We managed to pull ourselves together and get out of the closet and just in time.
‘There you are!’ George hurried up to us, his hair a little mussed and his Harlequin mask the tiniest bit askew. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. That poor girl – she was feeling sick, so I helped her find the hotel doctor – and when I got back, you were gone.’
Nicely played, with hints of both concern and guilt in his voice. Then he narrowed his eyes at Joe. ‘Who’s this?’
‘I went looking for you, and got lost, honey,’ I said meekly. ‘He was just giving me directions … back to the ballroom.’
Joe clapped George on the back. The gesture was hard enough to make George stumble forwards a step, and Joe caught him. ‘You’ve gotta keep a better eye on your lovely lady,’ he said, sounding all amiable and between-us-boys. ‘You don’t want her to slip away.’
‘Yeah,’ George said, staring at him funny. I caught my breath, worried that he’d figured out what we’d done. But all he said was, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’
We were an hour into the desert, headed towards LA, when my cellphone chimed to let me know I had a text message.
I take it your partner hasn’t noticed I lifted his phone. Means he hasn’t noticed something else is gone.
I stared at the display for a long time, the glow of it the only light except for our headlights on the flat straight ribbon of freeway. We had the moon roof open to enjoy the canopy of stars undimmed by light pollution. The crisp desert air poured through, and now it made me shiver.
‘What is it?’ George finally asked.
‘Let me see the Star.’
‘Fran, we’re in the middle of nowhere! I can’t just pull over and –’
‘Trust me. Get the Star.’
With a huff of annoyance, he slowed and pulled over on the shoulder. If a cop came along, we’d claim car troubles.
After we’d left The Venetian, we’d pulled into another parking garage and shucked our costumes for jeans and sweatshirts. George rummaged in the back seat and found his doublet.
‘It’s right here,’ he said, scrunching the fabric to show the lump in the hidden inner pocket.
A car zoomed by, and ours rocked gently.
‘I need to see it,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ George snapped. He dug it out, opened the drawstring bag, and dropped it into his hand. He held it out to me, and, barely able to breathe, I took it.
It was pretty.
It was very pretty faceted blue glass. Same size and weight as the Star, but still glass.
The sounds of the night, the rushing of passing cars, faded away. I felt the blood drain from my face.
‘Fuck!’ George snatched the stone out of my hand and flung it out the moon roof. It disappeared into the sand and scrub somewhere off Interstate 15. He didn’t look at me, but I still felt like he knew it was all my fault.
Damn me for an idiot. A horny idiot.
‘Joe’s’ diction had changed as we talked. Still the slight Texas accent – that might even be real – but he’d gone from all ‘aw shucks, ma’am’ to sounding smoother, better educated, as things got hot and heavy.
Which should have tipped me off that that was his real voice, the one he fell into when his brain wasn’t a hundred per cent in gear. But I’d been too busy being seduced.
A month later I was on the road again, this time headed south.
I loved George. Plain and simple, I did. And I loved working with him. But a disaster like the loss of the Lucchese Star could ruin even the most solid working relationship.
The personal relationship unravelled with the same effortlessness. Apparently George lost interest in sex not only when he was planning a heist, but also when he was thwarted in one.
Joe – or whatever his real name was – had texted me again. He’d been impressed, he said, with my creativity, my ability to think on my feet. If I felt like ‘upgrading’, he was willing to negotiate.
When I answered, he gave me the name of a bar in Tijuana. He’d be there for an hour on a particular night, if I cared to show.
I opened the moon roof, enjoying the wind ruffling my hair. The stars weren’t as impressive as a fist-sized sapphire, but they were awfully pretty.
It was important, always, to have a Plan B.
A Whole New City
Nikki Magennis
IN TEN MINUTES the office would open. Claire sat ready at her desk, behind the window sprayed with photographs of clouds in blue skies. The name of the agency – ‘skylines’ – was etched across the glass in long looping letters. Inside, ranks of shiny brochures leant on the shelves and the grey wool carpet stretched out from the door like a calm sea. Everything was designed to precise specifications, and in the morning everything looked perfect. Including Claire.
She wore a slashed-neck top, showing a sweep of polished skin from her throat to the top of her left breast. It was a considered amount of flesh – enough to suggest her sexuality, but not enough to promise anything. Her breasts had a good firm profile, they smiled up at the customers and Claire knew what useful assets they were. She was an attractive cog in the great machine of life, after all. Well oiled. She crossed a long beautifully sculpted leg over her knee. Her skin was waxed so smooth that her legs slipped against each other.
With her hair sprayed into a solid platinum-blonde knot and her wrists resting lightly on the desk, she waited.
On good days the customers she prayed for breezed into the shop and headed straight for the desk. They wore cashmere and leather, carried monogrammed Louis Vuitton and had skin tanned the shade of oak. The rich weather elegantly, Claire would think, as she turned to offer them her perfectly clear and undivided attention.
‘Tuscany,’ a tall man with silvered hair would say, so certain of where he was going and what he wanted. Then Claire would snap into action. Her eyes, as pale as a winter sky, would blink once. Her spine would unroll and her fingers become arrows, French manicured nails pointed straight at the computer screen, searching for flight details and hotels with the requisite handfuls of stars. Inside her fitted suit, her body would thrum with excitement. It was a sensation like flying, a swift and controlled freedom. Like the whole world was there at her fingertips. Airports, runways and gleaming white metal. She’d feel the points of her breasts burning. Her nipples actually jolting with electrical energy. Static, she’d think, as they brushed against the inside of her jacket.
In front of her the customer relaxed into a dream of airhostesses. He would wait patiently as Claire tapped out the codes, playing her part of a beautiful accomplice in his fantasy. Everybody would smile and Claire would squeeze her legs together as she offered the names of cities to her clients: ‘Sydney’, ‘Zurich’, ‘Jo’burg’. It was the reason why she’d struggled through university, set up the agency and fought her way into the travel industry. For the thought of exotic locations hovering on the horizon and the promise of escape.
The hope for these appointments got her through the day, made the package deals bearable. Claire’s flesh crawled when she thought of her usual customers. The vast sweating masses looking for cheap thrills in the sun. They were like cattle, loud and vulgar.
The hunger of those people. If it hadn’t been for the fact they paid cash and provided a steady supply of business, she would have refused to serve them. They’d push open the door and clutter up the shop with pushchairs and shopping bags, say ‘Ibitsa’ and ‘Mah-Jorca’ like the words were little pieces of gristle they were trying to spit out.
Claire booked them into half-built concrete high rises with dirty pools, wishing them verrucas and cancelled flights as she did so. Spain, Spain, Spain. Did they never imagine anywhere else?
‘Coffee?’ asked her one employee, Sandy, as she fidgeted with the button on her nylon company-issue blouse. It had tiny pictures of clouds printed all over it, fitted badly and pinched under the arms. Claire nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the screen. She highlighted several emails. More complaints.
Dear Mr Filkes, she wrote, I am sorry that the holiday did not meet your expectations.
It was hardly half-nine and already Claire felt bitterness rising in her throat. Clients like Mr Filkes did not turn her on. He was one of the cheap ones, the cattle clients. They demanded paradise for the price of a week’s shopping, and ranted and whined when they didn’t get it.
Claire ground her teeth, and her clothes felt suddenly tight and uncomfortable. Something in her longed to just stand up and walk out into the winter sunshine, to lose herself in the traffic and the faceless noise of the city. The clock above the door ticked slowly, forbidding her to leave her desk. Hours, hours till five.
‘Got anything planned for the weekend?’ Sandy asked.
‘Work to do,’ Claire muttered, thinking of her flat and its acres of quiet space. Her laptop plugged in and open on the coffee table, files strewn around it.
‘I might go and catch a movie. Some good stuff on just now,’ Sandy said. ‘You’re into films, aren’t you?’
Claire whipped round to look at Sandy, standing hand on hip at the coffee machine. ‘What makes you say that?’
In her mind’s eye, Claire saw her living room again: the laptop sitting untouched and next to it the stack of DVDs piled on top of her paperwork. Films with titles like Pain Slut. She heard the moans and the wet slap of a hand against flesh. Underneath her make-up, she felt her cheeks burn.
Sandy shrugged. ‘No reason. That guy was taking you to see a film last week.’
‘That guy’ was Don. A month previously he’d come in to the agency, booked his family skiing trip in Switzerland, paid with a platinum Visa card which bore his wife’s name next to his, and then asked Claire out to dinner.
She’d gone on a couple of dates with him, expecting the usual extravagance of a married man – gifts, trips, nostrings-attached hotel rooms. But an unexpected development had been his declaration of love.
‘This is not the deal, Don,’ she’d said on their third date, when he’d let his hands fall open on the table. He’d hinted at the possibility of a quick divorce, his beetle eyebrows lifting up, hopeful. He was practically begging her. Claire had laid down her knife, having only half-buttered a roll. She’d waved the waiter over and asked for her coat.
They’d never gone to see the film.
So tonight, like most nights, she’d be spending alone. She’d take the train home, order a pizza and pull out the hardcore porn. Some of the hard stuff, with sadistic undercurrents which made her pulse race. Claire preferred well-built men, men with shoulders and chests and torsos that rippled. She liked plenty of oil and leather, strong jaws and decisive gestures. In her dreams godlike men pushed her over backwards, tossed her around until her hair came loose and tumbled down her back in a pale-yellow waterfall. They held her down, forced her legs wide open in a beautiful arching V, imposed themselves on her trembling body. Their cocks were huge, made of iron and ruthless. If she fuzzed up her eyes and didn’t look at the faces when she watched the films, they almost fitted her fantasies.
Afterwards, she’d turn off the DVD and reach for a tissue to sop herself dry. Her legs would be shaky and she’d feel a little twinge in her stomach, the ache of a fading climax. She’d flick on the TV and channel surf till it was time to pop a diazepam and retire. Eventually sleep would come like a hard black tide, while Claire lay with her back turned to the window and her alarm set, clutching the sheets. She hated those long winter nights.
‘Chilly, ain’t it?’ The words were directed at her – a voice that sounded like a swarm of bees, dark and golden, smoky with a rough sweetness. Claire looked up.
A tall restless figure by the door. Tousled, uncut hair – blond splashed with grey. He could be a down-and-out, she thought suddenly, checking for signs of menace or delusion. Was he drunk?
But his eyes were clear. Green gold, with a gaze fixed firmly on hers. He was staring like a lion watching prey. A tanned face, with high cheekbones and a hooked nose. Weatherbeaten. When he walked towards the desk Claire noticed his limber way of moving, the easy stride of a man who never stays still for long. He was wearing the kind of nondescript clothes that would melt into the background anywhere in the world. His shirt and trousers hung off him in shades of black and grey. They said nothing about him and didn’t need to. His face had such an intensity, his body such disturbing grace, that every nerve in Claire’s body had sparked immediately to attention.
She noted the silver ring on his right hand and the clean fingernails.
He dropped easily into the chair across from her desk, giving Claire a face full of the pungent aroma which seemed to have drifted in with him. Smoke, sweat and a dark industrial scent, something like road tar – strong smells, but fresh, as though he’d just been labouring on a building site. There was an animal tang about him which Claire recognised as male. She shrank inside her clothes.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
He slouched back in his chair, legs spreading as wide as his smile.
‘Well, now I’m not sure if you can.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Claire.
‘See, I was just walking down the street, looking at all the grey skies and the miserable faces. And I thought to myself, I need a change. I need some inspiration. Modern world’s so damn noisy. Gets you confused and, before you know it, you’re halfway to dead and not yet done any of the things you always wanted to do.
‘You know how you can lose sight of your dreams, eh? Forget that there’s other worlds to explore. You live somewhere, you get complacent. You get stuck in a rut.
‘Then, I looked in here, and what did I see?’ The guy leant forwards, eyes searching Claire’s. She tried hard not to pull back in alarm.
‘“We make your dreams come true.”’ He pointed to the sign that hung on the wall behind Claire, quoting the slogan of the travel agency.
‘Only I’m not sure where my dreams might take me. I thought maybe you might have some ideas,’ he said, leaning to read her name badge. ‘Claire.’
Her name sounded so personal in a stranger’s mouth. And his eyes were on the name badge pinned to her breast, like he was eyeing the flash of pale skin there.
He was leaning forwards onto her desk, over the keyboard where Claire’s hands rested. His breath, she thought, I can feel his fucking warm breath on me. It crawled up her arm, dancing in the little hairs that were too blond and fine for her to shave. She looked at the coarse stubble peppered all over his jaw. Blond and rough. Like sandpaper.
‘I am very busy,’ she said, pointedly turning to her computer screen which waited with a patient hiss, cursor blinking.
‘The thing is, Claire, I want more than just a holiday.’
‘We can offer tailor-made holidays, sir, but –’
‘I want adventure,’ he cut in. ‘I want experiences that get under your skin. I want to go somewhere different, that I’ve never seen before.’
Claire shook her head, not even pretending to smile any more. This man. He was asking her to provide something that didn’t exist.
When the customers came in, hungry for escape, she knew what to offer. She promised paradise. She’d use the word ‘heavenly’. She scattered these words in front of the tired hordes, sold them fantasies she knew would never quite be realised. No matter how far they travelled and no matter how much money they threw around, the food would taste odd, the sheets would feel slightly damp and uncomfortable, the foreign language would jar in their ears and they’d find within two days that the person they’d longed to whisk away to a secluded idyll no longer excited them. Claire knew all about the disappointment of travel.
‘I thought maybe somewhere like Madagascar,’ he said.
‘Do you know, they have different words for the wind, there?’ he continued. ‘In the morning, there’s the warm air that blows off the land. They call it the “varatraze”. You wake up to it, coming in the open door. It’s like being stroked by a lover, still half asleep and lazy. You know what I mean, right?�
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The breath of the man across from her felt like the exotic breeze itself, tickling over her skin.
‘Yeah, it makes it kind of hard to get out of bed. A guy could spend all day in there, wrapped up in the arms of his woman, ignoring the paradise he’s in. Exploring the other kind of heaven. But then, you have to drag yourself outside. Because, God, it’s just so beautiful.’
What was going on? Claire heard the word ‘beautiful’ and felt a choking embarrassment.
‘These huge flowers, everywhere.’ He cupped his hands, showing how the petals of the flowers spread wide. ‘And all around them, birds. Kingfishers. Love birds.’
‘Yes, I get the picture.’ Claire knew she’d spoken too abruptly. No matter how rude this man was, she should act with scrupulous detachment. She should be breezily efficient. From the laughter in his jade-green eyes, she knew that he was well aware of her discomfort.
‘You don’t like Madagascar?’ he asked, affecting an innocent surprise.
‘Never been,’ she managed to growl, closing her lips firmly and clenching her knees together.
‘Really? Oh but, Claire, you should come with me.’
Her laugh was a bark, high and ridiculous. This had gone too far. She turned to the computer and rattled away furiously to find a flight, any flight going in the region of Africa. Her eyes raked over flight lists, the coded names for airports in strange cities. The text swam in front of her, numbers and letters spelling out meaningless destinations.
‘Nothing. We have nothing, I’m afraid.’ Claire was practically certain he was some kind of silver-tongued vagrant, without the money for the bus home let alone a trip to somewhere as exotic as he was describing. She shook her head firmly. ‘Sorry.’
‘Claire, I don’t think that’s true.’
‘We have nothing,’ she raised her voice before she could stop herself.
It was late afternoon. She keyed in the security code and pulled down the shutters, closed up for another day. Adjusted her hem and set out with a cool stride towards the station. Since the ‘Madagascar’ guy had left, the day had turned from shit to worse, with Sandy unbearably overexcited and desperate to make a big deal of the encounter.
Sex with Strangers Page 10
