Cathexis

by Clay, Josie

  The Mercedes caused roadside trees to shrug off their fluffy ponchos and we entered a dry Cresta run, the forest no longer visible behind repositioned snow, banked each side of us like hushed breath.

  “I have arranged so there is much snow for you this Christmas”. Nils' eyes squinted roguish in the rear view mirror.

  The dwellings dwindled as we headed south, the sea to our left, an undulating semolina pudding. Nils kept the car in its previous tracks to the house, which was white and dark in a nimbus of wood smoke.

  “We're home baby”. Dale squeezed my hand.

  A tall, fragrant tree on the black astrakhan, singing with silver lametta and little coloured horses, suspended mid-prance amid blue lights; it reminded me of Dale.

  A supernatural whiff of spirits and spice, she simmered whisky mac in a copper pan on the wood burner while Nils studied the label on the ginger wine bottle, intrigued. I hovered near as she shredded a hock of ham with her fingers, feeding me a salty titbit. Greasing my lips with her thumb, my blind heart tapping its way into new realms of bliss.

  “Minette” Nils said from the dining table, “I'd like to know what you think of these”.

  A slide show on the laptop. Photos of the phlegmatic Swedish landscape, from which he'd conjured melancholy and magic. They spoke of solitude, but not loneliness; a calm acceptance that we matter not and know nothing, lost in the enduring hinterland, searching for clues in the view (I tried my best). “Well put Minky” he said, glancing over his glasses, his face folding in affection. “And I thought I was just taking pretty pictures”.

  A rivulet caught my eye. I'd watched the studs of sweat bloom on Dale's chest, the tiny globules gathering to pearls, which peeled off, slithered between her breasts and rippled over the fine creases of her butterscotch belly, heading for black botany.

  The pine cabin under the house which I assumed was for storage, revealed to be a sauna. I was hesitant; the prospect of overheating in a confined space, followed by some masochistic ritual probably involving snow and possibly the frozen sea, didn't appeal. But now glad I'd acquiesced because she sat by my side, slick and taut as a galley slave. Softened in the eucalyptus steam, hair heavy with moisture, relaxed into oily snakes, insinuating a classical decadence.

  “Sorry, I need to do this” she said, splaying her tongue between my breasts and lapping like a heifer on a salt lick. Planting her hand on the slats between my legs, she ran her tongue across my breastbone and up my throat. “Mmm, salty”. She traced my upper lip, her breath like berries, before mouth raping me with her tongue, which she could swell and employ with uncommon aplomb. After the thoughtful mauling, she flashed her eyes like a comedy harlot and descending, redeployed her oral skills on my tits. Taking advantage of her rapt predilection, I inched my coco towards her wrist. She knew what I was up to and almost allowed me to make it.

  “Uh uh uh, not yet” she said, removing her hand to join the other one on my breasts. “I love these babies”, moulding them into nozzles and managing to suck both nipples at once, sending my pelvic floor through the roof, reminiscent of our first time. Similarly prompting a serious internal obliquity, as my orgasm stepped out of the shadows. “Not yet” she said, arranging herself on her back, head on my lap and coco in range of my hand. “Feed me” she said. Leaning forward, I lowered them to her face and as her head lifted, I supported it with my forearm, drawing her to me, where she suckled and palpated, moving her head between each one, twisting my body so she could bestow her mouth on them with impartiality.

  Parting her legs, massaging her silk; so soft - like the cloth I cleaned my glasses with. “Come on” she coaxed, “this is gonna be perfect”, and gasped as I held her open and toyed with her saturation.

  Working her with my hand the way she liked it, I looked down, a fierce, protective love, my actions repercussive on her face, which frowned and bunched around my nipples. When she gazed up, those preternatural eyes contemplated me as if I were the sea and they themselves reflected an endless blue sky.

  “Oh my girl, I love you so much” I heard myself say and felt the breach of a sob, like a whale. She smiled a sign and her eyes rolled back in her head. “Jag kömmer”, arching her spine, rising to my hand, my orgasm was on too, dashing me against the rocks. “Oh God, oh God”, dipping and humming in harmony we shuddered and sang (the captain far above us) with reckless abandon.

  Hammering chests we gawped at each other panting in the dead heat. “Epic” she said and then, “come on”, grabbing my hand, flinging open the door into the night, our footprints in the snow, naked in Narnia.

  “Skitkallt” she giggled. Collapsing us to the ground, she scooped a screaming snow angel and I, completely overheated, lay face down as if I were in a feather bed. She padding my buttocks with cold pats. My body woke up, saving itself. “Unpleasant” I said, assailed by a searing ice cream headache. Scrambling to my feet. “Unpleasant”.

  Dale roared with laughter as I skidaddled back to the warmth. Moments later the door banged open and fairies blinked in her hair. “I think I've had the full Swedish experience”.

  “Not quite” she said, rubbing exquisitely a hand full of snow into my coco.

  Stars through the steamy window, stars within me, her little constellation their negative. Her freckles, as if a jealous goddess had tried to mar her, but in so doing had only succeeded in flattering her further.

  “Mink ...Minky”. A mirage of Dale . “You slept ten hours, wow”. No, it's the real thing. Stroking my hair. “Merry Christmas, baby”.

  “God Jul” I croaked.

  She came to my face, the star above me, inhaling, “I love your morning smell”, hooking my sleepy sand with her little finger. “The family are here”. On cue, the shriek of liberated children turned loose in the snow.

  Too cold for the boat house, we slept in the cool planes of a king size bed, the thermostat in the big house cocked to an ambient twenty five degrees.

  “Let's do our presents” she said, delving into her exploded suitcase.

  For her, a bashed up biker jacket, much like mine. She shrugged her arms into it.

  “Perfect” she said. “I love it”, hugging herself in the creak of leather, the smell reminiscent of Spain and library books.

  For me, an authentic Swedish jumper, red ground with a busy arrangement of diamonds, cartwheels and ziggurats. And a smell like her hair. “And this” she said, blasé, placing a small, hinged box on the duvet, a hopeful smile belying trepidation. A thick silver ring, nestled in blue velvet, beginning her explanation. “I know how you feel about rings, Mink”.

  Historically, I hadn't subscribed to the possession implication, nor was I keen to draw attention to my fishwife hands. Plus, the ring, a symbol of love and union, could be politely requested back by the giver as if merely on loan, just like the heart they'd borrowed and returned, dog-eared, coffee stained, and no longer legible – the ultimate retraction. Plucking it up, she warmed it in her fist. “I couldn't resist it ...look”.

  Engraved in seraph capitals, 'MIN'.

  “It means mine in Swedish”.

  “I know” I smiled and offered my fingers. Taking my hand, she eased it onto the middle one, nudging it over the gnarly knuckle. She brought her lips to mine, a bolus of urgent emotion in my throat.

  “I love you Mink, I'm never going to leave you, trust me”.

  “Thank you” I said. “I do”.

  The chime of metal on metal, like a sword fight between old men deep in the forest. Stamping and chattering, our words clouds, we were waiting for Nils in his workshop, mending Dale's childhood sledge for different children to enjoy. Lucas, Hannah and little Freja, the offspring of Björn and Birgitte. Björn, cousin of Dale, son of Uncle Magnus and Aunt Pernilla (I wondered if they had an inkling he would grow into a bear). Unlike Dale's warm palette - cinnamon, chocolate, peach and rose - his was platinum, winter sun, the gold of leaves, bluey fish scales and the rhubarb of snow-worried skin. A giant who would have born more of a resemblance t
o his uncle, if Nils had been Odin.

  I searched for glimpses of his cousin in the ruddy countenance, which was largely obscured by a flaxen beard, and found nothing. But then he smiled and my heart kinked a little, as a fleeting suggestion of my girl played around his lips. “Let us hope that Thor's work is soon done” he said, nodding in the direction of the hammer blows. “Also, I hope my services will not be needed”. Björn was a paramedic.

  That morning, presents had been unwrapped, kisses exchanged, glögg drunk, sausages eaten, children cuddled and chastised and cakes, coffee and champagne consumed. A black photo album, on the cover 'Eviga Ögenblick' in silver Helvetica. 'Everlasting Moments'.

  The first page parchment and then began Nils's homage to his daughters, as he put it. Some monochrome studies: Dale and I ascending the steps of the boat house in a bygone era. Us swimming the sound – one black dot, one white in a goose feather sea.

  Sitting in Hulda, Dale's generous angles like an opulent Fellini and me, more Bergman – Sturm und Drang.

  On the turn of a page, the world lit up. Saturated colour, almost abstract. Hot, vivid, luscious. Dale's white teeth, silver gypsy glint, from a dark aspect and me, in this instance, laughing back at her. Two different types of women, clearly in love and beautiful for it (was that really me?). A series of these on a clean, blue sweep. Dale's turquoise squint shaming the sea, her side-winding locks reaching for my gold spun tousles, as if the Moors and the Angles had put forward their quintessence. Finally, our boots set next to each other: same size, same style, same stout brown against the flaking red iron oxide of the boat house door.

  “Aw, cute” said Dale.

  “They just looked so ...”, Nils searched for the word, “like buddies ...companiable, no?”

  Dale walking backwards into the bloody, petrol sky, sea birds wheeled behind her head like Giotto angels. I trudged in Nils's footprints, crushing the imprinted zigzags. Her eyes locked with mine in a juvenile game; if there were a tree stump or chasm, I would alert her, the red, woollen scarf wound around her mouth, disappeared into the leather jacket and re-emerged over her black jeans like a loin cloth, stepping back, wide and confident, like a Mohican tricking a tracker.

  Inhaling the frigid air, my heart jerked a double thump and I blinked slowly. A mental snapshot to retain the image forever.

  In the Floridian heat of the bedroom, sitting naked, except for my glasses, on the edge of the bed. I was engrossed in 'Myths and Legends', nearing the end, Valkyrie – chooser of the slain. Dale's legs appearing either side of mine. I inched forward so her feet could touch the floor. Her hands on my sides, lips on my neck, I stroked her long flank, her pubes bristling my tail. We fitted together, tillsammans, her tits at my shoulder blades. I watched as she rolled my nipples in her fingers, tuning up the gargantuan soft machine. Her coco heaved against me in a circular motion. Leaning my head back on her shoulder, succumbing, and perhaps because I was wearing my glasses, I told her that she was an insatiably horny miss. Cupping both my breasts in her big hand, she posted three fingers into my mouth.

  “And you're not?” she said, drawing them in and out, pouting my lips with swelling speed. Obviously, I couldn't answer.

  Anointing my nipples with my own saliva she touched and tweaked, then returning to my mouth for more lubricant, she trailed a moist finger down my belly, before stroking it between my cleft. She grunted approval on my skin, a noise she knew I liked; primitive, checking her stock.

  The book open on the bed, a Valkyrie bore down on me, summoning me with her finger. I had been chosen. Weaving me a story, my moans stifled by her hand over my mouth, her mouth on my trapezius, biting to keep me fastened, nothing now but the sound of sex, my legs flexed, my feet arching tiptoe.

  “I'm going to give you a purple one” she whispered (we had coloured orgasms). Moisture between us now and heat, her hot breath on my neck, breasts flattened on my back, hips rutting against me, fingers flooding me, enfolded in her wings. She unstopped my mouth, her hand needed elsewhere.

  “Talk to me, baby, can you feel me?”

  “Oh God, yes ...Dale?”

  “Yes, Minky?”

  “But one girl rode ahead”.

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, white skinned under her helmet. The horses were trembling”.

  “Were they?”

  “Yes, and from their manes, dew fell into the deep valleys. Hail in the high woods!”

  “Hail?”

  “Yes, Frigga, Hail Frigga, spinner of clouds, oh fuck, Dale, how are you doing this?”

  “It's my love”.

  I closed my eyes and a purple flower bloomed in a black slab.

  Chapter 19

  We got back to Belfry Road in the dark. I knew before the cab turned off Grange Park my car had gone. I'd dreamed it last night; a pea green leaf floating in the gutter and disappearing down the drain. Poor Fritz, probably crushed for scrap.

  She poured a consoling whisky at the kitchen table.

  “I'm sorry, Minky, we can get you another one”.

  But I didn't want another one. The naked wisteria nodded, unhinged in the black window.

  She'd kissed me despondently and cycled into the morning long before the dawn, her hi-viz, a dwindling firefly.

  Prudence and I on the sofa, breakfast TV on mute, staring at the rictus of congeniality on the presenters’ faces who were on tenterhooks in case Germaine Greer, forgetting she was in the Bennets', Crabtrees', and Guptas' front rooms, said 'bloody', or 'arse'.

  I hated Dale's job already. But I had resolved to be supportive and kind; after all, it was only her first day.

  My phone beeped 'Made it x' .

  'Good luck x' I texted.

  The letterbox rattled, a figure blobbing about in the stained glass.

  “Hello?” I shouted.

  “Delivery for Bracewell”.

  A huge bouquet, all the ones I liked. A little envelope . I tugged out the card.

  'Minky'. Not in Dale's hand; a stranger had written my name in conscientious but dimbo script.

  'Try not to burn the house down, N.O.R.W.I.C.H. x'.

  Picturing Dale patiently relaying the message over the ‘phone made me smile. I showed the flowers to Prudence who eyed them warily.

  Dale got home after dark and stood on the deck while I batted the dust out of her like an old rug, particularly enthusiastic around her hind quarters. After she'd bathed and eaten, she went to bed, plum-tuckered. I had to forgo the eye contact part of my secret ritual and hope the hair stroking would suffice. Her rough hand in mine.

  At weekends I taught classes, but she worked Saturdays anyway, cruelly hacking our time together into unsatisfactory pieces. Still my beautiful girl, but tired and miserable.

  “It's harsh” she said.

  “But why are you doing it?”

  “Because” she said, “...it's what I do”.

  Six weeks into this regime, our anniversary. We'd agreed no presents, she'd simply come home early, a quiet dinner, time for us ...perhaps an early night.

  I did the shopping and felt lonely, returned home frustrated, unpacked the dishwasher angry, peeled the potatoes, abandoned. Old insecurities gaining a foothold, my girl unlocatable and I was losing my way. Oh, I knew myself and that I could turn any house into one of cards. So, cross-legged once more, I dealt. Dale was jack, Dale was queen, Dale was ace, but like a child raised by wolves and schooled at Roedean, she had her blind spots.

  As the sea travels backwards betraying rocks and wrecks, recalled to muster a tsunami, a shallow breath gathered a vacuum, pushing out the fuss and tarnish, the groundswell of a mental shout I would send her, gathering, gathering, detonating at critical mass, a sonic boom. 'ME!'. I waited in the mushroom cloud.

  My ‘phone beeped 'Missing you badly x'.

  Good at detecting nuance, there was discomfort and conciliation in this simple message – she would be late, allowing me time to consider how I would foment a coup.

  I pictured her Lilliput
ian amid slabs of granite, sandstone, marble, chiselling pointless; essentially between a rock and a hard place.

  Solace and altruism no good now, they would only serve her pride, her persistence. Complaining would martyr her. Pointing out her folly politely would entrench her and polarise us. Sulking would galvanise her. I had gelignite that would either blow us apart or provide an escape route. I will fight dirty to save you Dale and if I succeed, you'll forgive my sharp practice.

  Fortified with wine I awaited our first argument, throwing a tea towel over the reproachful eye of the dead salmon on the butcher's block. Enjoying the detail of the bath I'd drawn for her, now cold, the sort of thing my old self would have done in love and hope, crying as I pulled the plug. I played Brickbreaker on the Blackberry.