On the Edge A Novel (27 page)

Back in the room, Brooke had found that twenty candles were already a fire hazard and she put the last thirty into a drawer, unlit. Taking Kenneth’s vision quest into account, she had run the bath scaldingly hot, until thick wisps of steam curled on its surface. With an oil spillage of L’Heure Bleue in the tub, the seething and wobbling refulgence of the golden candles on all the walls and ceilings, the bedroom floor ankle-deep in red rose petals, and logs burning silently behind fireproof glass, the cottage had taken on an exotic appearance. Heaped on a plate beside the bed were the wild strawberries she would feed Kenneth as they lay in post-coital calm among the moistened sheets.

It was pre-coital calm which eluded her grasp. Her secret aphrodisiac, and her most brilliant act of long-distance shopping, was the CD of Mtumbe’s
Drums of Africa
, the very sound which had transported Kenneth the day before. She had found the perfect volume, tested the remote control from every point in the room she could reach without climbing the walls, and finally put the disc on ‘pause’. Now, there was really nothing left to do, except to stand in front of the mirror and adjust her bathrobe for the twentieth time.

Kenneth approached the cottage along a manicured forest path. If he was going to do this thing he must do it right. He stopped to watch the bloodstained fingers of the sun drag the slaughtered day below the horizon. He breathed deeply a few times, walked the last few yards, and knocked on the artistically rusted door.

*   *   *

Jason leant forward, caught one of Angela’s breasts in his mouth and gave her nipple a little bite. Women loved that, didn’t they? He was already shagging her and rubbing her clit, so she ought to be well happy. Get them every way at once, that was his policy. It blew their circuits. And she couldn’t complain that he was fantasizing either, because he was totally in the present, thinking about what a great time she must be having thanks to him. What really turned him on was the thought of how much he was turning on the women he was with. The truth was that unless he hadn’t come for ages, he really didn’t feel that much
physically.
His record for not coming was ten days. It was a sort of experiment to see if it made him more intelligent.

Until a couple of days ago, Angela had been dead keen on his performance in the sack. Then she had been exposed to a bit of Tantric propaganda and suddenly she was the Teacher, with a capital T, going to show him how to have a totally spiritual shag. Of course he wanted better sex (who didn’t?) but he hated being patronized. The horrible thing was that Angela could tell if his mind was wandering. Luckily, he wasn’t making up a fantasy at the moment. Unless he was fantasizing that she was having a good time. Fuck, this whole thing was a nightmare. She was ruining his life.

Jason pumped away indignantly.

Angela could feel that Jason’s energy was blocked. She prayed to the Goddess to release the block and let the
shakti
flow between them. She really wanted Jason to feel that connection, that beautiful connection, to the Goddess.

‘Let go,’ she whispered.

Jason released her breast and fell back onto the pillow.

‘I didn’t mean let go of my breast,’ said Angela. ‘I meant let go
inside
, inside yourself.’

‘Just stop ordering me about, will you?’ snapped Jason. ‘If you wanna let go, let go. And you can let go of telling me to let go while you’re at it, because half the time I have no fucking idea what you’re on about.’

‘You have a lot of anger around this issue,’ said Angela, abruptly disconnecting her genitals from his and kneeling some distance away.

‘Oh, so you’re letting go of sex as well, are you?’ said Jason. ‘Great.’

‘No, I just thought we should try yab yum.’

‘What’s that, then?’ said Jason wearily. ‘Sanskrit for “processing”?’

‘No, it’s a position where all the chakras are aligned opposite each other and we can really balance the energy, and become a channel for the Goddess.’

Jason hovered on the edge of rage, but something restrained him and tilted him towards honesty.

‘I’d like that. I mean, I can see the problem now, but I can’t even imagine the solution. For me, during orgasm, that’s when the body takes over from the mind and there’s zero fantasy, or whatever you want to call it.’ Jason struggled to make progress without the crutches of facetiousness and aggression which usually swung him forwards. ‘The ideal would obviously be some permanent state of orgasmic freak-out,’ he suggested, ‘but that’s not possible, is it?’

‘I believe it is,’ said Angela, ‘although that’s not exactly how I’d put it.’

‘Well, let’s go for it, then,’ said Jason, all charm. ‘What exactly is this position?’

‘Just sit up cross-legged like you are meditating.’

Jason followed her instructions.

Angela, noticing that his erection had dwindled during their discussion, made a ring out of her thumb and finger and rubbed his cock up and down. As it stiffened she bent down to meet it, put her lips around the head, and let it slide gradually down her throat. With her middle finger she searched for his perineum, the stretch of skin just beyond his balls. She loved that part of him, the buried root of his cock. It was thick and hard under the softness of the skin. She scratched him lightly there while her head rose up and down on his cock.

Jason groaned appreciatively.

‘You like that, huh?’ said Angela, looking up.

‘Don’t stop!’ cried Jason.

Angela ignored his command and sat up.

‘Oh, no,’ said Jason. ‘That was great. Your throat was so tight.’

‘Wait,’ said Angela. Kneeling above him and taking his cock in her hand, she parted the lips of her cunt, and then, guiding it inside her, sank slowly down. She settled comfortably in his lap, wrapped her legs around his back and sat still.

‘This is yab yum,’ she said. ‘You see all our chakras are facing each other.’

‘Fantastic,’ said Jason, feeling something like wonder. ‘Yab yum, eh? Make a great title for a song.’

*   *   *

‘Spring has returned to the mountain!’ roared Stan. ‘I’ve got a hard-on.’

There was muffled applause from the room next door and a cry of ‘Way to go!’

‘Oh, my love,’ said Karen, ‘I’m so happy for you.’

‘So is half the building,’ chuckled Stan. ‘Evidently my throat chakra is in pretty good shape too.’

Stan pressed his palms on the bed and arched above Karen. He looked down into her eyes. For forty-two years he’d been looking into those kind eyes and for forty of them they’d been the eyes of his wife. They were glittering now, with tears, and with a mischievous look which hadn’t changed since the day he’d met her.

‘You’re a good woman,’ he said.

She laughed and the tears spilt out of her eyes and ran down the side of her face.

‘I guess I won’t be needing Walking Eagle’s special ceremony now,’ said Stan breezily.

‘That’s right,’ whispered Karen.

She had secretly arranged for Walking Eagle to perform the ceremony during their trip to Esalen, but she wouldn’t have told Stan that for all the world.

*   *   *

Kenneth and Brooke lay breast-deep in the bathtub, inhaling the fragrant steam, sweat tickling their cheeks and brows.

Kenneth felt himself sliding into some kind of collective male exhaustion. For a thousand years he had been fighting in the salt marshes, hacking with a blunt sword at other angry and exhausted men. His body was covered in cuts, there were purple bruises on his ribs. He was tired from shallow sleep, from a thousand years of sleeping with a sword in his hand. His arms ached from hacking at shields and shielding himself from hacking blows. He wanted to rest, he wanted to surrender; victory lay in surrender. He wanted to stop pretending to be anything except tired, stop pretending to be competent, stop pretending to know what was going on. Brooke was here to accept his surrender, to disarm him and to kiss those buckled muscles, to kiss that grazed skin.

Brooke was beginning to think that
Drums of Africa
might not be the perfect music for the occasion. Thanks to the grey pallor of his complexion, his gaping mouth, his closed eyes, and his appearance of being crucified against the side of the bath, Kenneth looked extremely drunk, perhaps dead. She slid across to the other side of the bath and leant towards Kenneth, not quite daring to touch him. Hearing the water swirl, he opened his eyes and smiled wearily.

‘I’m so tired,’ he said. ‘I mean
really
tired, tired in my marrow. Not just physically, either. I’m tired of all pretences.’

He’ll be telling me he’s got a headache next, thought Brooke, but she could see that Kenneth was not preparing her for sexual disappointment, he was telling her something essential. His defences were unravelling irresistibly, he was falling apart in the heat of the water. She also sensed that there was more trust in his helplessness than in any sexual act he had ever performed. She suddenly felt touched by the survival of their friendship, despite all the misunderstandings about sex and money. Besides, what else was there to do with sex and money except have misunderstandings about them? They were there to liberate the rest of life for some loftier purpose than bickering, lying and sulking. For the moment she didn’t care whether Kenneth desired her, she just wanted to heal him, to touch him where he was helpless, and to enjoy the trust which his helplessness revealed.

She reached out and pressed her fingers into his shoulders and his neck. Kenneth groaned and sank deeper into the water. She knelt in front of him and massaged his shoulders. She could feel his body shuddering involuntarily under her touch. Kenneth reached out blindly and wrapped his arms and legs around her torso. She felt his beard grazing her chest, the panic in his short breaths, the tension in his arms, the contraction in the muscles around his neck. Poor Kenneth, the booming guru, was just a wreck. Running her hands over his back, she could feel emotional collisions piled up in a scrapyard of twisted muscles, and a thousand knots, each telling the story of an unreconciled contradiction.

Everybody was a wreck, but Kenneth was more of a wreck than most. What could you do but heal and be healed? Yes, we’re all wrecks, thought Brooke, pushing deeper into Kenneth’s troubled flesh, and we must help each other make it through life.

They got out of the bath and Brooke dried Kenneth while he stood swaying with his eyes still closed. She realized that she was in a trance of service. For someone whose napkin was usually caught by a servant before it hit the ground, there was novelty as well as expertise in this role reversal. Stepping through the mirror, Brooke gave away the things she had so often received. The memory of ten thousand massages emerged from her pampered shoulders and rushed solicitously into her hands.

Lying on the bed, Kenneth whimpered pathetically as Brooke pummelled the back of his legs and, finding his exhaustion answered with sympathy, passed through exhaustion into excited gratitude. Brooke, who was by now transformed into the Mother Teresa of Big Sur, was astonished when Kenneth rolled over and presented her with a stubborn erection.

‘I love the way you do that,’ he said, clasping her by the waist with a manly grip.

She leant forward and they kissed.

*   *   *

‘Tight-arse!’ said Jerome.

‘You’re way outta line,’ said Paul, putting his clothes back on.

‘Poly wants more than one,’ said Sabine in a little girl’s voice, writhing on the bed.

‘And you,’ said Paul, turning to Sabine. ‘You may be attractive but you’re one sick chick. I’m a pretty go-with-the-flow kind of person, but the stuff you guys are into…’

Paul shook his head and started to leave.

‘Poly thinks Paul is
boring
,’ sang Sabine, sticking her tongue out.

‘And so does Jerome,’ added Jerome.

Jerome and Sabine rolled around on the bed together, sticking their tongues out and laughing. Paul left with quiet dignity.

‘Maybe Peter would like to play,’ said Sabine.

‘Peter?’ said Jerome. ‘You don’t wanna bother with him.’

Sabine rolled onto her back, bringing her knees up to her ears and pulling her legs open.

‘Poly wants all the men to come inside her,’ she groaned.

‘Yeah,’ said Jerome encouragingly.

He hoped he hadn’t blown it by trying to put her off Peter. Poly was the pure lust in Sabine, a surprisingly separate personality and the hottest lover he had ever known. She couldn’t be bridled and if she wanted Peter she must have him.

The Tantric group, because of the sound they might allow, had their rooms in the same area of the property. Sabine used her intuition to home in on Peter’s room. She tested the handle and, finding the door open, burst into the room.

‘Hello. Who’s there?’ said Karen, turning on the light. ‘Oh, it’s you, dear,’ she said, recognizing the woman she had comforted in the afternoon. ‘I hope we haven’t been making too much noise – I mean, allowing too much sound,’ she corrected herself.

‘What’s going on?’ said Stan sleepily. ‘Are we going to have group sex?’

‘Stan!’ said Karen. ‘I’m sorry, dear, he’s a little overexcited, he just had his first erection in eight years.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Jerome, who was standing behind Sabine.

‘Poly wants to stay,’ whispered Sabine.

‘She does?’

‘It would be kind of original, no? With these old people.’

‘Too original,’ said Jerome.

‘But Poly wants to,’ said Sabine, stamping her foot.

‘OK, OK,’ said Jerome.

‘It’s the woman I was telling you about, the one in my group,’ Karen whispered to Stan. ‘I think she’s upset about something.’

‘Gee,’ said Stan.

‘Why don’t you come and sit down, dear?’ said Karen.

‘Thanks,’ said Sabine shyly.

‘Yeah,’ growled Jerome. ‘Thanks.’

*   *   *

With gentle bites, Peter traced the tendon that ran from Crystal’s knee up to her groin. She spread her knee outwards and made a hollow in the smoothness of her thigh. He bit the tendon harder as he moved upwards, and then he kissed her in that hollow and pressed his lips to that soft crease of skin, rubbing his cheek against the tangle of her pubic hair.