SEVEN DAYS

Seven Days

By

Silence Welder

Copyright © 2013 Regale Publishing

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]

Chapter One: 18:13

Picasso:
“Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth.”

There were two queues. The other, of course, was moving more quickly and the temptation, the near compulsion, to move from one line to the other only added to Judy's anxiety.

She held the book that she hoped to purchase in her arms, clutched against her chest, partly for a feeling of comfort—though it did not hold her back—partly because it was heavy and partly to hide the cover from other people in the queue.

The tome was an authoritative work on 19th and 20th century erotic art. The writing was bold and unashamed, but worse, there was an extraordinary, explicit image on the cover. It was the image of a Japanese man in a striped, grey kimono looming over a reclining, white-faced Geisha, her legs spread to receive his elephantine appendage. He was ready. Boy, was he ready. But was the Geisha? She was looking away from him, which didn't surprise Judy at all. The man was licking his fingers, preparing himself to prepare her for what was to come.

Or was it her fingers he was taking into his mouth? It was hard to tell, especially as she had only allowed herself a glance at it before pressing it firmly against her chest, where she intended it to stay until it was safely into a plastic bag.

She surprised herself by being prudish. This was the opening night, after all, of an exhibition of erotic art and so there were plenty of people buying erotic prints, postcards and books.

This book wasn't for her, however, it was for Peter. Peter was the most intelligent man she had ever met.

They had worked together for a year at the same office, before he had been head-hunted and moved on to bigger and brighter things in a rival company. There had been a job for her too, but she had remained loyal to her firm and had later been graced with a promotion to team leader despite being one of the youngest people in the office.

Peter was head of a team about four times the size of hers and he was in charge of innovation. She and he had made a deal to stay in touch on the condition that they never talk about work.

Judy and her girlfriends had once fantasised about a man who could talk them to orgasm and Peter was the prime candidate. The only problem was that he didn't see her in a sexual way. Sometimes she wondered if he saw her at all. She had become his slightly simple, but interesting friend.

They had had a few moments of intimacy. They’d had sex a handful of times. The last time had been on Peter’s sofa in a darkened room, but his son had walked in on them and she had had to go home. Since then, they had not even spoken of the incident, and it was definitely an incident, the way a bump in traffic is an incident. A regrettable, undo-able, but eminently survivable incident.

They agreed to stay friends and she proclaimed to view him as a friend too, but she would have been receptive to more if he had once suggested it. He never did.

She hoped that this book would not only appeal to his burgeoning love of art criticism, but would give him a nudge in the direction of fun. They were two adults. They were alone. They shared many interests...sharing a bed would be natural progression.

She gained another couple of feet in the approach to the till. She had used a woman in a double-sided shawl as a marker. That woman was only eighteen people from the desk now and if Judy had switched queues when she had first thought of it, she would have been number nineteen. In her current position, however, she could barely see the purchase desk.

To occupy her mind, she let her eyes rest on the folds of the woman's shawl and noticed with a blush that it was similar in appearance to the flowing, flesh-like dress of the geisha on the cover of the art book. The dress was the colour of tanned skin on the outside, but red-pink on the inside. The man on the cover had gathered up a handful of the material and appeared as if he was about to thrust it up over her knees. She was looking away with heavy-lidded eyes, demure, coquettish, well—practised.

Judy returned the book to her chest and saw that her queue had advanced yet another three steps.

Hurrah.

Eventually, she was close enough to see clearly the faces of the staff in white gallery T-shirts behind the counter. They were a young man and woman, he handsome, she pretty, and the reason the queues were advancing so slowly seemed to be that they were busily flirting with each other. The guy was implying that the woman should bend down—or rather over—in order to reach something for him. She was declining, knowing full well that he only wanted to see what happened to her skirt when she moved.

The girl wasn't pretty; she was beautiful. She knew it too and loved the attention. She flashed the men and women in the queue Barbie-doll smiles, but when she smiled at the guy behind the counter it was different. She was feigning outrage, trying not to laugh, trying not to be too delighted that he fancied her.

Not for the first time, Judy wondered what it might be like to feel beautiful. To wake up in the morning and be lovely, even in the mirror pre-7 a.m., brushing hair that sparkled and then throwing on a summer dress. She wondered if the girl behind the counter had ever cried while looking in the mirror. Had she ever had a spot? On the end of her nose? For a week? During the end of school party? That was the kind of thing that stayed with you forever and made you who you were.

Enough of that, the queue was moving again.

She tried not to stare at the couple behind the counter, but even when she looked away, she could hear their play. At times, he was crude, so much so that a man in the queue ahead of her tutted, deposited his book on the nearest shelf and left the shop. The young guy was playing fairly close to the edge and he might even have been about to get himself sacked or slapped, but he was only doing it to shock the girl and the muscles of her cheeks would be aching in the morning from controlling her smiles.

Judy saw the way that he was looking at the girl. He was playing it cool too, but his eyes shone, recharging a little every time they glanced over her feline features, her smooth neck, the fall of natural, blonde curls.

Judy's dark hair didn't so much fall as drop. Any attempt to do anything with it was rewarded, eventually, with an ice-cream cone structure of one sort or another that lasted a day at most. She'd considered shaving it all off more than once, but was afraid that it might grow back even worse.

She was thinking this when she noticed that a member of staff, another guy in the uniform white T-shirt, was scrutinising her. He was near the checkout desk, possibly having rearranged books on the spiral display there. On returning to the store room or staff room or whatever it was, he had stopped and regarded her.

Judy checked over her shoulder to check that he was definitely looking at her and not somebody else in the queue.

He was looking at her.

Not just looking, but staring.

At that moment, a group of three people received their goods and she was obliged to take a few more steps towards the counter, bringing her almost parallel with him.

She glanced away, politely, and then looked back. His eyes were fixed on her, not polite at all.

He was pretty tall with very dark, wavy hair. Though he sported the same white T-shirt as the other staff, he also wore a plain, black jacket over the top. A shame, because she would have liked to have seen more of him. Since he was staring at her, she thought that she might as well stare back so he knew how it felt.

He appeared to be about the same age as she, early twenties, and she would later describe him as ‘funky’. She told herself that his look was probably well-cultivated. She imagined that the queue for his bathroom every morning was much the same as the queue in the bookshop.

Though she disapproved of his vanity, she found him handsome and his gaze magnetic and over a few seconds she realised that she had butterflies in her stomach.

She felt as if he reduced everyone and everything in the room to soft focus. His eyes were like pools and under this gaze, she became aware of her body. Every part of her that his eyes touched became hot. She felt the tiny hairs on her forearms stand to attention and a shiver ran down her back, causing her to shift from one foot to the other.

He looked her up and down, from her sensible shoes, up over her tan tights until the hem of her beige work skirt, beginning just above the knee. His eyes traversed her waist, counted the buttons of her blouse and passed over her neck and back to her eyes for a moment, before regarding the unstyled hair on her head. Either he liked what he saw or he was amused by something, because he moved towards her, smiling.

A breeze could have carried her up into the air at that moment, she felt so light on her feet. She’d be happy to be tethered to him, a kite guided by his expert hands.

Wobbling, she abruptly ended the exchange by examining her shoes.

Being in a gallery, she told herself, was no reason to treat everyone as though they were objects, particularly not on the opening night of an exhibition of erotica.

He wasn't just anyone, though. There was something about him that connected with her very deeply. He may as well have reached out and plucked her from the queue like an apple from a tree. She could feel his pull, even now, while pretending to be engrossed in the black bows on her shoes.

She pretended to gaze around the room, but soon discovered that he was still gazing at her, though now with a frown.

“What?” she said, disappointed and irritated at once.

A few people turned around. She despised talking in public and could feel herself becoming  redder than ever.

“That book's bigger than you are,” he said upon approaching.

His voice! Dry, like autumn leaves, but warm. An open fire, drawing her like a cat to its rug.

She smiled her best smile and agreed with him.

“It's very heavy,” she said. “Are you going to offer to carry it for me?”

“You're not going to read it,” he said. “So I'm not going to carry it. Even if you were going to read it, and you won’t, I wouldn't be doing you any favours by encouraging you.”

“Aren't you supposed to be selling these books?” she said.

“No,” he said. “Not if I don't like them. And that book represents six to seven hours of your life that you'll never get back. Six to seven hours that you could spend doing other things. Things infinitely more pleasurable.”

She could feel her blush rising, volcanic. The entire room seemed to have become silent except for the two of them.

“There's nothing like a good book, though,” she said.

“You're right,” he said. “That is nothing like a good book.”

“That's not what I said. And The Times seems to think it's a good book.”

“The author writes for the Times,” he said. “The author's friends like his book. That's not a great achievement. I'm sure his family thinks it's excellent, too. So what?”

“Wow,” said Judy. “You really know a lot about this guy. Are you his stalker?”

“I know about him, because he's been to this gallery many times. And you know what?”

“What?”

“He didn't even like art. He was more of a mathematician. He liked patterns, but not the kind you draw. The only thing he was fit to draw was a conclusion.”

“Why would someone who doesn't like art write a book on it?”

“Money? Prestige? School bullies? Who knows? All I know is that opening that book is like throwing any shred of creativity you might otherwise have had into a black hole.”

“Interesting,” said Judy, “but I'm not creative...”

“But you'd like to be?” he interrupted.