He stirred. His eyelashes flapped and I kissed him.
'You're awake,' he said and we touched lips.
'Maybe you're seeing me in a dream.'
His expression changed. He was fully awake now. 'I did see you in a dream, at least I think it was you.'
'Maybe it was someone you used to know…'
'Katie.'
I rolled over and scooped the mask from the floor where it had been dropped. I held it over my face.
'Is that better?'
'Yes,' he said. 'Definitely. It was you. You were dressed in that blue jacket with lots of buttons and you had your back turned. Then you turned around. You were holding something, a spider, I think, or a crab. You went to say something, then I woke up.'
'A spider!'
'A tarantula or something, it was huge.'
I squirmed. 'I wonder what it means?' I said.
He shrugged. 'It doesn't mean anything. Freud's a joke.'
I laughed.
His cock nudged my hipbone.
'Hello,' I said. 'Someone's awake.'
I disappeared below the sheet. His cock lay bathed in the perfume of our sex, sperm with its vanilla zing and girlie discharge, a fruit shake of chemicals I'd read made you feel high and happy. His knees stretched the covers in a ridge over my head and I felt as if I were in a cave. As he grew harder in my mouth, I wondered why I liked this so much, why it felt so right and natural to be in the warmth below the blankets, eyes pressed shut, my teeth fixed with that twin impulse to be tender and to bite down hard on his throbbing manhood. I sucked his balls and a sigh shimmied through his legs. He was constantly edgy, always anxious to be doing something, going somewhere: obscure meetings with mysterious colleagues, across the fields in search of the missing cat, out into the fresh snow to eat black olives and see London dressed as a Christmas card. For a moment he was in the moment.
His hands reached under the covers and his palms came to rest on the sides of my head. I became a robot girl, my mouth a perfect rictus, my lips furled back, the trunk of his penis slipping in and out of my throat with piston-like ease and rhythm. There is nothing more feminine than sucking cock. It is oral sex that separates us from the animals. My breasts were on fire. My pussy was wet. The whiff of my own arousal filled the cave. I wanted him so much, it hurt.
There is a word I have always avoided in my writing, my life, my thoughts. That word is love. What does it mean? How do you deal with it? If you find it and lose it, how do you get over it? Love is something you feel and when you feel it you can't trust it or define it. How can you sustain love for a long time? A short time? You may love your family, your friends. But you don't invite them inside your body.
I slithered up his chest and he slithered up inside me. He lay back like a figure carved in the landscape, and I adored being the pilot taking our little craft up over the updrafts and turbulence. By rolling rather than rocking, a rhythm men find hard to maintain, like being led while dancing, I felt the oscillations over my G-spot and a rippling effect against my clitoris, the simultaneous vibrations driving a charge as if between two terminals and lighting my body like a city at night. I arched my back, he stiffened, I shuddered and cried out loud enough to wake the Romanian girl from her slumbers in the flat downstairs.
13
Someone I Don't Know
We made love every night and every morning. The days grew warm and wet, as if spring were coming, and the buds on the trees were fooled into opening. I carried sunglasses as well as an umbrella as we set out to find little pop-up bakeries and coffee shops for breakfast. My inclination was to stick with somewhere I liked and return knowing what to expect. Tom preferred the unexplored and unexpected.
He collected the paper from the corner shop where Mr Patel was running a duster over a display case containing cigars.
'Good morning,' I said.
'And who should we thank for this fine day?' he replied with a question.
Tom pointed at the ceiling. 'Perhaps someone upstairs?'
'Ah, you mean Mrs Patel?' said Mr Patel, and it was the first time I had ever seen him smile.
'Have you made a New Year's Resolution?' I asked, and he shook his head from side to side.
'Yes. Yes. Yes. Every year the same. I decide to live for one more year.'
'Just one?'
'One at a time is more than enough.'
He smiled again, twice in one day. The bell over the door chimed as we stepped into the street's noisy chain of grinding traffic and turned at the first corner into the warren of architects' offices, new galleries and shops selling vintage tee-shirts, candles and cupcakes. There was a smell of fresh paint, croissants and coffee. East London was humming. You could hear the song of change in the air, the light that had once beamed down on Chelsea, Notting Hill, Camden, shining now on Wapping, Dalston, Haggerston. The sun lifted over the rooftops as we turned into a narrow passageway lined with horse posts and cobbles like dark winking eyes.
'London's magical when it's like this,' he said.
'The upside of global warming,' I replied, and he shrugged and seemed sad all of a sudden.
'A few degrees in Europe means blue skies. A few degrees south of the Sahara and there's a famine,' he said and I bit my tongue. 'Look back over the last hundred years, where's there's oil there's war.'
'Then we have to end our dependency on oil.'
'Absolutely.' He laughed. 'Then they'll find something else to fight about – water, most probably.'
He read The Times one day, The Guardian the next, seeking balance, staying informed, putting a frame around situations, giving them focus, perspective. He didn't believe everything was hopeless, selfish, existential, but a work in progress in which he and we and everyone played a part. He was plugged in and it made me feel as if I were observing the world like a graceful tree in an ink drawing above a rolling river.
One afternoon when he was called away to a meeting, I took the plastic bags filled with discarded clothes from under the bed and felt lighter leaving them at the charity shop. I studied my shoes and left them unculled for another day. I squeezed the yellow ball and my finger felt stronger. I went to the gym and could smell him on my sweat when I sprinted on the running machine. I bubbled in the hot pool and, clean and creamed, was ten minutes late for my appointment with the manager at the Nat West.
Angela Pelling worked at a glass desk in a glass office, her name on a metallic strip inserted in slots on the door in such a way that it could be removed as easily as it had been dropped into place, a suggestion of corporate impermanence. She was my age, squat and stocky with the beginnings of a moustache, rings on her thumbs and pens of different colours in her blazer pocket. She stared for several seconds at a computer screen, then turned and stared at me over red-framed glasses.
'You are aware that you're late? I have other appointments, not only you.'
'Yes, I am so sorry, Mrs Pelling.'
'Miss Pelling,' she corrected.
She glanced briefly back at the monitor, folded her glasses in front of her, then spoke as if the financial crisis were my fault, the fault of people like me who expect credit and neglect to honour their obligations. Banks support international trade, small businesses, large companies. Banks keep our money safe. Banks are a pillar of the community. Banks can't run on debt. The system only works when those with broad shoulders carry their part of the load, she said, and I wobbled my head like Mr Patel in the corner shop.
I was sitting at a sideways angle to the desk, legs crossed in dark brown skinnies from Anthropologie, a tan leather jacket with a fake leopard collar and knee-boots ornamented with brass fittings. My cheeks glowed from the workout, my pinned-up hair was half-unpinned, the wiles of the wind, and my lips were a shade of Lizzie Elmwood Christmas present Chanel pink. If I were a character in one of my books it would not have been hard to understand why Miss Pelling was going on so, and about things that were inaccurate and vaguely irrelevant.
The overdraft was the result of Simo
n Singh suddenly demanding three months rather than one month advance rent on my new flat and it had been paid off by the time my appointment with her had been made. I wondered, with the plethora of pens and the shadow over her lip, if Miss Pelling had a satisfactory love life, and I would love to have known if she knew that Miss Pelling spelled misspelling. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass wall separating us from the machines where lines of broad-shouldered people did their banking and the reflection showed someone all shiny and relaxed. What misspelling needed was a lover, and if she had one, well, she needed another, that it was love, or sex, or both, that oiled the wheels of the human soul. Angela Pelling seemed to have exchanged her soul for the name plate tentatively slipped in the slots on the door. I marvelled at the genius of this elusive but persistent threat that would keep her in its thrall and felt lucky to be me with different threats and shadows; future unknown.
I left, chastened, and caught a bus. I was learning the bus routes, avoiding taxis, doing my bit. I met Lizzie for lunch and ordered a bottle of San Pellegrino with an avocado wrap.
The waiter hovered with hairy arms in a sleeveless black vest. 'No wine?' he asked, and looked offended.
'No, thank you.'
Lizzie gave me one of her looks as I filled my glass with bubbles.
'Wars are going to be about water when all the oil's gone,' I said.
She stopped dressing her salad. 'Olive oil?'
'No, no, the stuff we put in cars.'
She pushed the cork back in the bottle and added a few grinds of black pepper. 'I suppose that's Tom talking.'
'Not at all…'
'You usually like to talk about sex.'
'I don't only talk about sex.'
'You do when you're not getting any.' She fluttered her eye-lashes as she stared back across the table. 'I have never seen you looking so…so pleased with yourself.'
'You always say that.'
'Do I? So he really is a good lover?'
I took a long breath. 'The best,' I said, gasping like I'd just had a tiny orgasm.
'When's he off?'
'Don't ask,' I replied and felt the hollow snatch of petite mort. 'What about Ray?'
'Don't ask,' she repeated in a different tone. 'We should get together, the four of us. I can't wait to meet this Tom whatever-his-name-is.'
'Bridge,' I told her. 'It's so poetic. On a bridge you are connected with the two halves of yourself.'
'On a bridge, dear, you are not in touch with anything. You are neither in one place nor the other.'
'In the middle of everything and the middle of nothing,' I said, and she reached for her wine glass.
'How well you describe my feelings.'
She turned away, her expression haunted, and there was something in her look that made me sure she was thinking about the new girl she had met and how Ray's presence would make it difficult to see her. She liked to give the impression that she was in control, but her life was driven by inner conflict disguised by outward calm: destiny's mistress, not its master.
Lizzie was a sybarite, a hedonist, a slave to pleasure. She was curvy, sensual, a pin-up for sex in all its configurations. She was born wearing high heels and claimed to have a rare disorder that prevented her wearing flats. Trainers to Lizzie were as cloven hoofs, an abomination, the work of the devil. She had the softest skin I had ever seen, the result, she said, of hot semen masques and hats with wide brims. Her small waist was emphasized by a tightly-buckled belt and her breasts pressed like tumbling waves over the v of a black cashmere top. Her cleavage, deep and inviting, was ornamented by a green lizard with golden eyes on a silver chain and filigreed silver earrings hung like a pair of Damocles' swords beside her wide cheekbones. Her hair was black from a bottle, shiny as lacquer, her nose strong and she had perfect lips, full and firm, shaped like a bow of the sort Renaissance painters provide angels.
The silence had stretched while we ate.
'How's the new girl?' I then asked, and she shimmied like a cat.
'Lisa. Lisa Lundt.' She took a long breath and sighed. 'She's…divine, white, like a fresh fall of snow, like a wedding cake, with red, red lips and the most amazing hip-bones I have ever seen.'
'I didn't know you had a thing for hip-bones?'
She did that little half-turn of the head and shrugged as if to say there was much I didn't know about her, which was partially true. We had first met at Pink, both in masks, and those who wear masks never reveal everything.
'Ray is so needy,' she said. 'He's so rough…'
'I thought you liked rough?'
'What girl in her right mind doesn't enjoy being tied up occasionally, a tanned bum, but, dear, there are limits.'
'I thought the only limit was death.'
'Now you're getting all erotic on me. I am quite content reading de Sade. I don't want to live with him.'
I laughed.
'You're laughing?'
'Why not?'
'You don't usually do that. Laugh, I mean. It must be him.'
I shrugged. 'Does Ray know about Lisa?' I asked her, and she shook her head.
'What we don't know doesn't hurt anyone,' she replied, and took a sip of wine. 'I'm not a bad person, Katie.'
'Bad people always say that.'
'Only when they get caught.'
She broke off a piece of bread and folded it between her lips. The sun had put a pink blush on the tablecloth and I glanced out at the men in black leather promenading in Old Compton Street. Soho was halfway between our respective parts of London, a good place to meet, and Lizzie always felt at home in its aura of decadence. I was overcome suddenly by a rush of happiness, a sense of calm.
'Yes, let's do that,' I said. 'Let's do dinner.'
She placed her knife and fork at an angle across her empty plate.
'My place,' she suggested. 'After a couple of drinks, Ray usually goes off on one of his rants against everything – bankers, officers, particularly procurement officers, whatever the hell they are, journalists, politicians, lawyers, Tony Blair, the television, vox pops, talking heads, bishops, supermarkets, taxi drivers…'
'I'm with him there.'
'I thought you liked taxi drivers. You spend half your life in them.'
'I like taxis. Not the drivers. They always talk about the past, and my legs, or if I'm meeting my boyfriend.'
'It must be such a burden being you.'
'Anyway, I'm taking buses now.'
'You told me the other day you spent more money on taxis than rent.'
'That was the other day.'
'Unbelievable. You're so unpredictable.'
'I try.'
She finished her wine. 'I worship taxi drivers. They're so macho the way they turn in front of the other traffic and skirt through the backstreets.'
'That I do like.'
'That's a relief. I thought for a moment I was sitting here with someone I didn't know.' She added some sparkling water to her wine glass. 'I'm not sure what Ray thinks about doctors.'
'Tom can handle it…'
'That's sweet. So unlike you.' She stared at me across the table. 'It sounds as if you have finally fallen.'
I unwrapped the end of my wrap and ate the contents with a fork. 'I don't know what that means.'
'I know you don't. I've read your books. Exquisite as they are, love is one area you have studiously avoided.'
'I have never avoided love. It was never pertinent to the plot. My books are about self-discovery…'
'Don't tell me what your books are about, I edited them,' she said. 'I'm happy for you. It doesn't happen very often. It has never happened for me.'
'What about Lisa Lundt?'
'Ah, the hip-bones. Her breasts,' she ran her palm over her breast to her throat. 'The hollow here,' she said, 'her eyes, her nose, her tongue...ah, her tongue…'
'Stop. You're making me go all shivery.'
'She does that, I can't tell you…' She paused, and her brow furrowed. 'You never did tell me why he was alone on New Year
's Eve. Is there a twist in the tail?'
'There was someone,' I said. 'A French girl, a cellist.'
'Beautiful?'
I shrugged. 'Delicious.'
'What happened?'
'He found her in bed…with her brother.'
'That's absolutely glorious. I'm so jealous.'
'You don't have a brother.'
'It's the idea, it's so literary. You'll use it, of course?'
'I don't know.'
'You must. It's a gift. What's her name?'
'Marie-France.'
'You only write about yourself. It will stretch you.'
She called the waiter and asked for another glass of wine. I was going to say I don't only write about myself, but didn't. We believe what we want to believe.
The waiter came, filled her glass and glanced at me, bottle hovering, a mischievous look in his dark eyes.
'No thank you,' I said, and he gave a little shrug and wiggle as he left the table.
I caught myself wondering what Marie-France would have done that day having lunch with a friend, how the bonheur verre de vin glues the different parts of life's mystery together. Lizzie raised her glass.
'Cheers,' she said. 'How's the writing going?'
'Oh, you know, slow, depressing. It'd like an endless game of Scrabble.'
'You think so?'
'All the words are there, you just have to keep dipping into you head to find new ways to arrange them. Everything you can think of has been thought of before.'
'There's nothing new under the sun.'
'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. That's the thing, you see. As soon as you see the word sly, you want to say: as a fox. Cold as ice. At the end of the day. Too many cooks. When all is said and done. On a level playing field…'
'All you need is love?' she said and shook her head. 'Never mind. The Beatles. You're too young.'
'The hardest thing in the world is to be original. It seems like our heads are filled with banalities and clichés. You have to keep digging deeper and deeper to try and find a fresh new seam that hasn't been explored.'
'That's just what you're good at,' she said. 'Great writing requires great courage, great doubt and great confidence.'
'Who said that?'
Katie In Love: full length erotic romance novel Page 16
