Quiver (14 page)

She wonders if they are being watched. She hopes so. The idea empowers her, the danger of it excites her. He lifts her skirt up over her head and helps her out of the rest of her clothes. She is now completely naked.

He takes a rose and traces it across her face, trailing the heavy perfume over her nose and lips, the petals catching the surface of her skin and sending a tingling right down to her groin. He kneels in front of her and runs the rose down the whole length of her body, crushing the juice of the petals as he does so, anointing her with the scent. The aroma, pungent and sweet, rises and overwhelms her for a second. He peels her open, revealing the mouth of her sex, her clit, which stands
erect like a tiny stamen. He touches her, running his fingers across and around, over and over. She quivers, wanting the man, wanting the cock. She sinks to her knees and frantically struggles to free him. He springs, long and erect. She lowers her head and takes him into her mouth. She wants all of him, now.

He pulls away from her and lowers her gently onto his jacket. She lies there pinned, waiting, wanting. He grabs a handful of the roses and showers the petals onto her. They float down falling across her breasts and belly. Watching her face he plays with her, making her gasp with each new caress. Leaning over her, teasing her with his cock, he weaves a path with the tip through the layers of rose petals which fall across her hair, her eyes. She wants him so badly, she’s burning, but still he holds her down, strumming her clit softly, excruciating pleasure. Unable to contain herself she pulls him toward her, kissing him deeply, taking his tongue deeply into her mouth. The rose petals crushed become a slippery layer between them. Her urgency inflames his own as she guides him. Diving into her, skin on skin, the consummation, the ecstasy of him in her, filling her, releasing her. His lips are everywhere, kissing and licking her breasts, biting her ears, her neck. She is lost in her own passion, wanting to take him, to be in control. She throws him over onto his back and rides him, the length of him making her gasp. Disturbed, a flock of pigeons scatter up into the warm air currents, cooing in approval. He quickens his tempo in response to hers until she is unable to discern where her flesh ends and his begins. A ball of pleasure rolls up from the base of her womb and like an avalanche rips through her body. A moment later, triggered by her frenzy, he comes too, his whole body involuntarily jolting as his seed bolts through her.

*       *       *

“Pretty adventurous for a senior executive,” Edward’s voice booms across the roof. Deidre lifts herself up onto her elbows and scrambles to cover herself. “But not acceptable to company policy. I’ll see you in my office.”

Edward squints in the sun, trying unsuccessfully to retain his dignity as he stumbles across the roof before disappearing onto the fire escape.

“Who was that?”

“My boss. How long do you think he’d been standing there?”

“I don’t know. I was a little distracted.” He kisses her mouth and her damp nipples. She lets herself be lulled for a moment, but, remembering the look on Edward’s face, she stands up and starts pulling on her clothes.

“Go down the fire exit, it will take you directly out onto the street.”

“When do I see you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tonight. I will be at your house at nine, okay?” He doesn’t wait for her answer, and kisses her before disappearing through the trapdoor. She slips on her shoes and dusts the back of her skirt. A sudden silence engulfs her as a startled pigeon flaps chaotically up toward the sky. Nothing will be the same, she knows that now. Her world, the constructs she has so carefully built around herself, are now rendered irrelevant. Inside the cool, shadowy stairwell she leans against the wall and starts to laugh.

Later that day Edward fired her, claiming that her behavior was untenable and too morally undermining for the company to sustain. Deidre suffered his hypocrisy silently. It was a
well-publicized fact that he’d had regular liaisons with his secretary on the very same roof.

Many found it inconceivable that Deidre would suddenly break out sexually like that. Muttering quietly amongst themselves, they put it down to stress or menopause. But, as the weeks passed, her absence grew like a tumor.

Two weeks later Mischa arrived at her house carrying three cheap suitcases and four cartons of old Russian paperbacks. Deidre was amazed at the ease with which she gave up her territory: his guitar was propped up against her desk, his few toiletries balanced against her own on top of the bathroom cabinet, his old leather coat made an unnoticed entry beside her own linen jacket. Even holding his shaving brush gave her a secret thrill.

Time took on its natural cycles. Just before dawn she would wake and watch as Mischa slept, his long lashes curled over his cheeks, the vulnerability of his hands and arms as she lay spooned around him, her hands wrapped around his soft cock.

Three generations of his life shifted and flitted across his face. Child, boy, young man.

She couldn’t believe that he was still in her bed, that this could happen to her so easily after all these years. She kept thinking that at any minute a disaster would occur that would destroy her rapture. If he was late she would sit by the phone terrified that he’d been killed in a car accident or detained under some immigration law he’d contravened without telling her.

Zoe was initially incredulous that Deidre had not only managed to find a boyfriend but had then kept the relationship going. As days became weeks, the initial awe turned to
envy. She kept finding fault with Mischa: he’s too young, too foreign, not ambitious enough…the litany went on. As for Mischa, he found Zoe’s attempts at flirtation distasteful and disloyal. But, ever discreet, he maintained a diplomatic silence.

Mischa also understood the importance of seducing the mother as well as the daughter. Ethel found the young man cosmopolitan and dedicated to Deidre, and being an amateur gardener herself would try Mischa’s patience by engaging him in long soliloquies about the correct way to grow magnolias, or how to get rid of black spot on roses. She didn’t care about the age difference between them, herself being of that age where time gives you the benefit of wisdom and tolerance.

“Happiness is so transitory, dear,” she told Deidre. “When you have it, grab it with both hands and hold on tightly.”

Deidre would spend hours in the small walled garden that Mischa had now planted with exotic purple and magenta blossoms. Under his guidance she read the contemporary philosophers and began to explore some of the more recent theories of physics and spirituality.

Sitting there in the shade, the roar of the traffic a distant hum, she’d fall into a reverie watching a caterpillar climbing painstakingly up the stem of a plant. She felt as if the vegetation around her was ripening, swelling in preparation for something. A seed had been sown, but what fruit it was to bear she abandoned to destiny.

She lowers herself carefully onto the hospital trolley, already her flesh feels precious. Mischa, walking beside her, slips a small Russian doll into her hand. She opens it up, inside is a tiny pearl.

“This will be you.”

“It might not work.” She can’t keep the anxiety out of her voice.

“Maybe not now, but I know it will eventually. I love you.”

Smiling, he disappears for a second as they enter the clinic through separate doors. As the attendants slip her onto the bed, Mischa reappears in a green hospital gown and picks up a stethoscope lying on the small operating table beside the bed. He puts the earpieces into her ears and places the end over his heart.

“You see? My heart runs with yours…”

She laughs, the accidental poetry of his grammar still making her melt.

“Hearts don’t run, they race.”

“Race? We are lovers not athletes.”

“Mischa, I’m scared.”

He kisses her.

“Don’t be.”

The nurse starts to pull the screens around and Deidre reaches for Mischa’s hand. Her heart is, indeed, running. She gazes up at the ceiling with its fluorescent light, blinking slightly.

Mischa squeezes her hand. “You OK?” he whispers.

She smiles up at him. Any minute now the surgeon will inject the fertilized eggs into her womb.

“I’m trying to visualize what she’ll look like.”

“It could be a boy.”

“It could.”

Mischa leans down and kisses her. Suddenly she wants to cry.

Looking up from her book, she crosses her legs. She feels herself becoming moist. Outside the bus, the lights of the city sail past. It’s a summer night, the kind of heat that excites, making everything seem possible.

She is still young. She sits there, book in lap, feeling the perimeters of her body under the tight satin dress, the underwire of her bra pushing up her breasts. Sweat runs between the tight material and her waist. She shifts her weight, peeling one buttock from the plastic seat. Everything vibrating under her skin. She looks back down at the book, a deconstruction of sexuality, a birthday present from him.

As I play back the images I become both the taken and the taker.

P
ORN
T
ALK
: H
ER

P
ORN
T
ALK
: H
IM

As she reads she is being watched. She glances up; two men are sitting opposite her. Their eyes have hope. The briefcase at her feet falls to the floor as the bus lurches around the corner. Quickly she rights it. If only they knew, the people on the bus, if only they knew what was inside.

She relates to these words, her own domesticity crushing down on her. A chosen oppression. A misguided impulse to appear as others. Impossible. Truth, like Nature, always finds a way through the cement.

Last night I dreamt about a gorilla, a large, sad primate. He was standing in the middle of the lounge room. His bulk was impressive and he knew it. Over seven foot in height with shaggy fur that hung down to the carpet. He had been chasing me all around the house. My family, that is my mother, brother and sister, who is always eight years old in my dreams, hid behind the couch terrified. His cage sat on the lawn outside the house. The cage door swung open in the breeze. He stood in the middle of the lounge room, opened his arms and began to reason with me in a deep melodious voice.

“What harm can I do you, little girl? All I want to do to you is hug you, wrap you up in my long smelly arms. Come here, just a little further, just a little further…” I walked bravely to the center of the room and began to argue sexual politics with him.

On the other side of Westminster Bridge stands the arts center, a fortress of concrete and glass, and the old river reflecting back this stark oasis. Next to it is the concert hall. Inside, a large body of people sit in the auditorium, waiting for the conductor to raise his baton. The conductor is her husband. He is fifty-two years old. Four back teeth in the lower jaw are false. He has a scar below his right nipple where he fell into a rose bush as a young boy. His penis is thick and slightly bent to the left. He is uncircumcised. At the moment he is slightly tumescent. This is because he is about to perform. The vibrations of the music play against the pleasure lobes at the back of his neck and he grows hard. But not too hard. Tumescent or
not, the young woman loves her husband, all of him, and his four back teeth, but mostly she loves his smell.

The bus stops.

A young man comes aboard: I can see only his shoulders at first. Broad shoulders, shoulders you don’t roll off. He leans against the glass partition with his back to me. He wears a dark scarlet silk shirt, I can see the texture pushed up against the glass. Just as I can see the tapering waist; the slim hips, the outline of his buttocks pressed against the glass. The conductor sits at the other end absorbed in a comic. Apart from him we are the only people on the bus. His hands hang down by his sides, tanned hands, with long, tapering fingers. He feels in his pockets with his left hand and pulls out a key ring, a silver orb. He rolls this from one finger to another. Swiftly, deftly.

I wonder if he is a magician.

She wonders about his cock, the shape of it, the weight of it, the taste of it. The bulk of his body promises size. He hasn’t turned around, but he wears his body comfortably, with the confidence of attractive people. His hair is thick, Celtic-black. It falls just below the collar of his shirt. For a moment she tastes salt in her mouth.

The man in the bus turns. His face comes into profile. With the alertness of those who are watched, he moves across and sits opposite her. She drops her eyes immediately as his gaze burns across her cheek, her breasts, her shifting legs. He sees the face of a woman, an innocence masking a terrible curiosity. A strong chin; olive skin with a faint moustache that highlights the edge of the upper lip. A fuller lower lip, her eyebrows feline. Black semicircles in a pale circle. The eyelids protrude knowingly. It is her eyes he wants to fuck. She sees the black down on the fingers of his hands. The long black
hair escaping from his shirt sleeves. The jawline sweeping up from the pronounced bones in the neck. His white skin. The scarred pores that push the aquiline into animal. The blind flesh in the trousers. His tongue for a second. And the gray of his eyes that shutters like the flash gun of a camera when their eyes meet.