezed her shoulder promising her, “There’s no need to worry about that, believe me. Stand him up at the bar tonight and I guarantee you’ll see how much power you have over him.”
“After I’ve already forced him to change his plans this evening to be here?”
“He had that coming. He will have known there was a reasonable chance you would be working the flight today. So you’ve every right to make a last minute change.”
Lucy sucked in her breath. “It’s getting pretty last minute now. He’s expecting to see me at eight.”
“Well, wait half an hour and then let him know you have other plans.”
“And you’re certain about this?” questioned Lucy, unsure whether to put the future of her relationship into her friend’s sharp, steely hands.
“Lucy, this is about power. If you really want him to ditch the lizard for you, then first he is going to have to respect you.”
“And not keeping my appointments is going to make Jay respect me?” she replied with uncertainty.
“Yes, it is. It will show him you are a woman with your own mind. Who makes her own decisions. Someone to be reckoned with, not trifled with. A woman of substance, for Christ’s sake.”
Lucy was not sure if letting Tessa make decisions for her was evidence of a woman who made up her own mind, but she knew that she did need to do something; and in the absence of any other idea, Tessa’s advice was worth trying. Lucy looked at her watch. She was now twenty minutes late for her evening tryst with Jay. She made her decision, and set out for the lobby bar to give him the bad news, striding from the room with a newly found purpose that made her dangerously beautiful.Fourteen
Jay felt a shadow behind him and lifted his eyes from his laptop. He turned to look over his shoulder and found his face pressed against the se
quins of a short, tight skirt. His focus on his work had taken his mind off Lucy’s tardiness, and he was not inclined to jump straight to attention.
“I just need a few minutes,” he said, asserting his authority while trying to ignore the smell of her perfume which, he guessed from the proximity of her crotch to his nose, had been applied liberally around the top of her thighs.
“That’s convenient, as I’m not staying. I just came down to tell you that I’m going to have to postpone things for a few hours, a friend of mine is having a relationship crisis.”
He turned to reply but she was already walking towards the staircase.
“Lucy—”
“And don’t go anywhere in the meantime, I’ll be finished at ten,” she called back, her body illuminated by the soft lighting of the staircase which silhouetted her curves in its muted glow.
It was nearly eleven when Lucy promenaded in; he closed his laptop in anticipation and began to stand. But she walked straight past and threw herself onto one of the plush chairs that filled the lounge, ignoring him in favour of a willowy redhead with whom she was now in an earnest discussion, punctuated by surreptitious glances in his direction that never seemed to meet his eyes.
He took his place again and watched Lucy cavort with her colleagues from behind his laptop. He was tapping the keys harder and harder as anger welled up within him. This new game made him uneasy, like the calm before a storm, but after eighteen months, the thought of Lucy could still stir within him a desire he felt with no one else, and had not felt with anyone else for as long as he could remember. Resolving to get Lucy out of his life from afar was one thing; resisting her temptations when her flesh was within reach was something else. He could not let go, could not disentangle himself from her embraces; her long, lean thighs held him in a deadlock that threatened to continue forever.
The thought of eternity in any form was not one that Jay often allowed to cross his mind and he banished it by snapping his laptop closed and making for his room without a second glance at Lucy who was now acting out some earlier scene of hilarity to her friend, wiggling and twisting her body as she did so.
