The Sexopaths (14 page)

‘Monique...’

‘It was just to put her at ease
about us.’

‘Seems like you’ve succeeded, on
your part at least.’

 He wonders if he sounds a
little rejected.  He asks:

‘Just how
much
detail did
you get into when you discussed the ‘arrangements’?’

‘Things we might like.’

‘We?’

‘Yes.  I said I thought you
would like it if we tied you up and took turns to suck you.’

Adam swallows.  His pulse
takes a leap that he can feel in his underwear.  He grips his chin with
one hand, in exaggerated fashion.

‘And you don’t mind that?’

‘Why should I?’  There’s a
glint in her eyes, sparked by the confession.

‘And, er… how about things you
might like?’

She takes a gulp of wine, then
apes his interview style in her response:

‘I’d like you to fuck her while
she’s in a sixty-nine position with me.’

‘Bad girl, Monique.’

For a second he wonders if the
observation sounds too congratulatory, and revealing of the secret thoughts
somersaulting celebrations inside his head.  He reaches for her hand and
she reciprocates, squeezing his fingers reassuringly.  He says:

‘Are you certain about this?’

‘Mais oui.  Et tu, mon
cheri?’

He delays his reply for a
diplomatic second.  ‘I guess – as long as you feel fine.’

‘I do.  It is exciting.’

‘I just wouldn’t feel great if it
were another guy involved.  After this Russian business…’

‘I understand.’

‘And you don’t want a couple to
come?’

‘Can you get that?’

Evidently you can, thinks
Adam.  ‘I imagine it’s possible.’

‘It is okay, my darling. 
Don’t worry.  This is what I want for us.  It is a turn on for me,
that it is a turn on for you.’

Adam nods once in
acceptance.  ‘Okay.’

‘So – do you want to change
her for another one, or cancel altogether?’

‘Right now I want to take you
upstairs.’

***

The doorbell chimes, a polite
pause between its two notes.  Adam glances nervously at Monique. 
It’s like they are both in a waiting room and now he is first to be
called.  Carefully he puts down his shot glass and slides off his stool. 
He takes a couple of paces but then has second thoughts and turns to down the
tequila in one.  Fashionably shod where he would usually go barefoot, his
steps betray his progress through the wooden-floored hallway.  As he
reaches the front door, the bell rings again, with more urgency this
time.  He feels the alcohol kicking in – the darts player’s
palliative it enables him to raise a steady hand to the latch.

‘Hi Jasmin, I’m Adam.’

He feels curiously detached as he
considers that this is a call girl he’s letting into their home, and how normal
seems the process.

‘Hey babes.’

He holds out a hand but she
plants a kiss straight on his lips and brushes past him.   He tastes
mint and cigarette, and for an infinitesimal moment he’s startled as her
unexpectedly familiar scent fires neurons in his brain that flash up an image
of Xara.  Then he hears the sudden rattle of a diesel engine and the
vision dissolves: a taxi is turning in their driveway.  The driver is
female and she sights him across her shoulder as she pulls away.  He has a
sudden urge to call after her, to explain that this isn’t for him – that
his wife is here too and that she has arranged it all.  But Jasmin
intervenes.  She tugs at his sleeve and says:

‘It’s okay babes – she’s my
friend.’

He turns to face her.  His
first impression is of disappointment; already her local accent has lowered his
expectations.  And while her web portfolio oozes airbrushed perfection and
promises beauty, the skin of her cheeks is flawed beneath its cosmetic rendering;
as Monique had perceived, she’s older than advertised.  Stretched lines
draw a hardness across her eyes, pale blue pools that seem slowly to be taking
in their surroundings.

She’s not far below his own
height, elevated by significant heels, and she begins to reveal more as she
removes a fur beret to shake out a twisted cascade of blonde hair, and then
unwraps herself from within the matching calf-length sable.  Adam reaches
out to assist, and she fixes him with an empty stare as he relieves her first
of an over-size designer handbag, and then extends an arm to receive the heavy
coat.  And now he sees why she can ply this trade: she may not be so
pretty, but her body – all curves within a  tight black skin of
silky jeans and matching top – he just wants to go to bed with.  His
heart takes a bump and he senses sweat at the armpits of his freshly laundered
shirt.  He says:

‘Monique’s waiting through in the
kitchen.  Can I give you our envelope first?’

‘Sure, babes.’  She appears
at once alert and disinterested.

‘This way.’  He beckons her
into his study and picks up an unsealed white envelope from his desk.  ‘I
think that’s right.  For two hours, plus a hundred extra for a
couple.  Six hundred.’

She thumbs the sheaf of
notes.  She frowns and after a moment says:

‘No – it should be
more.’  There’s a harsh note in her voice.

He can’t think why it’s not the
correct amount – he’s checked half a dozen times on the Angels365
website.  He wonders if this is her standard opening gambit.  He
says:

‘I took it from your web page. 
Look, I can go out to a cash machine.’

Then she smiles.  ‘Oh
– I got it wrong in my head.  Sorry, babes – this is
right.  I was thinking of something else.’  She crumples the envelope
into her bag like a discarded tissue and then suddenly places a palm on his
sternum.  ‘Nice shirt, babes.’

He’d like her to kiss him again,
to re-establish the connection she made on arrival.  Now her stare seems
to invite him to touch her, but he knows he must say:

‘Come and meet Monique.  And
have a drink.’

‘I don’t normally drink, but…
let’s see.’

As he leads her through into the
kitchen she traces a nail down his spine; only reluctantly he steps away in
order to introduce Monique.

‘Voila Jasmin.  But of
course you nearly know one another.’

Monique slides from the barstool,
explosively bombing the tiled floor with her own killer heels, and totters
forward to greet the girl.  Their heights are virtually identical. 
They start with air-kisses but their proximity draws them together into what
Adam recognises as an ice-breaking embrace; they visibly relax as one.  He
guesses there were more nerves than either chose to display, and in their
unspoken way they’ve just confessed these underlying anxieties.  Despite
Jasmin’s provocative touches, now he feels like the outsider.  This is
furthered as Monique indicates the barstool beside hers, where previously he
sat.  So while the girls make themselves comfortable he pours champagne.

‘Cheers, then.’

They reciprocate.  He
watches with interest as Jasmin drains her glass.  He extends the bottle.

‘That’s not bad going, since you
don’t normally drink.’

‘I’ve decided I like you
both.  And I love champagne, babes.’

Adam looks apologetically to
Monique, expecting her to recoil at this intimacy, but she pays no attention,
instead turning to face the girl.  She says, engagingly:

 ‘So – here we are!’

She dips her head and peers
inquiringly at Jasmin, rather like a doctor glancing up from a patient’s notes
over the rim of her reading glasses, as if to ascertain the veracity of
unlikely symptoms claimed by the patient herself.  He’s been expecting a
coded sign of approval, or otherwise, but her focus from the first moment has
been on the girl.  There’s no indication that she’s troubled by the
presence in their suburban sanctuary of this visitor whom, by most, would be
viewed as a denizen of the dark underworld, summoned to corrupt their
relationship.

‘You have a gorgeous house,
Monique.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s so beautifully
decorated.  Was it done by an interior designer?’

Adam intervenes to save Monique’s
blushes.  ‘It’s all her own work.  She’s in advertising.’

‘You’ve got fabulous taste. 
It’s really cool.’

Monique returns the
compliment.  ‘I love your top.  Is it the autumn range from
Ghost?’

‘Yes – how do you know?’

‘I think I saw it in one of my
magazines.  I adore their clothes.  I coveted it the moment I opened
the page.’

Jasmin proffers an arm and
Monique responds by stroking the fabric from her shoulder to her elbow. 
‘It is so soft – it must feel wonderful to wear.’

‘You can try it on if you like.’

Monique giggles.  Her eyes
narrow and Adam can see she’s turned on by the idea of swapping clothes with
the girl.  Already he senses a private airspace is taking form about the
pair, admitting the champagne bottle but not the barman.

‘I have one of their dresses from
the spring – it’s see-through and clingy in all the right places. 
It would suit you.  Very alluring.’

Jasmin smiles and raises her
glass for Monique to clink.  They drink and then Monique says:

‘It must be one of the perks of
your job – that you can wear sexy clothes for work.’

Jasmin casts her eyes down for a
moment as though she would disagree.  ‘It’s not always appreciated by the
punters.’

Monique seems unfazed.  Yet
to his ears it’s a shock epithet, ringing of the uncomfortable reality of this
moment.  Are
they
not punters?  Or is Jasmin so inured to its
use that she doesn’t even notice.

‘They just want them off!’ 
Monique sounds tipsy.

‘Who wants meat in its wrapper?’

This time Jasmin’s choice of
words elicits a reaction from Monique.  Sympathetically she replaces her
hand on the girl’s sleeve.

‘Oh – Monique, don’t
worry.  I’m used to it.  It’s better that way.  I can’t have
punters taking a shine to me.  Getting to know me.’

Monique involuntarily lifts her
hand.  Suddenly Jasmin is forced to backtrack.  ‘Monique – I
don’t mean you.  You
two
.’  Without looking at him, she
includes Adam with a sweep of her champagne flute.  ‘You’re a lovely
couple – I really like you – it’s really nice to be here. 
You’re really chilled.’

Adam feels like he’s kicking his
heels.  He doesn’t need to know about the girl’s problems.  Why
hadn’t they just led her straight upstairs, an option they’d discussed? 
But Monique is tenacious in pursuit of knowledge.

‘Do you get some awful…
punters
?’

Again Adam finds the word
disconcerting, doubly so coming from Monique’s lips.  Now they’re about to
share confidences like a pair of brothel-sisters.  Jasmin shakes her head,
though it seems as much an affected shrug as a negation of the question. 
She says:

‘Ninety percent are regular
guys.’  Now she indicates Adam with a tilt of her head.  ‘Like your
husband.’

He feels sure his cheeks are
burning, but Monique doesn’t look his way.  Meanwhile Jasmin completes her
equation:

‘Ten percent are scum.’

Monique’s eyes widen.  ‘In
what way?’

‘Huh… they try to con you –
or not to pay what you’ve agreed.  Or they want to do disgusting stuff to
you… or you to do it to them…’

Monique responds to the pause
with an encouraging nod.

‘I mean – last week… there
was this punter, foreign – wee greasy guy, fat, rude.  I got to his
hotel room and he started trying to barter down the price.  I wouldn’t
budge and he was calling me a slag and that.  I undressed in his bathroom
and when I came out he was sitting with his cock out – some tiny
cock!  He wanted me to suck him off in front of the mirror.  I asked
if he’d showered and he just ranted at me again and said he was paying and I’d
do as I was told.  I knelt down and started giving him a hand job but he
smelt awful and he got me by the hair and tried to push me onto it.  I
just went mad and shoved him over the back of the chair and grabbed my stuff
and ran for it.  He was spitting and screaming he was going to have me
maimed.’

‘That’s scary.  You must
have been terrified.’

‘I should have known better
– got out right at the start.  But he was hardly going to come after
me with his trousers round his ankles and that excuse for a dick.  More
the dick than the trousers.’

They all laugh at this –
Jasmin seems quite unperturbed.  Adam is interested in the practical
aspect of her escape.  He says:

‘What about you –
clothing-wise, I mean?’

She glances at him for a second,
then returns her attention to Monique.  ‘I was in heels, and stockings and
suspender belt.  I’d suspected I might need to make a dash for it –
so I’d stuffed my dress and bra and pants into my handbag and brought it
through.  All I had to do in the corridor was wrap my coat round me. 
I got the jerk’s money, too.’

‘You should receive danger
money,’ says Monique.

‘I suppose I do, in a way.’

‘Shouldn’t you have a bodyguard?’

Jasmin shakes her head.  You
can have someone you phone to say you’ve arrived and when you’ll call them
again – so they can raise the alarm.  You do it in front of the
punter, so for all they know you’ve got someone waiting downstairs.  If
you’re with an agency you just call into them.’

‘But you are not… with an
agency?’

‘’365? – it’s just a
website for independent escorts.  There’s no controller.  Not that
you can speak to.’

‘So what do you do, for safety?’

‘To be honest, Monique, I don’t
usually bother.  When a punter’s booked into a hotel… you kind of think
they must be safe… they’d know they could be traced.’

Unless they’re a psychopath,
muses Adam, in which case they’d have thought of that.

‘So did you phone someone –
when you got here?’

‘Tonight – the taxi I came
in – she’s a really good friend.  My regular transport.’  And
as if reading Adam’s thoughts, she adds: