by Gilmour, SJB
Males, I could understand. The penis doesn’t just sit there in front of the groin. Its base continues along, becomes the perineum and joins the prostate, I think. Ashleigh had tried to explain it to me once, but neither he nor I were comfortable discussing such things, so we didn’t get very far. Anyway, I knew Mitch certainly enjoyed stimulation of that kind, but not having such equipment, I just couldn’t see how any female could do the same.
Sally raced out again. When they both came back into me several minutes later, Mitch was talking.
‘He recognised me. I was just sitting there in the park — you know, near the fountain there? Anyway, I had my mouth full of sandwich and he walks straight up to me and says hello.’ Don’t tell her about all the eye-candy you saw while you were in that park, Mitch also thought as he was speaking. And whatever you do, don’t tell her you noticed that one of them works in the shop you bought the iTunes cards from.
Dear boy, you know it is okay to look at the menu so long as you only eat at home.
He opened the freezer and took out a leg of lamb.
‘Reckon this will defrost by tomorrow? I thought we could do your famous fall-apart lamb roast.’
Sally smiled and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.
‘Should have taken it out this morning. Just leave it on the bench for a few hours to kick-start the process. We’ll leave it in the fridge overnight and I’ll put it on in the morning.’ She pointed at the bench. ‘Do you want to invite anyone else other than this editor guy and his wife?’
Mitch looked at her blankly. ‘Hadn’t thought about that.’
Naughty, naughty, Mitch. You’d thought exactly that, but leading her into thinking a dinner party was her idea is a nice touch. You’re forgiven.
‘I just thought we might make a dinner party of it. You know, you get to invite two of your new friends, I’ll invite Megs and Kate.’
Mitch thought about this. He liked the lesbian couple, even if he did find their politics a bit abrasive. Pretty tolerable of him, I thought. I don’t care what anyone says. Men who lie with men and women who lie with women are sinners. Well, I used to feel that a lot more strongly while I was alive. Since then, when I really expected to have seen some sort of evidence of God’s existence, I’ve had time to question some of the things I was brought up to believe.
‘That’ll make six adults. You know that table seats ten—’
Sally shrugged. ‘Should we invite Kelly’s parents?’ I don’t really know them that well, but hey, maybe now’s as good a time as any? She always seems so disapproving, and I never see him, but Kelly’s always so nice. I wonder if she’d be a good babysitter… Oh, and we could go to the market. I love that market!
Images of the markets stalls full of fresh vegetables and fruit filled her mind, but I ignored them. Her earlier thoughts were the ones I focused on. Babysitter? Huh. Typical Sally. Ever the little planner.
Ten people? I’ll need to do more than one leg of lamb… I’ll walk up there now and ask the neighbours first.
And off she went. Mitch left me as well, I presume to go to his study.
I barely saw Mitch for the rest of the day. He came into me a few times to get snacks and drinks of water, but I resisted plunging into his thoughts. I could tell when he was concentrating on his writing, and I knew now that sometimes my presence in his mind could disrupt that. As for Sally, well I must say I watched her with a lot more interest than I had in recent weeks.
When she returned from visiting the neighbours, she made sure to actually write their names down on a sheet of paper, which she then left on the bench so she could check it every now and then. How come all I think about when I’m in this kitchen is food and sex? she thought. Fuck. I can’t even remember the pattern on that lycosa I saw last night.
A lycosa, I now knew was one of the species of spider she was studying. Every fortnight, she’d go out at night with a bright regular torch, her camera and a black-light torch. She was studying spiders, not scorpions, but finding a scorpion by making it glow in the ultra-violet light and then killing it meant one less predator for her spiders.
Then it dawned on me that Mitch wasn’t the only one affected by my mental eavesdropping.
She read the names on the list again. Kelly’s got school tomorrow, so she’s not coming. David Forbes is the husband. Trish Forbes is his wife. A pair of alcoholics if ever I saw them.
Sally Taylor, you’re not wrong there, I thought. I’d only met them a few times, and each time they’d been drinking — even that Saturday morning before Ashleigh died. We’d met them at the supermarket and I could smell it one them. I remember getting steamed when they mentioned they’d hit a wombat and showed us the new bend in the bull-bar on their old Toyota. Were they drunk when they hit it?
I forced myself to stop brooding and went back to watching Sally. She’d made a meal plan and a shopping list. She also took out an extra leg of lamb.
Eight adults. One leg won’t be enough. Better too much meat than not enough. Besides, leftover roast is great for lunch-meat, she thought. Should I cook it Mum’s way with the chick-peas and pomodoro salsa, or Dad’s way, all crispy? Crispy. Mitch likes to chew on the shank bone, the big four year-old. Thank God none of them is a vegetarian. I fucking hate vegetarians.
For the first time since she’d moved in, I found myself fully agreeing with her. Amen to that, sister.
The next morning was a perfect example of what had become their Saturday morning routine. They rose early, and only came into me to grab their bundle of calico shopping bags for the farmers’ market in Gembrook. When they returned a few hours later, those bags were full, as were their bellies.
Both felt slightly guilty about eating so much bacon, eggs and fancy sourdough bread, but they justified their indulgence with plans for more exercise. It was mornings like this that I preferred not to read their minds too much.
Observing their happiness had become quite a joy. They had their little system and worked together in a loving synchronicity. Mitch would unpack the bags and Sally would store the items neatly in my fridge. She had her system of where things went in the crisper drawers according to freshness. As she sorted and put new purchases away, she withdrew older ones that needed to be cooked for her to put into her weekly batch of minestrone and kept them in the bottom crisper reserved specifically for that purpose.
If they’d purchased vegetables that needed preparation before going into the fridge, Mitch got the job. He’d cut and clean the celery, making sure to keep the leaves and bulb for Sally’s soup. Spring onions would be trimmed and stored in one of Sally’s fancy plastic containers with special pop-open vents to keep them fresh.
When they were done, Mitch made a playful grab at Sally’s ass. As it always did, his touch immediately began to turn her on, but she squirmed away, admonishing him with a perfectly good carrot which she obviously thought needed to be cooked.
‘Later, mister. I’ve got to get that roast happening for your dinner party.’
‘My dinner party?’
She gave him a gentle shove. ‘Go on, word nerd. Go write something so you can keep me in the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed.’ Her tone was playfully imperious. ‘I’ll be done in about an hour.’
Mitch then grabbed her hands and pulled her close.
‘Making me wait, huh?’
‘Go!’ she told him again. Then she gave him a flirty look that even though I wasn’t in his mind at that moment, I knew was quite clearly driving just about all rational thought from his brain. ‘You won’t regret it!’
Mitch let her go and with final kiss and a hearty squeeze of her tight little buns, left her to it. Intrigued, I watched her prepare the roast.
First, she raced out into the back yard. I know that’s where she’d been because when she returned, she had a handful of fresh thyme, rosemary and a sprig of bay leaves. She rinsed these and set them on a dry tea-towel. Cocking her head to one side for a moment, she obviously found the silence a little dull
so she turned on her iPod in its dock and began playing one of her favourite cooking playlists.
I liked Jamiroquai, Dido, George Michael and Diana Krall, but there were also a lot of bands like Morcheeba, Massive Attack, Portishead and some outfit called Café Del Mar that I couldn’t tell the difference between.
Satisfied she now had the perfect music playing in me for her to create her lamb roast, she began to cook.
She peeled and trimmed two whole clumps of garlic. Twelve of those cloves, she set aside. The rest, she put in the bottom of a large roasting pan. To those, she added the bay leaves. Next she chopped up two carrots, two brown onions, two tomatoes, two sticks of celery and six mushrooms — all into inch-sized chunks. She mixed all these about in the pan and threw in a teaspoon of black peppercorns. Over all this, she set two metal roasting racks.
Next Sally faced her lamb. Each leg received six deep punctures courtesy of a paring knife. Into each cut, she shoved a garlic clove, making sure to press each clove deep inside the meat so the cut could be closed over fully. Then she secured each cut closed with a short sprig of rosemary acting as a suture. Satisfied each hole was closed properly, she then rubbed each leg with lots of olive oil and set into its metal rack.
Once she’d washed her hands of the olive oil, she seasoned the legs with plenty of freshly ground salt and pepper. The leftover rosemary and the sprigs of thyme, she rubbed together over the lamb, littering them with a gorgeous sprinkling of aromatic green fragments. The remaining twigs, she also left in the pan. Nothing wasted.
With two legs in the pan, there wasn’t room for the lid to fit on, so she made a tent out of two sheets of aluminium foil and covered them, leaving one corner open. I resisted the urge to sink into her mind to see why she did that. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. In the fridge, she always kept two bottles of nice white wine, a six-pack of beer for Mitch, and a box of wine for cooking or when the bottles ran out.
She poured herself a large glass of wine from the box and took a sip. Then she poured the rest of the wine into the roasting tray and sealed the rest of the foil. She glanced at the clock on my wall. It was nine thirty-five. She put the roast in my oven at a low temperature and sat down at on one the bar stools. She relaxed for a few minutes, enjoying the music and sense of pride at having completed what really did look like was going to be a spectacular roast.
Her thoughts drifted back to Mitch. He’d be slouched in his desk chair, writing by now. She knew he’d probably be so engrossed in whatever he was writing that she could do a striptease beside him and he’d hardly notice. That thought gave her an idea. She took off out of me and, judging by the noise of the plumbing, had a quick shower and went to the loo. Then she came back downstairs, fiddled with the iPod till she found a song she wanted and went in search of her husband. Her song of choice was Controversy by Prince.
A few moments later, I heard the sound of Mitch’s chair wheels on the hardwood floor in the hall. From the doorway, I saw her, wearing only a bra and thong, pushing Mitch out into the hall, chair and all. Each time he tried to rise, she’d wave her finger at him and shake her head. She then slowly circled him, blowing in his ear and fondling his chest. As she went around the chair, the nimble little thing locked the castors with her toes so the chair wouldn’t move.
I couldn’t read either’s thoughts since they weren’t in me, but I didn’t really need to. Mitch was enjoying this every bit as much as Sally was. I made a mental note to probe her mind later to find out just where she learned to dance like that. Mitch really seemed to like the bit where she straddled him with both hands up in her shiny blonde mane.
He reached out and behind her and unfastened her bra. She dropped one hand down to catch the lacy little garment with a feigned look of shock on her face. Then she smiled and backed away a bit so she could wriggle her ass at him. She discarded the bra and stood with her legs wide apart, still grooving to the music. Slowly, she inched her hands down her toned legs and then back up again. With one hand, she tapped the top of her thong.
Mitch didn’t need any more encouragement. He leaned forward and grasped her butt with both hands. He brought his face right into her little cleave and ran his nose up the length of the crotch of the thong to the top. Then he took the top of it in his teeth and pulled back a few inches then let it go.
At the little snap, Sally glanced back at him with a wild gleam in her eyes. She gently slapped his hands away and spun around a few more times. With one finger pressed into his chest, she pushed him back into the chair until he was leaning right back. She leaned in towards him, gently allowing her nipples to just brush his chin and up over his lips to his nose. The bulge in Mitch’s pants was clearly visible by now.
Finally Sally stood in front of him again, facing away, with her legs close together. She slid her thong all the way down to her ankles and wriggled one foot out of it. Then, still bent over so far she could probably have put her elbows on the floor, she spread her legs wide open and stared up at him from between her legs. He wasn’t looking at her face.
I can’t really blame him; I wasn’t either. Not that I ever in my wildest dreams found women attractive, it was just that this performance was so incredibly outrageous, so erotic and so much more than anything I had ever seen, I couldn’t help but be completely fixated.
The song must have been a real favourite of hers, because Sally seemed to know its end, at seven minutes, seventeen seconds, was getting close. She did a bit more teasing and gyrating and then scampered away out of my field of vision. Mitch followed, shedding his shirt before he even left the chair.
I expected them to disappear into the bedroom as usual, but Sally had more in mind than just a lap-dance. She skipped around the house while Mitch chased her. He managed to catch her when she scooted into me just as Salva Mea by Faithless began to play on the iPod.
Now stark naked in all his lean and impressively erect glory, Mitch grabbed Sally around the waist and pulled her up to him. In a repeat of the first embrace I’d seen them enjoy, only this time completely naked, they kissed hard and passionately for a minute or so. Then he carried her over to my bench and lay her down on her back.
Her eyes went wide. It was something new. That granite was cold.
Mitch leaned down and kissed her some more, letting his fingers trace gentle lines and swirls all over her body. He broke free from her mouth then and began moving his lips down her body. The lower he got, the more she moaned.
Mitch moved around to the end of my bench and slid her towards him, spreading her legs wide. Sally grinned, knowing what was coming. She brought her heels up to the edges of the granite and kept her knees wide apart as he went down on her.
It seems Sally wasn’t the only one who knew the trick of using lots of saliva as lubrication. Mitch let as much saliva drip from his mouth as he could as he first licked outside and around her lips and then deep inside, running from the bottom of her labium minor to her clitoris. Holding her thighs with his hands, using his thumbs to keep her spread wide, he moved up to cover that little button with his mouth.
Only then did I reach into his mind. I just had to know what he was doing with his tongue because by then Sally was very nearly squirming with delight. His mind was very clearly focused on the task at hand. His mouth was now covering her mound completely, enabling him to suck just a little while his tongue flicked gently but quickly over her clitoris, never changing the direction.
Keeping that amazing tongue going, he occasionally let a mouthful of his own saliva and her juices dribble out down his chin and also down to her anus. That was when he started bringing his right hand down. He tilted his head sideways just a little to give his hand room to move and inserted his pointer finger slowly into her pussy. Sally moaned even more loudly and was beginning to buck and writhe.
Mitch moved his left hand up to fondle her right breast, applying just enough pressure on her ribs with the flat of his forearm to keep her still. Licking faster now, and pressing down on her mound h
arder with his mouth, he kept his index finger inside her and then began to probe her now very well-lubricated asshole with his ring finger.
I pulled out from his mind and reached into Sally’s. Oh my! And all this time, I’d thought what Mitch was doing to her was more for his benefit than hers. True he was enjoying every minute of it, and really hoping he’d be able to put more than his finger in her ass, but Sally was loving it. Her moans were coming faster and louder now. She couldn’t help it. The tension inside was welling. Her heart was thumping and breathing had become pants. She couldn’t even feel how hard my bench was on those slim shoulder blades of hers.
She reached forward and grabbed Mitch’s head and pressed him down onto herself firmly. Mitch responded by upping the speed of his tongue-work and going deeper with his fingers. He withdrew his fingers briefly, just enough to un-crook his index finger which then joined his pointer in her pussy, just as his pinkie joined his ring finger in her asshole.
