Eighty Days Blue (27 page)

Dominik gave a final glance at the choice of flavours and opted for a combination of raspberry and Belgian chocolate.

‘Cone or tub?'

Lauralynn looked down at her tight white T-shirt and up at the sun in the deep-blue sky. ‘I think a tub would be more advisable.'

‘Done deal.' Dominik leaned against the counter, gave the uniformed kid their order and dug into his jeans pocket for a ten-dollar bill.

‘Isn't this exciting?' Lauralynn said.

Why had he never thought to bring Summer here, or Coney Island, or another place designed for ordinary fun? They hadn't even been to Central Park to sit in the grass and watch the kites fly in the wind or had a picnic together. The small epiphanies of life. Had they been too much in thrall to their emotions, their cravings?

Maybe there was something wrong about them. Were they even normal?

‘A penny for your thoughts?' Lauralynn's voice reached
him
through a fog of mental haze as he scraped the bottom of the paper cup for the last, almost liquid, remnants of his ice cream.

‘Nothing important,' Dominik replied.

Lauralynn looked at him quizzically. ‘Summer?'

‘I suppose so,' he agreed.

‘She's really got under your skin, hasn't she?'

‘I suppose she has.'

‘Seems to me you're no longer in charge.'

‘I sometimes wonder what the point of the whole thing is.'

‘That's just the problem with you, Dominik: you think too much.'

‘Easy to say.'

‘You should relax more. Take matters as they come. Go with the flow of things.'

‘Hmm . . .' he mumbled.

‘Tell you what,' she said.

‘Yes?'

‘Let's go down to the sand.'

He looked out to the narrow beach below the boardwalk. Scattered silhouettes were dotted across it, with a few heads bobbing here and there in the sea.

‘No way we can go swimming,' Dominik remarked. ‘We haven't brought anything.' They wouldn't even be able to strip to their underwear, as Lauralynn was braless and he had slipped his jeans on with no thought of underpants.

‘Just dip our toes in the water,' Lauralynn said, ‘under the boardwalk. Just like in the songs and the movies, no?'

They ventured further up the boardwalk until they found a set of stairs that led down to the sand. They descended and took off their shoes. The sand was coarse and still
damp
, and after loitering briefly in the wave-swept spume on the edge of the beach and enjoying the feel of the water round their ankles, they retreated back and installed themselves in a dry spot of sand under the boardwalk's rafters.

Lauralynn giggled like a child.

‘What is it?' Dominik asked her.

‘I feel we should be in black and white,' she said, thinking back to countless movies she must have viewed when she was younger.

‘And silent?' he added.

‘Absolutely,' she smiled. ‘Come here.' She gestured. He shuffled across the sand until he was right next to her.

And she kissed him gently.

Above them was the ever-present animated sound of families and passers-by strolling down the boardwalk and kids' scooters in full flight.

Dominik closed his eyes, one hand on Lauralynn's thigh, the other digging into the wet sand with two fingers, tracing arcane hieroglyphics with his mind switched off. He knew there was nothing sexual about Lauralynn's sudden kiss, just an affirmation of the way she felt right then, at peace with herself. Nonetheless, he felt his cock harden and wondered if he asked, whether she would go as far as giving him a blowjob. She had done so when they had been together with Miranda, he remembered, recalling the feel of her mouth wrapping itself round him. He knew, though, it would spoil the moment and he willed his erection to subside.

Later, Lauralynn said, ‘Thanks for bringing me here, Dominik. It's been a wonderful day, really.'

‘There's no rush to get back to the city,' he said. ‘We can stay the evening.'

‘I'd like that.' They were now back on the boardwalk, and the sun had faded, though the sky was still blue, duller and not so hot. The crowds had thinned, as had the way they were clothed. The night people were coming out, like vampires from their coffins, a different nocturnal race, beckoned by the neon lights now dotting the boardwalk's horizon.

‘A nice meal?' he suggested.

‘Are we suitably dressed?' she asked. They both wore jeans, she with her flimsy white T-shirt, the shape of her hard nipples clearly visible beneath the stretch of the material, and flat ballet pumps, while he only had a grey short-sleeve shirt with a button-down collar.

‘It's Atlantic City. I'm sure places here are not that formal,' he said. Or would it be like some London clubs he had visited, where he had been loaned a tie or even a jacket by the establishment in order to fit in with the house rules? There were still shops open on the boardwalk, he reckoned, where they could find a summer jacket if need be.

Lauralynn's eyes lit up. ‘After our meal, I want to visit a casino,' she said.

‘Why not?'

They ended up at the Tropicana. Jackets were not required.

What came as a surprise to Dominik was that Lauralynn turned out to be a reckless and compulsive gambler. He was anything but. He had twice visited the gambling Mecca of Las Vegas in the past for seminars and conventions, and had managed the remarkable feat of not even risking a dime on the ever-present slot machines liberally spread across the city from the airport corridors to the washrooms of hotels
and
restaurants. He'd never even been tempted to sit at a table.

He had once played poker on a regular basis with friends when he had been at university, but the stakes had been low (and when their grants had been stretched as far as they could manage, they had actually played with matchsticks), but he knew no other card games and lacked even the curiosity to learn their rules.

Lauralynn first attacked one of the roulette tables and quickly trebled her small original stake with a judicious game of playing the red and black almost alternately, her gut instinct dictating the occasional variation. It was either luck or divination. As soon as two bets failed in a row, she abandoned that table and moved to another. At the next table, there were cards involved, but Dominik didn't have a clue what game was being played. Again, her success was surprising, as her pile of chips quickly began to grow. Dominik had no idea how much she had made, ignorant as he was as to the specific value of each coloured chip, but it was evident she was beginning to attract attention to herself, as groups of onlookers were congregating around the table where she was in action, many of them men with a predatory air about them. But women too.

After a time, the size of her winnings settled down and she moved to yet another table and dealer, where things grew quieter for a while. Dominik was getting bored watching her now, even though Lauralynn stood out like a sore thumb among the other gamblers, her cascade of blonde hair falling to her shoulders and lapping against the whiter-than-white collar of her T-shirt, sitting tall and imperious like a thoroughbred.

Finally, she tired of playing, gathered her chips and rose
from
the chair as the eyes of all the others round the table followed her.

‘I need a drink,' she told Dominik.

‘I daresay you can afford one now,' he said.

This time, Dominik forgot to tell the barman to go easy on the ice, and his Coke was tasteless and watered down.

‘You're a risk-taker,' he remarked, sipping his drink.

Lauralynn's eyes were still shiny from the excitement of her gambling. ‘Life is all about taking risks,' she answered.

‘There is a thin line between risk-taking and being reckless,' he added.

‘I think that is exactly your problem, Dominik,' Lauralynn said. ‘One part of you wants to forge ahead, take risks, but there is another you who wants to weigh things, consider, holding you back. You can't commit fully to things.'

‘Is that so?'

‘But then I'm just a poor cello player and a girl to boot. I don't have a degree in psychology,' she grinned.

‘Very funny.'

‘I'm buzzing,' Lauralynn said. There was no escaping the spectacle of her nipples as they stretched the thin cotton of her T-shirt. ‘Sex would be nice right now,' she added, looking around at the other customers at the bar, all couples or single men. None appeared of interest to her.

‘But not with a man? Or me?'

‘I don't fuck my friends,' she said.

‘You just kiss them or suck them off, if the circumstances are right,' Dominik remarked.

‘Oh, that . . .' she said. ‘Just riding the wave, part of the dynamics of that particular situation. With Miranda. A pity about that. I wonder if Victor put her off somehow,' Lauralynn added. ‘Or if she just chickened out. She didn't
use
her safe word, though, and she could have. I thought she'd be up for more.'

‘Anyway,' Dominik pointed out, ‘don't feel obligated to stay with me. I can make my way back to the city. If you want to go on the pull, find someone . . .'

‘No, that wouldn't be fair,' Lauralynn said.

‘As you wish.'

‘Tell you what,' Lauralynn said. ‘I've made almost a thousand bucks tonight. We'll get ourselves a cab home. Can't be bothered with trains. It'll be faster at this time of night anyway. My treat.'

‘Very generous of you.'

During the lengthy taxi ride into Manhattan, she mostly dozed, her head against his shoulder, her breath slowing, the heat from her body a warm blanket of softness.

Back at the loft, she gave him a peck on the cheek, turned her back to him and, oblivious to his attention, stripped off her T-shirt and jeans, and casually inserted herself inside her sleeping bag in the semi-darkness of the loft, her long body disappearing quickly into its folds, unavailable, now switched off. Dominik slid the partition that separated his bedroom from the principal living space, undressed and lay down on the bed.

He quickly fell asleep.

An hour or so later, he was awakened by a series of soft sounds coming from the direction of Lauralynn's corner. He heard her moan and realised, with a jolt of arousal, that she must be touching herself. What thoughts or images, whose face or body was she evoking as she did so? Dominik wondered, and brought his hand down to his cock and began to masturbate, albeit more quietly.

They both climaxed within seconds of each other.

‘One day, she'll feel distant. Then the next day, she sounds needy, demanding, angry even.' Dominik was telling Lauralynn about Summer and the sparse emails she had been sending him at random times since she had arrived back in New Zealand. ‘I end up not knowing what she really wants from our relationship. Or what I want . . .'

‘Sounds a right case of “can't live together, can't live apart” to me,' Lauralynn said.

‘Maybe.'

‘The problem is the same,' she added, ‘whether you're just an ordinary couple or folk with dominant and submissive elements, as I see it. It's how to deal with the happy ever after.'

‘She likes to play with fire,' he said. ‘That's what attracts me to her, makes me take things to extremes sometimes. On the other hand, it also scares me, as I don't know what she will want to do or have done to her next. It's as if she expects too much of me, but also rebels against it. I don't want us to end up one day like Clarissa and Edward, old-school libertines, a parody of ourselves.'

‘Ed and Clarissa are good fun when you get to know them. They were just playing a part, Victor's theatrical hosts. Besides, I'm sure it doesn't have to be that way.'

‘Me too, but I'm struggling to see things clearly. What happens when her tour is over? I'll be running out of time with the fellowship by then. I'll have to make a decision as to whether I should remain in New York or go back to London. I could ask her to come there with me. As a solo performer, surely she can be based anywhere, no?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘I could order her, of course, insist she come with me,
return
to London, but I'm scared shitless she might say no and that would be the end of everything that binds us together.'

‘Why don't you?' Lauralynn said.

‘I would if I could. I just feel I don't understand her enough yet.'

‘Understand?'

‘How she feels, what she feels . . .'

Lauralynn was sitting on the edge of the loft's long orange couch. Dominik was at the other end, his laptop on his knees, the Wikipedia page on modern jazz still flickering on his screen like a reminder of his real life. He'd been investigating the black musicians who had played on the Paris Left Bank in the early 1950s for his novel. He was thinking of having his heroine, Elena, sleep with one, but was still concerned that having an interracial scene so early in the book might attract concerns of racism if he wasn't up to the task of evoking it delicately enough.

‘Have you ever subbed?' Lauralynn asked.

He was taken short by her question.

‘No. Never. It's just not what I am. Surely you should know that well.'

His mind flashed back to Kathryn and how she had intuitively brought out the dominant hidden within him all those years back. The look in her eyes that signified her surrender, not just that sexual thing but the unmistakeable rendition of the soul as well as the body. Of Claudia, who'd encouraged him to expand the limits of his transgressive self and never flinched as he'd unveiled his dark side. Of Summer . . .

‘Sometimes,' she remarked, not quite as casually as it sounded, he noted, a gleam of mischief illuminating the
pale
blue of her eyes, ‘you have to experience some things in order to understand them properly.'

‘Meaning?'

‘You know what it feels like to possess another, to control them, to have to an extent power of life and death over them, no?'